Emergency Preparedness Pamphlet #6: Family Reserves

There are a number of family reserves we have been counseled to setup. They are usually talked about separately but I am going to consolidate them for us here.

Family Reserves:
Food Storage
Financial
Spiritual
Emotional
Intellectual

Food Storage Reserve
Food Storage is the one everyone thinks of first. A year's supply of food, water and where possible fuel is the standard line given. We ought not to forget household commodities like toilet paper, soap, shampoo and the like. Every day we use things up that need to be replaced often. It is very inconvenient when you don't have any toilet paper. Disasters can come without prior warning and having food in your house is better then having food in a warehouse somewhere in the state. A year's supply for one person is 1095 meals for that 1 person, or a 9 month supply for a family of 4, or 1 meal for 1095 people. One of the major things sent to disaster area by the Church are hygiene kits: Soap & small towel, toothbrush & toothpaste, razor and other small but very useful things.

Financial Reserve
We have been told many times to get out of debt and to build up a reserve. This reserve can start out being $100, can be built up to $1000, the standard size of emergency fund in many books. At this point, you should throw all your effort into getting out of debt. Pay off the smallest debt first then move to then next largest and in just a few short years you can be debt free.
Then you can built your reserve to where it should be able to sustain your family if you become unemployed. The LDS Employment Center has found it takes on average 1 month per $10,000 per year of salary/wages to find another comparable job.
While keeping this reserve in the bank is fine most of the time, a major disaster will shut down banks for a while. Having a small cash reserve on hand at home is important too. Pay the Lord first with a full tithe and generous offerings, pay yourself second, minimize your expenses, eliminate debt and maximize your income.

Spiritual Reserve
The Parable of the Ten Virgins is about the members of the Church. We have been warned that we must have testimonies of our own as we cannot survive what is to come on borrowed light.
As individuals and as families we can build these reserves by:
Daily Prayer
Daily Scripture Study
Weekly Family Home Evening
Weekly Church Meeting Attendance
Regular Temple Attendance

Emotional Reserves
Paul taught that without charity we are nothing. Charity helps us as we help others. As we help others our own hurts are healed. Charity begins at home.When was the last time you spent some good quantity time with your spouse or just one of your children? Do you really know them? Do they really know you? Hopes, dreams, goals, progress? When it comes to relationships love is spelled T-I-M-E. Time spent in the same room watching the same thing doesn't count. This is not about face time this is about knee to knee time. Talk time counts, particularly if they are doing most of the talking.

Intellectual Reserves
The brethren have taught mainly the sisters that they should get all the education they can. Just because you have left school doesn't mean you can stop learning. Yet 77% of college graduates never read another book from beginning to end the rest of their lives. The way the employment market goes you need to constantly improve yourself just to stay in place, much less advance. Brian Tracy, a motivational speaker, has studied successful people for many years and has found that they spend at least 3% of their income on their own continuing education. Have you spent anything on your own education? And what about your spouse, have you encouraged them or helped them to learn something new? If they are a stay-at-home parent they need it more then you do. Even teaching your children at home will allow your brain to go to flab if you don't do something to challenge it from time to time.

On Starting a Long-Term Company

On Starting a Long-Term Company: "A lot of what goes into starting companies is turning nothing into something. Starting with a blank slate, and just inventing all kinds of stuff. You'll never know if it's ultimately correct. You just have to use your judgement, make decisions, and move on. To some people, that's pretty scary. Not to have any answers to look up in the back of the book. Just to do stuff."

This is good advice. I am keeping it here and the link for near-future reference.

Aid pours into Bangladesh after cyclone | csmonitor.com

Aid pours into Bangladesh after cyclone | csmonitor.com: "Survivors are scrambling for food as rescue workers struggle to reach remote villages three days after cyclone Sidr battered Bangladesh, leaving more than 2,200 dead and thousands homeless."

The aftereffects of a major disaster take a while to dissipate. You have to have something for yourself. It just takes too long for others to come help.

One thing to notice is that there are a couple of Marine dock landing ships racing to help. Know your friends.

Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth - New York Times

Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth - New York Times: "15 of the 20 descend from at least one line of former slaves who managed to obtain property by 1920 — a time when only 25 percent of all African-American families owned property."

As a point in the argument of to rent vs buy, this is fascinating.

Admittedly, his study sample size is very small and not randomly selected but since he is backtracking it ends up being very large He is looking back 5+ generations, that is a lot of people, and they all started out pretty much in the same place, as former slaves.

Property ownership seems to be one of those things that changes a person quite radically. Just about everyone who buys their first home says they feel different about things afterward.

The effects of property ownership also obviously echo down through the generations. The attitudes that you have you pass to your children and then to their children and maybe further.

Another effect that can be in operation is compound interest. Over the long term compound interest is vastly powerful. By keeping property in your family for a long time it generally appreciates and can by used later to powerful effect.

We may be renting right now as we re-establish ourselves but our goal is another home of our own. Because it is important to us and it will be important to our children and their children.

Nov. 16, 1904: Vacuum Tube Heralds Birth of Modern Electronics

Nov. 16, 1904: Vacuum Tube Heralds Birth of Modern Electronics : "1904: British engineer John Ambrose Fleming invents and patents the thermionic valve, the first vacuum tube. With this advance, the age of modern wireless electronics is born."

I almost missed this
Via Neetorama

Anchor Optics - Educational Documents

Anchor Optics - Educational Documents: "Educational Documents"

Way cool! Those will be great projects when my daughter is a bit older.

via MeFi

Ratatouille Movie Mistakes

I've watched Ratatouille several times now and have noticed a couple of mistakes.

The Disappearing jar
The first is when Linguini lets Remy out of the jar. Remy runs off and Linguini stands up. Remy looks back and the jar is at Linguini's feet. Then as Linguini turns to his bicycle the jar has vanished.

Jumping Physics
This one is more subtle. In the big chase scene as Skinner and Remy are jumping from boat to boat on the Seine. When Skinner does the screaming jump from the No Smoking Boat to the boat with the couple in love, we see most of his jump from the point of view of a camera on the deck on the Love Boat and he approaches it in a straight line toward the camera.
The mistake is that Skinner flight is directly toward the Love Boat in a straight line. The two boats are in motion relative to one another. Skinner would be moving at the speed of the boat he left and not the speed of the boat he is jumping onto. So from the Love Boat point of view he would be moving in a curve that would have had to start behind the man for him to end up grabbing the tablecloth.
Admittedly that might not have been as dramatic as what was put on screen but physics errors in movies are slightly bothersome to me.
This was something we ended up spending a lot of time on in my high school physics class. Several students couldn't figure out that the path of a falling object that was moving sideways was a curve. They kept saying it was a straight line. It turned out to be an optical illusion. The first experiment we tried was to have the teacher walk along and drop his keys. The optical illusion was that the keys were falling down beside his leg which looks like a straight line. Legs are straight and therefore the keys are falling in a straight line. After arguing about it a while I devised a plan to make it more obvious. I have the teacher stop and have the keys slide off his hand, then it was very obvious that the keys were traveling in a curve.

Stir-fried Popcorn

We wanted some popcorn to watch Monsters, Inc. with but all we had was popcorn kernels. The popcorn popper is buried in a box somewhere and we don't have any paper bags for doing it in the microwave. Obviously, popping it in a pop is a good way of doing it but tends to be a bit soggy and not very crisp like good popcorn should be.

Well, I know the problem is that the lid on the pot will keep all the steam in, and trying to keep the lid slightly open while shaking a big pot of popping corn on the stovetop without letting popcorn blast its way across the kitchen is just a really hard thing to do easily.

So I thought about how to solve this problem of letting the steam out without also letting the popcorn out and not burning myself. The big colander was hanging in the pantry and that solved the steam problem but it didn't fit well on any of the pots. But then I remembered the wok. It was about the same size as the colander, and trying it out it fit perfectly.

I now had a stovetop popcorn popper. Now to popping the popcorn itself. Preheat the wok on medium heat. Have a landing container ready. Add a tablespoon of corn oil and butter and allow the water from the butter to boil off and add 1/4 cup popping corn. Shake leisurely until they start popping then continuously until things start slowing down. When they reducing popping to 1 a second or so, remove from heat and into your landing container and season immediately. Serve with a good movie.

Ham Radio Amateur Extra License

I passed the test for my Amateur Extra class license so I have full privileges to the Amateur Radio bands. My wife was just short on her General test but she wants to try again after a bit more studying. She never studied electronics or anything like this as an elementary education major and this has been a struggle to hook the theory on to something in her mind. She keeps complaining about the material not sticking.

The problem seems to be that the material in the Ham study guide really expects you to have some science background in your education, like a high school physics class or something like it.

That is a big thing. There are all kinds of things you learn in school that are just not related to anything else but in the real world everything is mixed together and recognizing that is a big deal. Like during the fox-hunt a couple of people walked right past the transmitter box a half-dozen times but since they were looking at the readings on their radios rather then the world around them they just didn't see it.

Relating new concepts to things that are familiar is a really important thing to do. Wave theory can and should start by taking you back to the bathtub and splashing around.

