New Airbus A380

The new jumbo Airbus A380 super jumbo luxury jumbo airliner has been getting a lot of press lately.


One of the things that cracks me up about these articles is that people are still naming planes. Qantas' first A380 has been named [theage.com.au] after Australia's first female pilot Nancy-Bird Walton. To me, naming planes reminds me of a bygone era of the Enola Gay [wikipedia.org] and the Spirit of St. Louis [wikipedia.org] -- naming a plane these days seems very antiquated.

At least there are several worse names (or tributes) they could have chosen:

• Satan's Testicle (although this probably would be a great band name)
• Tokyo Rose
• Ticket to Hell
• Mata Hari
• Marie Antoinette
• Ethel Rosenberg
• The Titanic
• Eva Braun
• The Hindenburg
• Amy Fisher

Picture of Airbus A380 airliner from Telstar Logistics' Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Guitar Hero

In yet another example of how I have the best wife ever, Heimlich found a deal on a used Playstation 2 and bought me Guitar Hero as a surprise (yes, I know, we're way behind the times).

Do you remember back when we were kids, and you would try to show a grandparent how to play a video game, and they would look at the game controller like it had the complexity of some alien technology that's been transported back from 100 years in the future? And they would be reluctant to even touch the buttons, because they were so unsure of what was going to happen, that for all they know, hitting the wrong button could launch a nuclear weapon, or kill the dog, or some other unspeakable horror?

I've become that guy.

You should have seen me try to figure out how to get this console game system and miniature guitar to work. There's nothing that can make you feel old like having to ask a 6-year-old neighbor kid to teach you how to hook up something to your TV. Now that I have it working, I spend every night playing the thing, and pretending that I'm Eddie Van Halen in my living room.

...you know, if Eddie Van Halen were a short, metrosexual Asian man with a pink guitar.

Local News: Depression Era Money Found

Here is an interesting story [cleveland.com] from the city that I live in (Lakewood, OH). Let's say that you buy a house, and pay a contractor to remodel part of it. The contractor finds $182,000 in Depression-era currency hidden in the walls. Who does the money belong to -- The current owner, the original owner, or the contractor?

How does the contractor have any stake? I think that most would agree that the current owner should get the money.


But wait, the story gets weirder. It's just not that simple (somehow, it never is). From the article:

"Kitts was working at Reece's home in May 2006 when he knocked a hole in her wall. He found several boxes of money, some wrapped in paper marked 'P. Dunne.'"

"Kitts notified Reece, sparking a dispute over who should keep the currency, which included some rare bills. A coin dealer appraised the rare cash and deemed it worth $500,000."

"With several parties preparing to stake their claim in court, Reece sold some of the money on eBay and spent some on a trip to Hawaii with her mother, she said in a deposition. She stashed some of the money in shoe boxes under her bed. One box with about $60,000 mysteriously disappeared, according to the deposition."

According to the article, Reece eventually relinquished any claim to the rest of the money, and the judge awarded the money marked with Dunne's name to his heirs, and the rest of the money was awarded to the contractor.

So, what is the moral of the story? That if you are a contractor who finds a pile of money, that you should keep it to yourself? That if you are in possession of cash that is in dispute, you should spend it as quickly as possible? That if you are going to hide money in the walls of your house, that you should clearly label it with your name?

Picture of old coins from Whatknot's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

US Elections

I just want this election to be over.

It seems like it is impossible to read any news source without seeing some sort of poll projecting the results. In many of the news sources that I frequently read, links to articles about the latest poll results are listed ahead of "real" news like the War in Bajaur (Pakistan) [google.com], OPEC cutting output [nytimes.com], the global response to the credit crisis [deutsche welle], etc.

One of the things that is so irritating about polls is that not only are they ubiquitous, but they are also meaningless. They're meaningless because they're wrong, and the polls from this year's primaries prove so. Let's take the New Hampshire Democratic primary. 4 days before the primary, a USA/Gallup poll showed that Barak Obama had a massive 13 point lead [wikipedia.org] over Hillary Clinton. And according to this article [nytimes.com], in all of the polls leading up to the primary, including polls taken the day before, Barak Obama had an average lead of 8 percent.

He would eventually lose this primary by 3% [wikipedia.org].

Now, how does that happen? Is it that people lie to the pollsters? Is it that racist people (or even people who are subtly racist) refuse to participate in polls in larger numbers? I don't know if we're going to know the answer to that question for a long time. But what is clear is that this polls suck.

America is in for a giant racist wakeup call.

If there were any year for a Democrat to win the presidency, it would be this one. The main reason being that the economy is doing so badly, which somehow translates into the current administration being blamed (which has happened in several election years before, but never ceases to amaze me). People seem to be under the impression that racism is now confined to a very small segment of the population.

