Barry’s Daily Web News

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We had a busy day today. We had planned to have dinner guests, and we also had an invitation to an afternoon pool party. We decided to do both. So, we had to spend the morning getting the house clean and getting the dinner preparations ready. Then we went to the pool party. Since we spent time in the pool, Sean had a good time. We left the pool party, then barely had enought to to finish preparing dinner when our guests arrived. They had two kids, a daughter Sean’s age, and a son almost 4 years old. Sean was a little fussy during dinner after the long afternoon swimming, but then had a little fun playing with the kids of our guests. He got tired early, so we put him to bed before our guests left. Overall, it was a satisfying day.

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Someone in my department at work was fired yesterday for writing an inappropriate e-mail on the bomb threat we had on Wednesday. I think there is some suspicion that this person may have been responsible for the orginal scare notes.

Sean is progressing well with his grunts and growls. I think he will be well trained to communicate with other males. Just as a precaution, should he need to communicate with females, I am trying to teach him a few words as well.

Everyone on the news is talking about bombing Afghanistan. I think we need to send in ground troops. If we are going to beat the terrorists, we need to show compassion for innocent women and children, but we also need to show we are willing to risk our own lives.

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I found out today that the bomb threat at work consisted of 3 notes placed on the chairs of people in my department. One of the notes was placed on the chair of someone in my group, in the same row as my cubicle, just a few cubicles down. My department is only 70 or so people out of about 1500 people in the complex I work at. I wonder if was actually targeted to someone in my group. The notes were placed in the mid-morning, and my department is on the second floor, so it was either an employee or someone with building access that was familar with the layout. Scary. I’m glad I remained at home for the day.

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At 10:30am today at work, we were told to evacuate the building due to a bomb threat. After standing around in about 105 degree heat for a half hour, we were told that the building would be closed for a while, and to go to lunch or go home. I went home and took Cortney out to lunch. I left a message to my boss to call when the building was open again. He called back around 12:30pm to say that returning was optional. They are even offering counseling to people upset over the bomb scare or the events in New York and Washington, DC. I decided to stay home and spend time with Cortney and Sean.

I’m worried that our military response to the terrorist incidents will be limited to cruise missiles and maybe some additional bombing. I don’t see how cruise missiles will stop terrorists. I think we need to send in ground troops, even though that will risk the lives of soldiers. I’m also amazed that the terrorists were able to take over the planes with carpet and pocket knives. If just a few of the passengers would storm the terrorists, they would be able to disarm them with only minor injuries. Perhaps that is what happened with the plane that crashed near Pittsburg.

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Terrible tragedy today. I even hesitate to call it an act of terrorism; I think it should be called an act of war. It’s hard to comprehend the massive loss in human life and property. But, our country was founded on the principle of risking life for freedom. I think we should be willing to risk additional lives to ensure our freedom after this terrible incident. Launching a few cruise missiles towards a tent camp and taking years to bring individuals to justice through an international court is not a sufficient response to what happened today.

Work was quiet today. Quite a few people did not come in, and many people who were in spent at least part of the day in the cafeteria watching CNN or listening to radios. I tried to find out more information on the internet. Most of the main news sites were not responding. Eventually, I found some good information on some secondary sites. Dave Winer’s Scripting News Weblog had some good information and many links. I hope in the future, the mainstream news sites realize that information is more important than large graphics and fancy scripts and plug-ins. I noticed that CNN in particular, thinned down their main page to increase download speed. I can’t imagine why the internet would not be a preferred source of information over TV stations.

Thunderbird University, where I take my Italian classes, shut down for the day, but since our professor was willing to hold class, we kept our regularly schedule class time. This didn’t give me much time to spend with Sean and Cortney today.

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When I woke up this morning, I decided to feed the cats first. When I walked out of the bedroom, my feet were in water on the tile floor. I was still half asleep at this point, but I heard some water spraying near the kitchen sink. I opened up the cabinet under the sink, and I didn’t even look for the leak, I just pulled all of the quick-shutoff valves. Rather than getting my morning workout riding the stationary bike, I got my workout mopping the floor. I figured I mopped up about 10 gallons of water.