The Only Complete Swiss Army Knife at Hammacher Schlemmer

The Only Complete Swiss Army Knife at Hammacher Schlemmer: " is the largest Swiss Army knife in the world, holder of the Guinness World Record for The Most Multifunctional Penknife, with 87 precision-engineered tools spanning 112 functions."

I love Swiss Army knives as much as anyone but, this is so over the top it is hilarious, unless you have the hands of King Kong this is just not going to be useful.

You survival tools need to be simple and effective. This is neither.

A good tool should be good at what it does. The thing about a Swiss Army knife is that it does many thing pretty well, and it is very small and light. Which is important too if you are carrying it around all the time.

U.S. Army Survival Manual FM 21-76 - EQUIPPED TO SURVIVE (tm)

U.S. Army Survival Manual FM 21-76 - EQUIPPED TO SURVIVE (tm): "U.S. Army Survival Manual FM 21-76"

You can download the whole thing from that site.
From Instapunbit

After Fires, Homeowners Feel an Insurance Pinch - New York Times

After Fires, Homeowners Feel an Insurance Pinch - New York Times: "Most Americans still think that full coverage means full coverage, but insurance companies know otherwise,” said Douglas Heller, executive director of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, an advocacy organization"

Reviewing insurance and reassessing our spending plans is one of those things that need to be done from time to time.

Insurance is becoming crazy expensive but it is still something to have.

Reviewing it whenever a major change occurs is probably the best time, a new home or renovation, or other major purchase, a job change, a new child or a child leaving home.

My brother in law went though some of his papers recently and found his will, it didn't even mention he youngest child who is in college now.

At the very least review these thing on years ending on 0.

MAKE: Blog: Programming AVR MCUs on a Mac

MAKE: Blog: Programming AVR MCUs on a Mac: "Programming AVR MCUs on a Mac"

This can come in useful for ham radio tinkering.

Fired after 30 years and taking bullets for the store

Shilson rose rapidly, working 60-hour weeks and becoming general manager at the W. 7th Street store and, later, at the Richfield Taco Bell. She was robbed at gunpoint twice, including the time she was shot while opening the W. 7th restaurant one morning in 1998.

A gunman made her open a safe, but there was a 10-minute delay on the lock. The impatient robber started shooting the safe. A ricocheting bullet hit Shilson, wounding her in the left knee.

When the cops came, she was in shock and called Doug, asking him to bring her a clean uniform. Why, he asked. "Because the one I'm wearing has holes in it and there's blood all over."

Paramedics intervened and took her to the hospital. She had two operations, but the knee still hurts. Other than a severe car accident that required a year's recovery, nothing kept her from work again.

"Border Foods was very good to me," she says, referring back to the days of her convalescence from the car accident. "They paid me disability until I went back to work, and they spent a lot of money on me. At that time, I thought there was no better company to work for."

This is not really new news, company loyalty left the coop long ago.

We can't afford to keep all our eggs in one basket. They say that about you investments in stocks and bonds and the like, but we forget that it is vitally important in our biggest investment: our career.

Having a side-business or possible income producing career is far more important now then it was when it was more popular years ago.

From The Simple Dollar

In Flanders Field

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Simple Chicken Soup From Scratch Recipe

We are a bit sick so I spent the day making chicken soup to help everyone out. I made this from scratch since all the ones at the store have way to much salt and preservatives. I roasted the vegetables and the chicken bones to improve flavors. This step is optional but tasty.

Chicken Soup from Scratch
1 whole fryer chicken
4 stalks celery
4 carrots
2 medium onions
1 head garlic
2 Tbsp peppercorns
2 bay leaves
About 1/2 lbs of small pasta like rotinni or elbow noodles
enough water to cover ingredients

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Finely chop the narrow ends of celery, you want about 1/2 cup of celery and reserve for the soup. Coarsely chop the rest of the celery for the stock.

Finely chop one of the carrots for about 1/2 cup of carrot and reserve for the soup. Coarsely chop the rest for the stock.

Finely chop enough of the onion for about 1 cup of onion and reserve for the soup, and coarsely chop the rest for the stock.

Finely chop 4-6 cloves of garlic for the soup, and break up the rest of the head for the stock.

Cut up the chicken, into wings, legs, back and breasts. Remove the skin and ribs from the breast. Dice the breast and reserve for the soup. Put it in a plastic bag and refrigerate until we are ready to make the soup.

The Stock

Put the chicken, and vegetables on a roasting pan and cook until the vegetables begin to brown. About 20 minutes. This step is optional but it does provide an extra flavorful stock in the end.

Transfer everything to a large pot, about 8 qt sized, and add the peppercorns and bay leaves. Add enough water to cover by about an inch. Up here in Colorado a lot of water will evaporate, by if you are in someplace with lots of humidity, like Georgia, you probably won't need so much.

Simmer on low until the wish bone or other small bone like the wing become brittle, about 4 hours. That means much of the gelatin in the bones has been liberated.

Remove the bones vegetables and herbs and discard they have given all they have to the stock. Now you have chicken stock. You can strain it through a fine mesh strainer or a colander with some cheese cloth in it, but that is not necessary for this application.

The Soup

In a new pot, about 2 qt sized, place the diced chicken and vegetables, and the noodles. Add enough stock to cover and a little bit more as the pasta will absorb quite a bit. Cook until the pasta is tender and chicken is cooked through. Salt and Pepper to taste. If you are sick you'll want more seasoning then usually, as you can't smell very well.

Ratatouile DVD Review

We really enjoyed this movie when it first came out.

Our daughter loved it so much we watched the podcasts most evening before bed. So, of course, we had to get it as soon as it came out. It is still a great movie. It has lots of replay value, way more then Dora the Explorer.

The best part about it is that it had heart. Colette is annoyed about being handed Linguini when she stood up for him in the first place. He was so eager to please her, well it was obvious that he was smitten by her, that it soften her toward him as she continued to teach Linguini and Remy. She was really hurt when she thought Linguini had used her teachings to blow past her. Not the case but that is how it looked.

Colette had been used before by some other rising chef, and she had loved him too. We see that and it is heart rending as she expresses that. She is in that kitchen because she has something to prove. She beat that other guy, she is in the finest resturaunt in the world and he is in some lesser
place, but it still hurts her.

These characters have real pain in their backgrounds. The look on everyone's face as Colette challenges Skinner to keep Linguini because, "Anyone can cook" is priceless, Skinner and Colette were the only ones to come to cooking the conventional way. Each of the others had met Gusteau somewhere and had been taken under his ample wing.

Horst is a key character, whatever his management style it alllows the chefs to work smoothly even with iron-fisted Skinner in charge. Horst is actually doing most of the work as Skinner dreams up his next batch of frozen entrees. It is his decision to leave at the big revelation that let everyone else leave, but he is almost in tears, he doesn't want to leave but he cannot stay and that tears at his soul.

This is a great movie because they don't have to tell you all the backstory of everything, but you can create it yourself easily.

I am wondering where Disney/Pixar will go after Wall-E and Toy Story 3. I am pretty sure they want to move animation out of the action-comedy genre. I hope they make a drama that is still rated G but is not really for kids. I would never expect them to make a "My Dinner with Andre" but they do need to tell people that just because it is animated doesn't mean it is kids stuff.

Mrs. du Toit Something to Live and Die For

Mrs. du Toit: "Our civilization will be lost to those who at least pay lip service to loveliness. Our cities, our great institutions, are full of those on the ideological left with the ideaological right locked in our houses or scattered into the woods… and when a young mind is given the choice between the ugly emptiness, selfishness, and simplisme of the right, or the elegant pseudo-sophistication of the left, what do you think they will choose? They will choose lovliness, in whatever guise it is offered. "

There is great beauty in simplicity and it takes some work to achieve simplicity and that is a work to itself.

There needs to be more emphasis on beauty and too often things that drive me the most crazy are things that are designed badly, things that don't work well are ugly no matter how much lipstick was put on that pig.

That is one of the main reasons why I like using Macs. They work, they work well and are good looking too.

American kids, dumber than dirt / Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history

American kids, dumber than dirt / Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history: "because of all the insidious mandatory testing teachers are now forced to incorporate into the curriculum, of the 182 school days in a year, there are 110 when such testing is going on somewhere at Oakland High. As one of his colleagues put it, 'It's like weighing a calf twice a day, but never feeding it.' "

That is a interesting way of putting it. Testing seems to be making it worse rather then better, but the system has been in trouble for a lot longer then that.

Seth's Blog: We accidentally marketed ourselves into a corner

Seth's Blog: We accidentally marketed ourselves into a corner: "There's no question that a Harvard degree helps (or is even required) in a few fields. There's also no doubt that spending four years at Yale is a mind-changing experience. The question isn't, 'are they wonderful?' The question is, 'Is it worth it?' "

'Fire blogging' tech expert on how fellow evacuees and networks are holding up | NetworkWorld.com Community

'Fire blogging' tech expert on how fellow evacuees and networks are holding up | NetworkWorld.com Community: "Local media did a great job of telling people that the most efficient way of telling others where they were or assuring those people that they 'were safe' was by texting, which has a lower bandwidth demand than voice.With 250,000 people turned into refugees by the fires there was a lot of stress on voice networks. I only got a "network unable to place call" message twice yesterday on I-15 as I went zero miles an hour.

The other piece of technology I rely on and carry in my "go now" bag is a Belkin Skype wireless phone. It's sturdy and small enough to nestle safely in my bright red backpack and it finds Skype and connects automatically wherever there's an 802.11 network. I keep all my portable electronics fully charged and ready to go. My Skype wireless phone has become an integral part of my mobile equipment and it's a great backup or primary communications tool."

Interesting take on the Go-Bag. As we see again the cell phone network bogs down in a crisis. Testing is a good way around that, though.

I am not exactly surprised that a shelter in Southern California would have 802.11 WiFi I have doubts that one here in Colorado would. Though as a Ham I am going to start thinking about it a bit more because that, obviously, would be very useful.

From Slashdot

E-mail from an inferno: How we escaped the fire - CNN.com

E-mail from an inferno: How we escaped the fire - CNN.com: "It is truly amazing what becomes important under such terrible circumstances; but I think we got 95 percent or more of what really mattered. Everything else is replaceable clothes and furniture and TV's and computers and refrigerators and china. "

They are quite fortunate they had lots of time to get ready to go, they even got to make two trips.
I wrote about evacuations just yesterday so go back there and read up. Getting that much time is not guaranteed.

EO Newsroom: New Images - Wildfires Strike near Los Angeles and San Diego

EO Newsroom: New Images - Wildfires Strike near Los Angeles and San Diego: "Wildfires Strike near Los Angeles and San Diego"

The current fires and where other fires have been in the last few years and how they are overlapped. This is a pretty cool site.

from Chaos Manor

Evacuation planning

Gathering Plan

Unless you work at home, homeschool your children and grow your own food, most of us are away from home for a large portion of the day. We may have to find a way to gather everyone together. Disasters aren't going to come convenient to our schedules.

1: Figure out where everyone is during the day. You should have done this when creating a communications plan, but do it now if you have not. This is contact information for work, school and play, including address, main and direct phone numbers.

2: Decide on a local alternate gathering place that is not home. You won’t be able to go home if it is burning down. Choose an alternate: a nearby park, church, school or family member’s house.

3: Decide on an out-of-state contact, phones will often be overloaded during a disaster but you may be able to get a long distance call out of the disaster area. If everyone is calling the same place information can be exchanged. Setting up a family blog is also a way to find each other after a disaster, Do it now at blogger.com which is free and make sure everyone has the web address in their wallets.

4: Setup a distant evacuation point. This can be in-state but further is better. As we saw with the Blizzard of 1997 and Hurricane Katrina, disasters can cover multiple states. If you can travel 500 miles (about 2 tanks of gas) you will generally be out of the disaster area.

5: Scout out alternative routes. Everyone will think to use the interstate but that will clog them completely plan and practice alternative routes. During the evacuation for Hurricane Rita in 2005 many people used the county road system to escape at a much higher rate of speed then those who used the interstate. Be prepared for blocked roads so have a detailed maps or good GPS to find alternative routes. State Highways are usually better then an Interstate and County Roads are often the least used routes. Going North, East or South from Denver is pretty easy, going West can be a real challenge. Eisenhower Tunnel and Loveland pass are the routes most people think of, you need to think of a different way.

The Go Bag

For an evacuation it doesn't make too much difference if you're running from a wild fire, hurricane or tsunami. You really just need to grab the same things and go. Evacuation plans are a big deal if you have to go. You usually have very little warning. Ideally you want just one bag per person that you can grab on the way out the door. Really it probably won't be quite that good.

• Copies of your important documents (insurance cards, photo IDs, proof of address, deeds, bills, etc.) in a waterproof and portable container, double bagged in plastic zipper bags is fine.
• Contact and meeting place information for your household, and a small regional map.
• Keep a list of the medications each member of your household takes, why they take them, and their dosages. Medication information and other essential personal items. If you store extra medication in your Go Bag, be sure to refill it before it expires. A spare prescription to refill anywhere can be kept here.
• Extra set of car and house keys.
• Credit and ATM cards and cash, especially in small denominations, at least $50-$100 on hand, or enough to put the family up for a few days in a cheap motel.
• Bottled water and non-perishable food such as energy or granola bars.
• LED Flashlight and extra batteries wrapped with a couple of feet of Duct Tape.
• Battery-operated AM/FM (optional Weather/TV audio) band radio and extra batteries.
• Communications systems: Two-way radios of some kind: cellphone, FRS, GMRS, CB, or Amateur radios, and list of numbers or frequencies to call on. And extra batteries.
• First-aid kit.
• A multi-tool or swiss army knife
• Some parachute cord, chained for compactness.
• A couple large trash bags which you could make into a poncho if you have to.
• Paper and pen/pencil.
• A wide brimmed hat to keep sun and rain off.
• A Red bandanna has many uses including signaling.
• Child care or other special care items:
This would include things such as diapers, formula, toys, books, diabetic supplies, or anything else that may be needed to help sustain life.

We Went on a Fox Hunt! A Ham Fox Hunt

A Ham Foxhunt is an activity that Amateur Radio operators do where a transmitter is hidden in the community and you have to go find it. This is an important skill to learn as you can use it to find people who are lost or a crashed airplane or even an illegal transmitter.

So we (about a dozen of us) met at a parking lot and got our instructions. As we just got our licenses and haven't been able to build or buy a directional antenna we were lent one. We all got our first bearings, in the NNW direction. The signal was too weak to even hear with our handheld.

My wife and I hoped on the interstate and ran a few exits to shoot another bearing at a big box store that had some open space next to it, that I knew of. After getting a nearly West bearing we just took off down the street to try and box in the contact. We knew the next major street north was the boundary of the search box so we could box it in as we got closer.

With my wife watching the signal strength meter on our handheld she saw it rise and fall. So I turned North and came back on the boundary street to see if it had been north or south of the previous road.

Well, it pegged the meter as we drove past a supermarket. I turned and headed south to see if it dropped off after we passed a golf course. We went back to the supermarket and there was a little plaza that just seemed to say "It's right here." Just as we pulled in I saw a couple of the others wandering around with their Yagis, so we knew we were close.

While my wife kept our daughter entertained and out of the parking lot with some of the other children, I went looking for the "Fox." We knew it was a green ammo can but we were so close that the meter was pegged no matter which way we pointed. So I got out our little handheld and a baking sheet to try to find a null but there were too many reflections from the buildings us to go any good. We had been instructed that we could replace the regular antenna with a paperclip but we could find ours, we still needed to find a way to strongly attenuate that signal.

Then I remember we had covered the potato salad with aluminum foil. I wrapped our handheld in the foil and that worked great. Moving South toward the golf course it went down, tried west down again, back north and it got stronger.

At this point I realized I needed to use my eyes instead of my radio. Sure enough hidden in the junipers next to a tree was a little green box with an antenna.

It had taken us 44 minutes to find it. Second place. Most of us had come to the parking lot at virtually the same time. The leader had only gotten there about 2 minutes before. The last place team had caught a building reflection on their second bearing and that had sent them in the totally wrong direction. It was funny when we finally saw him, as we were wondering where they were, he was on the hill behind the store pointing his Yagi right at it but it was the rear lobe that he was catching it so he was looking the wrong way. Then we all went to the picnic.

Some lessons learned: We need a directional antenna to do this kind of work. An attenuator to help with the close work or a really lossy mini directional antenna out of paperclips or something.

Afterwards at the picnic we were looking at the "Fox." Written on the outside was a simple message explaining to people that it was a piece of Amateur Radio Emergency Training equipment. It doesn't come out and say it isn't a bomb but it turns out these kinds of activities get peoples attention, my wife answered a question of a passersby during the event.

The Fox itself was an old handheld modified with a hacked digital timer, a few other electronics and a large battery to run at 400mW or 1.4W. We were discussing making some of our own, this one was bought from another ham. All it does is send a morse code signal in FM for a short period of time. We brainstormed a bit and we figure a microcontroller could do most of the work of generating the signal and controlling the timing, we could hack one of those iPod FM transmitters up to our band and an output amp to boost it to 1-1.5 W instead of the 100mW as is typical of those iPod FM modules.

Fun stuff.

Newsvine - Living Paycheck to Paycheck Gets Harder

Newsvine - Living Paycheck to Paycheck Gets Harder: "The average family of four is spending anywhere from $7 to $10 extra a week — $40 more a month — on groceries alone, compared to a year ago, according to retail consultant Burt Flickinger III. "

Things are changing and this is just a symptom. Food prices are up in general, I've noticed it in all the supermarkets around here. It makes sense to sop at multiple stores when you can save a buck going to Sam's Club compared to Safeway and forget the 7/11.

Is Your Home an Asset or Liability?

Is Your Home an Asset or Liability? It depends on some of the other things that you leverage about your home.

If all you do is use your home to sleep in and store a bunch of stuff you don't use in productive ways then yes a home is not all that good a deal compared to a rental.

We had to sell our home after piling up debt due to medical bills and loss of my job so we are renting again. The thing is we lost a number of things that we could do with our home we cannot do in an apartment.