At this point, I was fully awake and was able to survey the damage. We had quite a bit of water under the kitchen island. The baseboards were starting to buckle on the side away from the sink. It’s so dry here, the baseboards actually shrink after they are installed. If they touch water, they swell up like a sponge, causing the buckling. We had a couple of boxes of instant rice that soaked up some water in the pantry, but we were able to save 2/3’s of each box. That was pretty much it. The slip-cover on the love seat soaked up some of the water. Most of the water just sat on the floor in the great room area. None of the carpeted areas were reached. When I went back to the sink, I turned the water back on, and found the leak. The fitting for the tee off to the reverse-osmosis filter had broken off. I wished the previous homeowner had used a plumber to install the filter, rather than do it himself. He probably weekend the fitting during installation. I took the broken part to work with me, planning to stop by home depot on the way home.

It turns out that home depot didn’t have the part. It was a piece of nylon, with different thread sizes on each side. I think the one side was custom to our filter. Since our water is terrible, I didn’t want to wait to order the new part to have filtered water to drink, I decided that enough of the broken piece remained to be able re-use it. I fitted everything back together. The part held, but I still had a slow leak. After swearing and taking the pieces apart again in knuckle-scraping fashion, I refitted all the threads with the Teflon tape, tightened everything carefully, and finally, no leak. At least we have drinking water. Hopefully, in a few weeks, the swollen baseboards will dry out and shrink back to their normal size. It looks like quite a bit of water is still trapped under the kitchen island, so I think I will open it up tonight and blow air in with a fan to dry it out.

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I had to do something about the cricket farm growing on our back patio, so I sprayed the house foundation with insecticide. Unfortunately, this means Sean won’t be playing outside for a couple of days. After dinner, we took Sean to the near by park so he could run around and get some exercise. He likes running on the grass more than playing on the jungle gym equipment.

Here is a video of Sean playing in the pool from yesterday. The video should play directly from your browser if you have the quicktime plug in installed. If not, save the file to disk, and then run the file from the quicktime player. If you don’t have the quicktime player, it’s free, and should be easy to find on the internet. If you can get it working, you can see how much Sean loves the pool.

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It finally feels like the summer heat is going away. The high today was 100 degrees, but it cooled off into the seventies last night. I went swimming this morning after my morning run, and the pool water had cooled down to 76 degrees. We all went swimming at the hottest point in the day, and we had to get out after 15 minutes because Sean was getting too cold. I took advantage of the cooler weather to clean the a/c filters and to do some house clearning.

I thought some more about yesterday’s post on the increase in plant growth in the Northern hemisphere. I don’t believe that a 0.8 degree temperature rise would cause this. The yearly variations are much greater than this number. I think the most likely cause is the reduced air and water polution over the last 30 years. Of course, this is a fact that the environmentalists are tyring to keep hidden, so it makes sense why this would not be offered as a solution.

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It was a little cooler tonight, so we took Sean outside to play in the grass. He actually spends more time running around and playing rather than picking up leaves and rocks and putting them into his mouth like he used to. I tried to get a video of Sean running around, but I was a little slow in turning off the recording, and created too big of a file. When I get a little more used to taking videos with the new camera, I’ll try to post one here.

Here’s a good article that should be titled Environmentalists Can’t See the Forest Through the Trees. Last time I checked, plants remove carbon dioxide, the so-called greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere. This would be good news to anyone else but an environmentalist. I always thought that environmentalist was an unusual term. I really don’t think there is anyone out there that is actively seeking to destroy the planet. So, I guess you have to believe the world is coming to an end to call yourself an environmentalist.

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Cortney took Sean to the emergency room last night. The nurse who called back from the Doctor’s office wasn’t particularly helpful, so we decided to be safe rather than sorry. After waiting several hours, Cortney was told that Sean didn’t need stitches, and was given a sheet on head injuries and was sent home. Cortney also took Sean to his regular Doctor this afternoon. The Doctor was more concerned about Sean’s diaper rash than the cut on his head. Here is a picture showing how it looks tonight:

The picture also shows Sean’s new haircut. The cut looked alot worse last night than it does now, although you can see how the cut is fairly wide. Sean doesn’t seem to be bothered by his injury at all. He was running around and playing like he normally does. The Doctor said it won’t be a problem swimming with the cut, but we will likely wait until this weekend anyway.

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Both Sean and I got our hair cut today. Cortney and I had to compromise on the length of Sean’s hair. I wanted to get his hair cut just like mine, but Cortney didn’t want Sean’s hair cut with the shears. I’ll post a picture tomorrow to show of Sean’s new look.