The major thing is that we no longer have any capability to grow our food. We had a huge garden that was a major supplement to our grocery bill and tasted way better too.

Another thing was that we could process the food we grew or bought from the farmer's market. We helped my nephews family can about 6 bushels of apples at their house. We had a station for cleaning and cutting apples, another to cook them, another to process into applesauce and finally another to do the actual canning process for putting up. The kitchen in our apartment is so laughably small two people can't do anything together in there. Doing applesauce would have taken forever as only one person could do anything in our pathetic little kitchen.

While I never had a chance to do it we were planning on solar panels to go for energy independence and having a well for water independence.

By itself a home is not much of anything at all except four walls and a roof, but it depends on what you do with it. A home can be far more then a storage facility and if that is all you'll use it for then if makes no sense to buy. A small apartment will be a much smarter idea.

NASA - Giant Waves Over Iowa

NASA - Giant Waves Over Iowa: "'For one thing, we believe undular bores can amplify tornadoes.' He cites as an example an F5 tornado that struck the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama, in April 1998. 'At first the tornado was doing relatively little damage. But our research shows that, just before the tornado reached Birmingham, it was hit by an undular bore.' The wave spun up the twister, increasing its intensity and size; the tornado went on to wreck more than 1000 homes and business totaling $200 million in damage. Tornado-wave interactions are the subject of Coleman's PhD dissertation, which he is completing now under the direction of University of Alabama-Huntsville professor Kevin Knupp."

That is a cool bit of weather, but for some reason I was reminded of an Umgubular Slashkilter.

More alternative-energy innumeracy | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

More alternative-energy innumeracy | Tech news blog - CNET News.com: "The Windbelt idea won a 'Breakthrough Award' in the November issue of Popular Mechanics, but not because Windbelt is actually useful or innovative. It looks like the magazine was a bit too eager to jump on the alternative-energy bandwagon, so nobody bothered to run through the numbers"

Too bad, lots of things work on the small scale but fail at the large scale. Look at insects like bees and dragonflys and see how well ornithopters have done.

Michael Yon : Online Magazine � Blog Archive � Achievements of the Human Heart

Michael Yon : Online Magazine Blog Archive Achievements of the Human Heart: "Once abandoned streets are now filled with families and budding entrepreneurs who continue to open new small businesses every week. We have made available grants for small businesses in our area and they have become immensely popular as you can imagine. I cannot walk the streets without children asking me for a soccer ball and “chocolate” (meaning any kind of candy) and adults asking for a micro grant application or for the status of the one they already filled out. They use these grants to open new businesses or improve their existing one and it is working well. "

And we've supposed to be losing!?!?!?!?!!?

The pathetic ones are not in Iraq but in our own country.

from instapundit

Here they come.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide: "The first Baby Boomer applied today for Social Security benefits, a milestone marking the approaching retirement of a generation of Americans whose eligibility for government payouts threatens to overwhelm the federal budget. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, a retired Maryland teacher who was born at 12:00:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1946, applied this afternoon for early retirement benefits. She'll become eligible to receive them in January when she turns 62."

Time flies when your having fun.

Westminster Hazard Assessment

The City of Westminster already has a list of possible disasters and their level of frequency and impact on the community. The Westminster Ward can use this information to implement a ward emergency plan. The primary focus of this plan is to insure the survival of the ward families with special needs: medical conditions, limited mobility, and those with limited reserves at home. By focusing on those with special needs as a primary factor the ward can react most quickly to support those at the highest risk during a disaster.

For the sake of this plan we will focus on Frequency. The most common hazards are:
Hazardous Materials Spill: Highway
Utility Service Failure
Winter Storm
There are two major reactions to any disaster:
Evacuation aka Scoop and Run aka Flight
Shelter In Place aka Stay and Play aka Fight

A Hazardous Material Spill will often require a small scale evacuation around the site of the incident, often with a radius of 1-2 miles. If ward members who have limited mobility are in that area having evacuation assistance available would be highly increase their chances of survival.

A Utility Service Failure and Winter Storm can often be ridden out at home. A generator to keep the refrigerator or furnace running, a 72 hour kit and some food and water storage is often enough. But members that require life sustaining medical support like oxygen and dialysis will need additional help to get to their specific supplies or treatments.

The key to any successful plan is proper communication. Winter storms often leave people home bound for days. A communications plan is the key issue that needs to be dealt with. By already knowing who has special needs we can setup systems to make it easy to communicate with them and make sure they are well or what needs they may have that need to be fulfilled. Phones will work pretty often but are often overloaded during major disasters. It is often easier to call out-of-state then in-state or into-state. The stake and region is developing a ham radio network for such occasions. An alternative, dependent on the distribution of ward members and ham operators, is to do a quantity buy of Family Radio Service (FRS) radios within the ward to allow short range communications. By using Ham operators as block captains it would allow an alternative to the phone system for members without amateur radio licenses, this does require that block captains be centered in 1-2 mile radius blocks.

To successfully implement any plan there much be a clear and detailed line of command. This generally follows the priesthood authority, obviously the Bishop is the top person in the Ward. We merely need an up-to-date list of the leadership.

This plan should be reviewed and updated about every quarter.The City of Westminster Emergency Management Office http://www.ci.westminster.co.us/res/ps/em/emer.htm has evaluated which disasters could potentially strike our community. You may be aware of some of them; others may surprise you. The following is a summary of their Hazard Analysis. Each type of hazard is evaluated based upon frequency, and impact estimates, and an evaluation of the necessity of evacuation is added:
Frequency:
Low: 0 to 5 significant events in the past 25 years.
Medium: 5 to 10 significant events in the past 25 years.
High: 10 or more significant events in the past 25 years.

Impact:
Low: Exposures have been partially or fully mitigated or minimal risk exists. The threat to property or population is considered minimal.
Medium: Exposures have either not been or can't be mitigated. The threat to property or population is considered possible.
High: Exposures have not been mitigated. The threat to population, widespread property loss, and damage are considered highly likely.

Evacuation:
Low: Not very likely to need to evacuate. Specific areas may be required to evacuate, most areas are not affected.
Medium: Moderately likely to need to evacuate. Specific areas are required to evacuate, most areas should be prepared to Shelter-In-Place.
High: Very likely to need to evacuate. Large areas are recommended to evacuate.

Season:
Some potential disasters are seasonal and plans need to be adjusted for them.

The Threats

Aircraft Accident

Frequency:  Low
Impact:  Medium
Evacuation: Low
Season: Any
The volume of air traffic over the City is very high. Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport™ is one of the busiest airports in the region and Denver International Airport has holding patters over Westminster airspace.

Dam Failure

Frequency:  Low
Impact:  High
Evacuation: High
Season: Any
Failure of any of Westminster's five dams could cause property damage, injury or death within the flood plain areas of the City.

Earthquake
Frequency:  Low
Impact:  High
Evacuate: High
Season: Any
At least four major faults exist along the front range including the Jefferson County.  The Major earthquake faults are located west of Interstate 25.  Earthquakes are very unpredictable and will be unexpected by the majority of the population.

Flash Flood

Frequency:  Low
Impact:  Low
Evacuate: Medium
Season: Any
Waterways and gulches that are normally dry pose an extreme threat during heavy rains. High numbers of visitors and recreational enthusiasts may increase the number of people that may be affected and need warning and evacuation. Major drainage basins potentially at risk are Big Dry Creek, Little Dry Creek and Coal Creek.

Hazardous Materials Spill: Business

Frequency:  Low
Impact:  Medium
Evacuate: Medium
Season: Any
Businesses that operate 24 hours a day, such as gas stations may expose a risk at any time. Less than five businesses have reported significant hazardous chemical inventories to the City.  Examples of businesses that may utilize hazardous materials include Rocky Flats, water treatment plants, swimming pools and gas stations.

Hazardous Materials Spill: Highway

Frequency:  Medium
Impact:  Low
Evacuate: Medium
Season: Any
I-25 is a designated transportation route for hazardous materials, radioactive materials, and nuclear weapons. Hazardous materials may be transported on any road while being delivered to local businesses. Radioactive materials and nuclear weapon components have been transported for more than a decade.

Hazardous Materials Spill: Railroad

Frequency:  Low
Impact:  High
Evacuate: Medium
Season: Any
Fifteen to 30 trains a day cross many major thoroughfares and commercial and residential areas of the City. The majority of cargo is coal. However, shipping records indicate a daily presence of hazardous materials being carried in bulk by rail.

Mass Casualty Incident

Frequency:  Low
Impact:  Medium
Evacuate: Low
Season: Any
City roadways are the greatest threat for a mass casualty incident. High speeds, foul weather and the sheer volume of vehicles provide a setting for an accident capable of injuring many people. Airplane crashes and rail related incidents also provide risk for mass casualty incidents.

Terrorist Incident

Frequency:  No Record
Impact:  Medium
Evacuate: Low
Season: Any
No area in the United States is immune. The City has few areas that are considered potential targets. The threat to the City would most likely come indirectly on an attack in the Denver metropolitan area.

Tornado
Frequency:  Low
Impact:  High
Evacuate: Medium
Season: Summer
Although tornados typically occur between April and June they are possible during other months of the year. According to the National Weather Service, the north metro area has averaged one confirmed tornado each year since 1950. Most tornados occur to the east of Westminster.

Utility Service Failure

Frequency:  Medium
Impact:  Low
Evacuate: Low
Season: Any
A reliance on utilities has produced a life safety threat should any services be disrupted. Extended outages cause problems with food storage, communications, warmth, and travel. Disruption of service may include electric utilities, natural gas, and telephone services.  Disruption of communication systems may impact ability to warn of other hazards or pass vital information to the public.

Open Space Fire

Frequency:  Low
Impact:  Low
Evacuate: Medium
Season: Summer
Open space and undeveloped property pose a threat for brush fires throughout the year. Most are contained immediately. Drought conditions, periods of low humidity, lack of precipitation, and high winds provide ideal conditions and increase the potential for these fires.


Winter Storm
Frequency:  Medium
Impact:  Medium
Evacuate: Medium
Season: Winter
Heavy snowfalls can seriously disrupt transportation, communications, and complicate emergency response. Although not an annual event, the City is extremely susceptible to heavy snowfalls.

Family Emergency Communications Plan

Most families are dispersed over a large area during the day. Parents are at work and kids are at school. Having everyones telephone number in one place will allow you to more easily contact each other during a disaster.

Phones tend to be jammed during a major incident. It is often possible to make long-distance calls out of an affected area, so even having prepaid calling cards in everyones wallets is a good idea with a common out-of-state phone number printed on it.

Finding alternative means of communications are recommended. Ham Radio, CB, GMRS, and FRS are all alternatives to the telephone system. Create a family band plan of 3-4 frequencies/channels to attempt to communicate on.
Don't forget Am/FM radios too. Your city should have a Primary and secondary Emergency Alert Stations.

The internet is also a good communications medium. By setting up a family blog now on a free service like Blogger and giving everyone the URL, they can leave comments there, if everyone is separated, to let everyone know they are okay. During Hurricane Katrina many families were separated and this is an easy way to contact each other to come together again.

Others may need to know your status and having their numbers are important too; like work and church leaders.

Make a list in a Word Processor and print out copies for everyone.

Make a list of everyones phone numbers, and addresses that can be useful. Include everything:
Home
Cellphone
Pager
Work direct
Work main
Work Fax
School main
School Fax
Church

The add things like:
Local police/fire/ambulance/hospital
Doctor/Ask-A-Nurse
Dentist
Pediatrician
Utility companies
Insurance companies
Apartment owner/HOA president
Bank
Car dealer
Real Estate Agent
Airport/Airlines
Taxi/Bus companies
Poison Control
Hazmat
Road Conditions/Weather
Funeral Home

If you don't know where you are going it doesn't matter which road you take.

The 5 Secrets to Success | Nubbytwiglet.com: "The easiest way to begin the process is to make a list of goals and achievements. It sounds terribly cliche, but it works! "

I am re-evaluating what I am doing with my life. After loosing an good engineering job and ending up in a call center where it was so awful I couldn't remember what I had done all day. I guess my mind was just trying to protect itself for the horror of the job. There are a few memories of that place that have stuck but they are mostly in the lunch room or some office and not the floor. It was too horrible to return to after a week in the hospital.

Now it is time to try it again. I have had enough of interim or temporary or "just get a" jobs. I am tired of moving backward.

I want to move forward. To change myself and the world. I want to alter the very structure of reality itself. That statement all by itself empowers me, I feel the coals in my heart blaze a little bit.

For a long time I was scared that the fire of my soul had gone out. It wasn't, just buried under a pile of ash. I just needed time to gather fuel and build a new firepit.

Your Outboard Brain Knows All

Your Outboard Brain Knows All : "My point is that the cyborg future is here. Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us."

This has been an issue for a long time. Heck the ancient Greeks were decrying writing as the youth were noticed to not remember as much as their illiterate forbearers. But then without writing we would never have found this. I love the internet and all but I still save a lot of stuff I feel as important to my harddrive as .pdf files so I have access for al those times I don't have access.

I often go to the local library for some time away from the desk and their internet access is not very good but I still have plenty of material with me as well as all the books around me. It is a good sized library but it is limited and I have a lot of stuff on my computer they just don't have in or at all.

It is funny though, in college my dorm room had 6 of us in science and engineering and we constantly had people coming over for topical help. I remember one person telling us that "You've forgotten more math then I've ever learned."

Now the Internet is a Knowledge Multiplier that is just amazing. My biggest issue is that it is too easy to get lost in the fun.

How to Continually Sharpen Your Skills

How to Continually Sharpen Your Skills Freelance Switch: "Whether it’s 30 minutes a day, or an hour a week, it’s important that you set aside a regular block of time to learn about your profession."

I know I am constantly learning about what I do and what I want to do. Spending on books is one of the few things we don't hold too much back on. It only has to wait until the ones we have have been read which is nicely self-limiting, but at 2000 wpm it doesn't take all that long to read a book anyway.

I was wondering what others had to say about how much you should spend on self-improvement and so after some searching hit on this guideline.

"Invest three percent of your income in yourself (self-development) in order to guarantee your future."
-- Brian Tracy, Author

Brian Tracy is a motivational and business speaker and writer, he studies successful people and explains how they did it. So I think his guideline sounded pretty good. I ran some quick numbers to see how much that would turn out to be. If you're making $30,000/yr you should spend about $900/yr making sure you are getting better at what you are doing.

We've been stretching that by going to the library or buying books cheaply on the net rather then full price at a local store. But really I don't think I've spent that much on self-improvement and that needs to change.

This Day In History: Oct 4, 1957 Sputnik I

The start of the space was only 50 years ago. The Russians launched a little satellite with a Ham Radio transmitter in it. The fun thing was to help make it easy to find they set the transmitter to just above the National Reference Frequency so it was easy for Ham Radio Operators to listen for it.

Now there are Ham Radio satellites up there you can link with.

Some major milestones in space history:
Sputnik the first artificial satellite was launched in 1957
2001: A Space Odyssey came out in 1968
Apollo 11 landed men on the Moon in 1969
Apollo 17 the last manned mission to the Moon was in 1972
Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977 the same year as Star Wars came out and are still transmitting

A lot of investment was made back then but somehow things have gone astray. Where are the giant wheel space stations and lunar cities? Taking the long view it is unwise to leave all our eggs on one basket. We really do need to have some of our species off of this world, just in case.

There is plenty of hope left. The space X-price was just won and they are working on something better. God-speed.

Oct. 1, 1908: A Basic Car for the Great Unwashed

Oct. 1, 1908: A Basic Car for the Great Unwashed : "The Model T was the first mass-produced automobile in history; approximately 15 million were built during a period lasting nearly 20 years. It achieved exactly what Henry Ford set out to do: to 'build a motorcar for the great multitude.'"

One of the most important changes in our society was the introduction of cheap and easy transportation. Not to say we have completely mastered the technology of the car but we are getting better at it.

The problems we have with the car aren't the cars but the designs of our cities. Cities changes slowly but there are buildings and whole sections of major cities that have stood since before the introduction of the car.

There has to be smething to be said about how much things changed when Ford used technology to reduce the assembly time of a car from 12 hours to 24 seconds.

from Wired.

Underground "terrorists" with a mission to save city%u2019s neglected heritage - Times Online

Underground %u2018terrorists%u2019 with a mission to save city%u2019s neglected heritage - Times Online : "From time to time, however, she whispered into Mr Kunstmann%u2019s ear and he relayed the message. %u201CWe are the counterpoint to an era where everything is slow and complicated,%u201D he said. %u201CIt%u2019s very difficult to get anything done through official channels. If you want to do it, you have to be clandestine.%u201D"

As an engineer I grew up dreaming of making science fiction, fact. But this is something out of Brazil.

"Why do we always get the DARK version of Science Fiction as OUR future? I want that OTHER worlds' future, the one over THERE with the giant wheel space stations and Luna City! "

Go Bag: Documents Kit

Your Go Bag needs lots of little subkits. One of the least obvious but possibly most important is the Documents Kit.
Lots of list will say to take copies of your "important" documents but never call out what they are.

These are all Important documents and having copies on hand will make rebuilding your life after a major disaster much, much easier. You may need these documents to file insurance claims, pay bills, help injured family members get proper care, or even manage the affairs of a death.

What Documents You Need
• Birth certificate: The big one. If you have to replace a Drivers License or Social Security card you need not a noterized copy of an offical original copy, which they only limit you to 7 of now. This needs special care. You may not want a copy in you Go Bag but rather in a remote location. A locked box in an energency bag at a family members house or in a safety deposit box, but remember the Hurricane Katrina destroyed whole cities so it should be quite a ways away from your home.

• Drivers License: You should have this on your person all the time so should not be a problem to have handy.

• Deeds, Mortgages, or Rental Agreements: To show where you live and what you own.

• Insurance policies (life, health, disability, long-term care, auto, homeowners, renters)

• Medical records, including prescription information: Very important if you need medicines to survive.

• Marriage certificate

• Licenses, recommends and certificates related to things you can do. For example, commercial driver, medical, legal or amateur radio licenses.