We went swimming tonight to cool off and rinse off any remaining hair. It seemed cool out, particularly with the pool water around 82 degrees. After swimming, I took Sean into the shower to warm him up with some warm water. As I went to grab his towel to dry him off, he stood up and slipped, doing a half-turn and landing with the back of his head on the bottom part of the shower door. He had some bleeding and a little bit of swelling. As I write this, we are waiting for the Dr to call to see if he might need a stitch or two.

This article, titled Deregulation and Libertarianism Don’t Mix in our local paper really bothered me. When trying to find the article on the internet, I found this, which does a fairly good job debunking Ivins’ article. Free markets work when they reward people who innovate and add value to society. Some regulation is always needed, say to prevent fraud or extortion. Any government regulation should always be carefully weighed. I believe the same is true for appling deregulation. You can’t take a monopoly strenghtened company, then deregulate that company giving them more power and more barriers to entry of any competition. I think both the democratic and republican parties are both responsible for the problems mentioned in the article. In many cases, what actually happened was re-regulation, not deregulation. In any case, if the original regulation had been more carefully thought, none of these problems would have occurred.

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Some news from the internet:

An article from salon on zero tolerance. I refer to zero tolerance as “zero intelligence”. Zero tolerance policies take the decision power away from the people who should be making the decisions. This is a particularly bad policy for institutions bound by bureacracy like the schools, police, and justice departments.

A good article from the register on the HP/Compaq merger. The register is not afraid to tell it like it is and offend technology companies, which is unlike any technical publication in the US. Most of the information from the US sites did not indicate what a stinker this deal is.

Stephen Hawking should stick with physics. In this article, Hawking suggests we undergo bio-genetic research to keep pace with the increase in computer power to keep the world from being dominated by machines. While I have no problems researching improvements in human genetics, Hawking’s statement is off the deep end. First, the math problem. Every 18 years, computers will have increased in power by a factor of 4096. Even if we could continuously change human intelligence by this amount, we would run into the problem that children would have no more in common with their parents than humans now have with insects. Second, we really have no clue as how to program a computer to simulate real intelligence. Today’s most complicated programs break problems into tiny pieces where simple equations can be applied to each piece. We do this because we have no idea how to develop, test and maintain more complicated algorithms. We cannot even program a desktop operating system that is 100% effective. Lastly, even if we could develop artificial intelligence, it wouldn’t be that hard to develop safeguards to prevent “machines” from taking over the world.

The high today was 110 degrees. So much for Labor Day being the end of summer. We are supposed to have above average temperatures for the rest of the week.

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Today was devoted to bills and cleaning up the piles of paper and receipts in the loft. Cortney took Sean to the mall while I was doing this work. She took him early so he could run around without the crowds.

We had a nice swim this afternoon. The cooler pool water isn’t so bad when it’s 105 degrees out. I enjoyed it more knowing that the pool area landscaping has been taken care of. Also, after treating the pool for algae a little while ago, the pool water has been crisply clear since. Overall, it was a good way to spend the holiday.

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The morning today was devoted to the yardwork. I trimmed some heavy branches off the mesquite trees in the front yard, leaving a big pile in the street for the trash pick-up this week. I also trimmed the plants around the pool, and packed three yard bags full of leaves and debris from the pool area. I think the fall gardening season has started. I’m starting to get some new flowers and plant growth.

Sean was a real handfull today. He accidentally cut the inside of my nose with his fingernail, giving me a nose bleed. I trimmed his nails right after the bleeding stopped. He is getting better at running. You can now clearly see both feet in the air when he runs.

I was planning on going swimming this evening, but Cortney decided the water was too cold! When I went swimming to cool off after the yardwork, the pool water was 80 degrees. I think this is a comfortable temperature, but Cortney doesn’t like it that cold.

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I had mixed feelings about our camera at first, but as I learn the new features, I’m starting to like it more. The zoom feature is very handy. Even without the zoom, the new camera has a longer focal length than the old one, so you don’t feel like you have to get too close to take good pictures. With the USB cable, the software sets up a virtual drive, so instead of downloading and deleting the pictures, you just move them off the camera into the directory where you want to keep them, and the files transfer without much of a delay. Despite all of the features, we still can’t get a good picture of Sean when he is moving around too much. We did get some good pictures when he would stay still for a second or two. Here is a picture Cortney took of Sean and me playing in the pool this evening:

By the way, the pool temperature dropped down to 82 degrees, so we didn’t stay in for very long.