• Will

• Power of attorney

• Living will or other medical powers

• Trust documents

• Social Security card/records

• Military records

• Checking and savings account statements

• Retirement account records

• Other investment statements

• Pay stubs

• Tax returns

• Car titles and registrations

• Warranties and receipts for major purchases

• Credit card records

• Other loan records

• Safe deposit box information (location and key)

• Copies of your utility bills: mainly you are looking for the company contact information (address, phone number & website) and your account number so you can make arraignments while things recover.

• Copies of pictures or documents of semtimental or family value, such as journals and diaries.

• A video or pictures of all your stuff for insurance purposes. Just lay a drawer full of stuff on your bed and take a picture of it.

How to Store Your Important Documents

This is the interesting part. On the one hand you want it to be pretty easy to get to during an emergency, but you don't want it to be too easy for a burglar to take if they break in. If you are storing them at home or a family members house make sure that it is also in a media safe fire box so it can survive a fire.

In many cases the most important part of the documents you really want are the contact information to the companies you're doing business with. You want to be able to call the electric company to tell them your homes been destroyed and you need to turn off the power and make that last payment on the account. You'll need the account number and the number you should call.

You can scan these things onto you computer too. If you don't have scanner a digital camera will work fine if instead of using the flash put it on the desk with some lamps on both sides. The flash will overexpose the center of the document making it unreadable.

You can copy all of that onto a piece of paper or a word processing document and keep it in your wallet as well. or on a keychain flash drive or on your iPod, password protecting the electronic documents would be a good idea. You could even make them contacts on you mobile phone, but you might want to make them less obvious so if you lost your phone it is hard to steal that information.

There Are Only Two Kinds of Disasters

Those you have to run from and those you can sit tight for.

You have to run from wild fires, floods and large hurricanes. You can sit out blizzards, small hurricanes and the like.

Okay, there are plenty like tornados and earthquakes that are come as you are, and you figure out afterwards if you have to leave or can stay, depending on damage to your home.

So what do you do to get ready?
You need a couple of kits: An evacuation kit and a shelter in place kit.

An Evacuation Kit is a 72 hour kit optimized for getting out of Dodge.
A couple of liters of water and some lightweight food, I like GORP myself as that has plenty to energy to keep you going for 3 days.
A simple first aid kit, just bandaids and some elestic wrap. Good for a cut or sprained ankle.
A good map to get you to your evacuation point.
A multitool and flashlight.
And copies of important papers.

A Shelter in Place kit can be much bulkier as it and you aren't going anywhere.
2 weeks of food and water. This can be regualr stuff you eat preferably canned as it doesn't need to be kept cool and about 14 gallons of water per person.
A battery operated radio but you can use the one if the car.
A tool kit to repair the house if it gets damaged.
You can add plastic sheeting and duct tape, but don't forget to cover the furnace intake vents and all the other vents into your home.
An extensive first aid kit.
Flashlights and extra batteries. Candles and matches but be careful and don't burn your house down.

This is just and overview. I'll be fleshing this stuff out over time.

On Food Preservation

"Food Preservation

Jim wrote:

"..My son has been raised to an urban lifestyle; we planted a few tomato plants a couple of times with variable success, but haven't done significant gardening. I've recently had cause to reflect that he knows nothing about food preservation (and the opportunity that he had to learn something about the subject passed unheeded)."

While farming is a complex skill best learned at the knee of an expert, canning and freezing can be quickly learned by an absolute novice with a copy of Joy of Cooking or, I believe, Fannie Farmer. I know this because the results were delicious and safe, often on the first try. Don't despair.

-Tim Herbst
"

I would also recommend the Ball Blue Book of Canning. We've used that any number of times and the results are great.

Alton Brown on Good Eats did several shows on canning, jamming and pickling. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has canneries scattered around the world that are wonderful resources too.There are other community canning groups as well so look around food is a great way to make friends.

We're Hams

My wife and I passed our Amateur Radio exams. She made technician and I made General, I missed the Amateur Extra by one question. I was too tired to try any more but there is another test next week.

Bandwidth Hogs may just have a Worm

"Some customers are unaware they are using so much capacity, sometimes because neighbors are covertly connecting through unsecured wireless routers. ... Others, however, may be running bandwidth-hungry servers intended for small businesses from their homes, which can bog down a network serving a neighborhood." - MSNBC

"We've seen spikes where the owner is experimenting with something and those spikes are usually five to 10 times what we normally see," he said, noting he suspects the botnet could be as large as 50 million computers." - ITNews

I wonder if they might consider that their customers might not be in control of their own computers. We just got Comcast, because there is no other choice.

I've helped a lot of people clean up their computers and it is usually a terrible sight. Sure I know you should update your computer and finally so does Microsoft but there are plenty of computers that are still not patched and that is where these worms thrive.

Someone is running new underground cable past our apartment complex but we don't know who or if it will be for internet but we can always hope.

Computer Consultant Resume

Profile:
A systems administrator with 7+ years experience in large and small networks. 
Expert with Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh and UNIX. 
With 5+ years writing and documentation experience and experience creating and maintaining business systems.

Skills:
Network Management
Business Systems
Troubleshooting
Windows, Macintosh, UNIX
User Training Fast Learning
Technical Writing
Documentation
Electronics Engineering
System Maintenance
Network Equipment
Team Player

Experience:
Customer Service Director, Mr. Fixit, 2006-Present, Denver, CO
Reduced operating cost by more then 60% by migrating the Customer Relations Management system from Salesforce.com to Salesboom.com.
Documented business processes and procedures for the training of new hires, enabling them to be productive within two days.
Created business processes and data handling procedures to maximize customer satisfaction with only 3 complaints last year out of more then 1000 transactions.
Managed and grew the Customer Service Representative group, the IT department, web master and database administrator enabling them go from handling less then 500 transactions to over 1000 transactions.

Columnist, iProng.com, 2005-present, Fort Collins, CO
Write the Monday flagship column analyzing the iPod and music markets.
Wrote the ebook: So You Wanna Learn How To Podcast.

Writer/Publisher, Ziggurat Math, 2002-2005, Fort Collins, CO
Wrote the book: How to Teach Your Child Numbers and Counting.
Embedded System Engineer, Decatur Tech. LLC, 2001-2002, Fort Collins, CO
Provided ISO 9000 documentation for engineering design procedures which enabled successful re-certification.
Addressed the shortcomings of the in-car video products documentation by adding pictures.
Redesigned handheld radar unit for European safety certification enabling the company to more then double their market space.
Created an installation video for the in car video product used by the documentation team which significantly improved documentation.

Volunteer Experience:
Instructed a men’s self-improvement group for 40 minutes twice a month.
Youth group assistant leader.
Managed the membership of a non-profit group.

Education:
B.S. Electronics Engineering Technology — Brigham Young University

The Interesting Life

"May You Live In Interesting Times." -old Chinese Curse

It certainly got interesting around here. We've moved our family into a new apartment and finally got internet access to it. My work moved from an office space into a house, then was put on retainer (because the computers actually work now and don't need me fulltime) so I need to find a new job and my wife and I are taking a amateur radio class I was called to be the Emergency Preparation Specialist at church.

I've been big on emergency preparation for sometime. I've got loads on information and I link to it from time to time. So really this is a dream calling for me. I am going to be putting together the manual for the church so there is a plan in place for helping our families and other around us during a disaster.

Taking the ham class was more for us. My sister, brother in law and some of her kids have their licenses and this would be a good way to keep in touch.We often hear about ham radio operators helping out in emergencies, it is actually a lot more extensive then that so this will be a lot of fun. You can actually experiment in the ham bands building antennas and radios and interfaces to other services. Hams can connect to the Internet already, but I wonder if they can do Twitter. Lots of Hams also look at those big balloons at car dealerships and wonder if they are any good for floating an antenna to boost the range. It will be fun to build radios again. As I'm digging through out stuff I am finding all kinds of neat old things I can use to rebuild a work bench.The only real problem is I don't have any place to put one.

It won't be boring for a while.

Natural Disaster Recovery - Essential Skills, Tools, Tactics - Tornado - Hurricane - Flood - Earthquake - Popular Mechanics

Natural Disaster Recovery - Essential Skills, Tools, Tactics - Tornado - Hurricane - Flood - Earthquake - Popular Mechanics This is a great roundup of things to do before and after all kinds of disasters.

The Dilbert Blog: Freaky Happenings

The Dilbert Blog: Freaky Happenings: "I%u2019ve said before in this blog that it feels to me as if all of my ideas already exist, and I%u2019m nothing but some sort of antennae. Every time I have an idea, no matter how strange, that idea inevitably finds its way to my door from some other source. It%u2019s freaky."

I've noticed this too. There are a lot of ideas I've had that certainly seemed unique, mainly because I haven't seen the before anywhere.

The last memorable one was putting BBQ brisket on some crispy french bread rolls. Later THAT SAME day on the local news report they show a chain store finishing up testing that same idea.

R.I.P. Books: Buzzword - Popular Mechanics

R.I.P. Books: Buzzword - Popular Mechanics: "The problem is that the printed page is a damn-near perfect technology for text presentation and storage. It%u2019s durable, requires no power or connectivity and is remarkably cheap to produce."

I spend most of my day reading off of a screen, from news and weather to reading what I have just written. I like books because they are a little easier on my eyes after all that.
It isn't that ebooks can't take off. I have a friend constantly reading ebooks off of an old Palm. Lots of people read on a computer screen all day.
There is just an issue with how ebooks are designed. It is not about the text, it is probably something subtle. Right now using a Palm for an ebook reader is a lot like reading a flip up notebook, That seems fine but is very different from how a real book is read which is more side to side in a pretty wide format that is more comfortable then a small pad. Smaller isn't always better.
The eInk screens are really good, but it is the overall design that is lacking. It is kinda like going into a new home and feeling it isn't right, all the good parts are there just not in quite the right places. The dishwasher is far from the cabinets, there is a big pillar too close to the front closet. Lots of dumb little things.
For the iPod small size was an important feature, for an ebook reader it probably isn't. They need to test some radically different designs, because what they've come up so far hasn't worked.

Remarks of Bill Gates %u2014 The Harvard University Gazette

Remarks of Bill Gates %u2014 The Harvard University Gazette: "Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have %u2014 whether it%u2019s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet."

Cabinet Magazine Online - A Minor History of / Miniature Writing

Cabinet Magazine Online - A Minor History of / Miniature Writing: "The earliest known example of miniature writing appears on a Sumerian cuneiform clay tablet measuring 1 5/16 inches by 1 5/8 inches. (Courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana)"

This is just pretty darn cool. I didn't know that microwriting existed before the microdot and other advanced techniques.

What should J. K. Rowling do next.

Rowling is too good -- she has learned too much -- it would be a waste if she let some longing to be acceptable to the boneheads at the New York Times and the various university English departments keep her from writing more novels that use all that she has learned from writing this massive work.

I truly hope she doesn't stop writing. At this point there is no reason to even attempt to seek the approval of those critics. The NYT and the rest have already rejected her and like any clique they can never accept her for what she is and it would be painfully embarrassing to have her change to something they might accept.

They deserve to worst punishment we can give them: To be ignored.

J. K. do what you want, it will be good. We'll wait.

I am forcibly reminded of this quote:

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have
challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more."
-Anton Ego, Ratatouille, 2007

Becoming a Ham

Not a cheesy actor but rather get our Ham Radio Technicians License. Our church is running a 6 week course to get more people able to provide alternative communications for the area in event of a disaster.

My sister and her husband have theirs and it came in handy last winter when we had a blizzard every week for 5 weeks and it was hard to get around.

Once Water, Food and Shelter are taken care of Communication is the next big thing in a disaster. It means being able to call for help and helping others.

Whenever there is a disaster the hams become very valuable people who help coordinate communications efforts which can bring to bear the most appropriate resources to each area.

We'll also have to save up for a transmitter but that is a good goal too.

Dominate Your Market What's Your Dash?

If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

1. Become the best at one specific thing.
2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try.

The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort.

There is a lot of advice out there of people saying become the best at something. Often these same people forget to explain what it takes to do that. If you want to become Olympic-class (top 1%) at anything you're going to have to put in a lot of time to practice.

To master any skill it take about 5000 hours of practice to get to that level. If you work at it full time 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, it will take you about 2 and a half years to get that time in.
Most people don't have the capability to do that, but you may be able to squeeze in 1 hour a day. That will take 20 years.

On the other hand, if you just want to get really good at a skill (top 25%) that can take only 1000 hours or less. That will only take 4 years at 1 hour per day. A college course often is only about 50 hours of study and you end up knowing quite a bit.

Becoming good at two or three things and presenting it as a package can be a really great way to break into a market. Look at Ben&Jerry, there were lots of big ice cream companies, so they dual-classed with organic-ice cream. Haggen-Daas went with gourmet-ice cream.

What is your dash?
I am an engineer and I also write. I am an engineer-writer. Can I dominate in a market with that? I think I can.
How about you?

Serious Literature

I've been surfing the web to read about what people think about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I came across this amazing comment.

...my husband, a Tolkien scholar, often observes that these days, in literature, to write about deep and ultimate themes, it is almost impossible to do so in, say, poetry or "adult" literature and be taken seriously - for that, you must write in fantasy and/or children's literature - and then your readers will find you.

I certainly believe it. One of the worst parts of high school were the English classes. I love to read and even back then I was a voracious reader, reading lots of material outside of the requirements of school. But all that "great literature" was something I read but couldn't really stand. All it showed was that life and living was pointless and we all died even if you win you lost. "The Old Man and the Sea" was particularly nasty that way. They all ended with the protagonist (I can't call them heroes) either dead or insane. The best case for one was merely social and financial ruination. We only studied the tragedies of Shakespeare where everyone pretty much died. After 3 years of that is it any great surprise that the average American doesn't read for fun. There is no pleasure in it. Then I find a post like this that just pegs the sad/pity-meter.

I sampled all kinds of genres when I was young, it was fun to wander into the library and choose a book at random to see where it might take me. I still do that but not so often. I settled on scifi and fantasy because some of them would deal with hard and troubling questions.

What makes us human and different from the animals?
Why do people make choices that are obviously bad for themselves and others?
Why are so many people listening to someone who despises them and doing what he says?
How can good people do awful things?

There are plenty more questions but these are a good start. Too much great literature is only based around jealousy or envy, that isn't necessarily bad but there are far more emotions out there then just those.

Harry Potter generally is a coming of age story, but is also about love and the nature of good vs evil.

If schools really wanted people to learn to read they would offer a huge variety of material to read. Encouraging people to find the books they like best. That will help them learn to like to read if find some they want to read.

But it is still interesting that the literature that explores the hard stuff is considered kids stuff. Is that irony I smell.

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

We didn't get the book until very late on Saturday and while I read the first three chapters out loud of my family I after our daughter went to bed I settled in for a a couple of hours good reading before bed. I was slightly annoyed with myself when I closed the book and noticed the sun up coming up and my alarm clock going off as I stood up.

We are reunited with many old friends and revisit just about everywhere we've been before, before ending up back at the beginning.

A good strong opening with Harry equipping himself of the hunt. Like the heros girding themselves for battle Harry is readying himself for what he expects to be coming, but he knows that he doesn't have all the knowledge that is wishes he had, not being able to heal a small cut is the key image here. The goodbye with the Dursleys was not what I expected and Dudley seeming dimmer then usual. A harrowing battle as the protection breaks and Harry is taken to safety. It was a good plan and it mostly worked.

This is followed by a wonderful interlude at the Burrow, Hermione tells Harry just how much she trusts him and how important what he has to do is to her. That blew me away. The wedding is broken up by the fall of the Ministry.

Then we are off on the Quests. There is more then one. They are pretty smart together and very courageous, but they are still just three kids. Harry has so much to overcome within himself that the story seems slow in the middle, but that is only because we expect fast, easy resolutions to conflict in our sit-com world. Harry has to make serious choices and he actually spends time working them out and not just going with whatever pops into his head. He has learned from the mistakes he's made in the past and that is really important. He knows people are on his side and fighting for his cause, but he has to focus on winning the war instead of turning the tide on any particular battle. He shows great maturity. He also learns of the ultimate choice he has to make. He shows just how powerful love is.

There are some great scenes in this book that I am sure the special effects artists reading now are beginning to sweat over. The Battle for Hogwarts may not beat the Battle of Pelinor Fields but it may come close. They better get to work now.

Snape rocks.

Molly is not just a quiet little homemaker, she never really was since she had been in the original Order of the Phoenix but we finally see her at full power and she is something else. They better not leave that out of the movie!

Voldemort has his weakness but he is smart enough to learn from his encounters with Harry. He never does take a stupid pill, but his weakness sends him down wrong paths. And that is just fine for a well written villain.

There are few books out there that have enticed me to stay up all night reading them. This was worth it. The obvious comparison is Lord of the Rings. Do I think that Harry Potter will be celebrated in 100 years? Yes, I do.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I saw this film with my wife as a date which we haven't had in a long time and we gave it a solid 3 of 5 stars.

The opening scene with Harry, Dudley and his gang was well done and quite intense. In general he stayed as close to the book as he could, using quite a bit of the dialog, but given the nature of book 5, very introspective which is hard to put on screen, there was a lot to skip over as well.

The wizards battle at the end was extraordinary, the rest of the movies have something to live up to now.

My biggest problem was that the music was too bland, it didn't support the movie as much as it could have. I was also disappointed in the lackluster attention to detail. There were many things I was expecting to be in place that just weren't there, particularly in the second act which lacked emotional intensity.

Daniel has improved tremendously as an actor as have the others, if not as much, though it maybe because they didn't have as much to do. I really enjoyed Luna, she really got into that character and tended to steal the scene. I hope to see more of her.

Build You Own Machine Tool

multimachine : Intermediate technology machine tools

Get the pdf from Popular Mechanics

Could be very useful someday.

Mega-mushroom a savory stunner in Mexico

Mega-mushroom a savory stunner in Mexico

Now all we need is lightning and some saffron. :)

Ratatouille Review

Ratatouille is the best film I've seen in a long time. While the images were great on their own that isn't good enough by itself to make a great film. The story has heart and soul. It is not a summer blockbuster type film and that is just fine. It is a story that is very moral. Yes, the good guys lie and cheat and steal trying to do the best for themselves, but it is only after they confess and make amends that their true abilities come forth. 

Reme just wants to have food that tastes good but his abilities were about more then being just a food sniffer or even a chef. Linguine just wanted to keep his job. They weren't losers, just not in the right place doing the right things for them. 

After Reme gets separated from his family as they try to escape from a shotgun wielding little old lady riding a cookbook he ends up in the sewers of Paris, though he doesn't know it yet. We see a wonderful set of vignettes introducing us to Paris before the big reveal at the top.

It is the astonishing attention to detail that is most brilliant thing about Pixar. We come into a world that feels like it existed before the movie starts and will continue beyond the end, but not as an obvious sequel bait or happily ever after, just life continuing on.

That was one of the most disappointing parts of the Star Wars prequels it was lots of fun but had no depth like this or The Lord of the Rings.

The food was brilliant, they took cooking lessons and it showed. We were so hungry afterwards but chose to do something better then the standard fast food burger joint. They really understand foodies; food is more then fuel and it was amazing how well they were able to translate that to the big screen. The climatic shot captured it completely, it was beautiful. 

Not everyone is a foodie, that is okay, though we have a friend who grow up in a family where they called a three course meal, meat, potatoes and a vegetable. Usually it was just a single food item like hamburger or potato. 

It has heart and the characters are deep and complex, far more so then is usual. The character development time is well spent, it is not an action feature and don't even try confusing it with one. Though the big chase scene with Skinner chasing Reme across Paris was great, that bit with the tablecloth was choice.

I loved the characters, Colette was great a tough, no-holes barred up-and-comer, with real heart.

The pivotal character was Alton "The Grim Reaper" Ego, food critic. He just comes on scene at the very end but even then he steals it completely. It is amazing what the power of love can do. 

I highly recommend this film and plan on buying it later.

Massive GTD Resource List | zen habits

Massive GTD Resource List | zen habits: "My tribute to all the GTD junkies out there (a group that includes me) — a massive list of GTD stuff. It’s far from comprehensive, but who can be comprehensive on a topic this huge?"

A honking big list I need to keep handy for myself.

Social Bookmarking

Social Poster - Best Social Bookmarking Solution yet? | Tech Spikes : "Well, now apparently Social Poster allows you to submit links to 34 social sites including Digg, Reddit, Technorati, Stumbleupon, del.icio.us and more."

I'll need this later

Safari 3 Rocks

Safari has one absolutely great feature no one else seems to have talked about yet.

The in-page search really stands out now. In Safari 2 and the other browsers I've used the in-page search has been rather understated: a simple highlight, that may be in the middle or bottom on the page never consistent and often plain hard to find.


Safari 3 changes all that.


No only is the page darkened and the word highlighted in orange with a white background, it is also magnified. As you got to the next one the previous one is still highlighted so you can see where you just were.

I really like this and it is great. I can't remember how often I've searched and missed something because the highlighting wasn't noticeable enough.

Great job Apple, but why didn't you mention this?

Steve Jobs WWDC2007 Keynote

That was maybe not one of the most exciting keynotes Steve has given, mainly because he's talked about almost all of it before.

Stacks was new to the keynote but a patent showed up on that years ago. It is really great to see it come up. Though to be honest about it I've been doing something similar for ages, I put Home, Applications, and a few other folders in the dock to accomplish the same thing.

The Core Animation stuff looks wonderful. I presume he was using a maxed out Mac Pro, I wonder if that cool animated video search tool is going to be available or was just a developer plaything. I also wonder if a MacBook could handle all that video playing at once.

A lot of developers are bummed over not getting a real SDK for the iPhone. In all likelihood one will be forthcoming in time but not now.

Going cross platform with Safari is pretty interesting. I am going to be thinking about that a bit more.

That huge picture of the Library of Congress was great. You could almost read the titles on the books when he zoomed in all the way. And that the title he added was smooth all the way in was awesome.

I am still curious about the other 290 features that are coming to Leopard will be. Actually Apple's website lists a whole bunch though I didn't count them. I am really impressed by the new voice they have, that will be nice.

Mini Maglite LED Upgrade

Out daughter likes flashlights and often she will fall asleep with one on in her bed. We got one of those windup ones to save on batteries but it is to big for her and she doesn't like it. She loves the Mini Maglight that is much more her size. At some point she took it apart and lost the bulb, while I could have used the spare in the base I decided it is the perfect time to get the LED upgrade I saw at Walmart, It is from NiteIze and has 3 white LEDs in it.

It is a nice little kit, with a 3 LED bulb system and a replacement reflector. The new reflector is the hardest part to deal with, I needed a couple of pairs of pliers to unscrew the face of the Mini Maglite but the LEDs were a simple drop in replacement though it is polarized so if it doesn't light up when you pop it in you need to try it the other way. The LED is big enough that even if she pops it out it is big enough to find easily.

The light it produces is very bright and lasted for hours on old batteries. The flashlight itself gets rather warm after that much time but doesn't seem to be a problem.

Hacking Knowledge: 77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better | OEDb

Hacking Knowledge: 77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better | OEDb: "Life-changing knowledge does typically require advanced learning techniques. In fact, it's been said that the average adult only uses 10% of his/her brain. Imagine what we may be capable of with more advanced learning techniques. Here are 77 tips related to knowledge and learning to help you on your quest. A few are specifically for students in traditional learning institutions; the rest for self-starters, or those learning on their own. Happy learning."

This is a fantastic list. It is more geared for the High School/College crowd, but it is well worth reading in detail.

Wound Care: An Emergency Room Doctor's Perspective, by E.C.W., MD

For the concerned individual who must deal with a wound outside the emergency room or clinic setting, for whatever reason, I have some reasonable advice on avoiding infection that is not widely taught, even in some health care settings. (The following applies to wounds that an experienced parent could evaluate and immediately know that a band-aid alone would not be appropriate.)

A major essay. Well worth reading.

How to bootstrap technology

Kevin Kelly -- The Technium: "A favorite fantasy game for engineers is to imagine how they might re-invent essential technology from scratch. If you were stranded on an island, or left behind after Armageddon, and you needed to make your own blade, say, or a book, maybe a pair of working radios, what would it take to forge iron, make paper, or create electricity?"

This is a fun exercise. I like to consider what to take along to colonize another Earth-like planet. I am also assuming clean enough air and water and living soil to start with. And finally I am assuming the colony ship has a good library available, so we are not reinventing the wheel at every stage.

The ship won't be able to carry very much since it takes so much to support the colonists. So it won't have tons of pipe for water handling or things like that. However it would have a full machine shop and a small semiconductor fab to produce some technology. The biggest thing the fab would be needed for would be radio parts. Communication is one of the biggest forms of leverage you can have.

That thing that makes our modern world work best is the division of labor, people who are best at mining may not be the best at farming. That is want we are trying to recreate as quickly as possible. If we do this right we should be able to recreate a goodly sized potion of our technology in 50-60 years or less.

The first thing is to produce food in excessive quantities. If we can make more food then we need we will be able to repurpose much of the population to other specialties. Most of this comes down to domesticating beast of burden so relief ourselves of doing the muscle work, and we want to replace then with machines as soon as we are able. The nice thing about farming is that it is only labor intensive for two periods of the year: Planting and harvesting.

At the same time we need to be sending a few knowledgeable people out to find ores and extract them. If they're close together farming and mining can be done together. As the metals start piling up we refine them and using blacksmithing techniques to make better farming equipment.

One of the next things to start doing is recreating Roman-level sanitation technology. Clean safe water and public hygiene are pretty important. They even had hot and cold running water, sure they used stone instead of metal or plastic piping but it still worked.

Now that the basics are covered we can start building more creative tools: at this stage is where a lathe makes sense to build. Once you have a machine shop you can build steam engines and you are at the Industrial Revolution. The ships has a machine shop but creating another one from local materials would be a great step.

There is also glass making and paper making and textile creation to be considered.

This would take about a generation.

Now you can start building tractors and textile machines and all kinds of labor saving devices. This is when we can start climbing up the tech curve fairly quickly. With all the research in the library we can skip a bunch of blind alleys and dead ends and move more quickly. Even with refrigerators and washing machines and the like the biggest limitation I see is just the sheer size of the population. It is just too small to allow enough specialists to rebuild quickly.

So decisions would be made as the to best use of the available labor pool. It would definitely be worth going for electricity at this point just for the leverage it provides. A bunch of small electric motors in each home does wonders for labor savings, Add to that bunches of simple computers and things get even better.

This is a fun problem to think about, and a lot of interdependent technologies that make it really a lot of fun. But then what things would you do differently if you knew what we know now but where starting over on a new planet from scratch?

The radio spectrum could be used a completely different way and not be a crazy hodgepodge of laws.

though in any case we wouldn't be able to completely recreate modern society but then we probably won't have the need to create many things until we had a big enough population to support sit-com production and all those types of things.