But I think what we're about to see is racist and xenophobic people coming out in droves (many of whom would not normally vote) to vote against a black candidate. Given the margins in the last two US presidential elections, it wouldn't take much to swing the vote one way or another. And if you don't think that racism plays a large role in our society, why do you think there are predominantly white neighborhoods and predominantly black neighborhoods? It is very unusual to find integrated areas. This isn't a coincidence.

Greg Pattillo

This weekend, Heimlich and I will get a real treat. We will get the opportunity to see Greg Pattillo perform. For those of you who aren't familiar with his work, he does this whole freestyle, beatboxing flute thing. It's a lot easier to understand if you just watch one of his videos:



If the embedded video doesn't work, use this link [youtube.com].

I haven't actually seen him perform live before, but the videos make it look like he puts on quite a performance. I'm sure that going back and forth between playing notes on the flute and notes with just his mouth is a lot harder than it looks (and it looks hard). Hopefully, he will live up to the hype.

Creative Zen Review, Part 7

Previously, I had described some of the experiences I have had with my new Creative Zen [creative.com] portable media player (PMP). This is the 7th and final part of the review.

Here is a list of the previous review portions:

• part 1 - Size and layout
• part 2 - Resume function doesn't work properly
• part 3 - Bookmark function doesn't work properly
• part 4 - Converting video formats for the Zen
• part 5 - Transferring files to the Zen
• part 6 - Volume, music sorting, screen brightness, and battery life

In summary, the device has several great features, and several features that could be improved greatly.

The Good:

• Small size, good layout, attractive
• Buttons are clicky (good feel)
• Device is easy to use, and there is a configurable shortcut button
• USB cable uses standard connections (finding a replacement is easy)
• Great battery life

The Bad:

• Resume function doesn't work properly (see Part 2)
• The way bookmarks are handled could be improved greatly (see Part 3)
• The bundled video converter software is rubbish (see Part 4)
• Comically short bundled USB cable (see Part 5)
• Can't charge device from a computer and listen to audio at the same time (see Part 5)
• Slow rate of transfer between computer and device (see Part 5)
• Screen is unreadable in direct sunlight (see Part 6)
• Music can't be sorted by folder (in my opinion, this problem makes this PMP almost useless for listening to music)
• Documentation is terrible/non-existent

The good news is that most of the drawbacks of the device could be fixed in firmware. So, it is possible that these shortcomings could be addressed, making the device a complete standout in a sea of mediocre media players.

A lot of other reviews I have read have complained about a slow or sluggish interface on the device. I have not seen any evidence of this on my PMP, so I can only assume that sluggishness was a problem with older firmware versions.

So far, the device has been pretty stable. My average usage is probably around 12 hours/day. In the 2 months that I have been using it, I have only had to perform a hardware reset 4 times (almost all occuring during data transfer). The number of required resets is far fewer than with any previous device I have owned.

Acting Like a Dog

I have mentioned before how I used to run around on all fours, barking like a dog when I was little. The story was that my sister wanted a dog so badly (but wasn't allowed to get one), that she trained me (her much younger and stupider brother) to act like one.

What I just remembered is that (like everything else) I took it way too far. I don't really do anything half-assed. When I decide to do something, I do it completely whole-assed. When I got into having fishtanks, I didn't just put together a small aquarium -- I had to set up one of those really big ones. When I got into autocross, I didn't just race the car I had -- I went out and bought a car specifically to be raced.


And when my sister trained me to act like a dog... I didn't just bark like a dog. I went so far as to dig out a refrigerator box from who-knows-where and make myself a doghouse in the living room. It's just too bad that we don't have any pictures from those days, because they would probably be worth a fortune in embarrassment right now.

I feel really badly for my parents, who had to put up with a terminally psychotic dog-child, barking incessantly around the house. And on top of that, they had to put up with a ridiculous refrigerator box/doghouse in their living room that I was constantly running in and out of. I'm not a parent (thank goodness), but I would imagine that this would be enough to drive anyone to commit homicide.

The worst part is that I can't even remember exactly what age I was when all of this was happening. I want to say that I was about 5 or 6, but I am praying that pictures aren't going to surface that show I was actually like 14.

Picture of dog in costume via matthamm's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Traffic

I keep seeing articles about how Americans are driving fewer and fewer miles these days due to high gas costs. Take, for instance, this article [newsday.com]:

"U.S. fuel demand averaged about 18.6 million barrels a day during the past four weeks, the lowest since June 1999, according to a weekly supply report from the Energy Department, released Thursday [Oct. 16]."

Depending on which source you use, the decline in US driving is generally down a few percent from last year. For instance, take this article [tirereview.com]:

"June figures [from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration] showed a drop of 5% and July continued with decreases of 3.6% from the previous year."

Every time I see an article like this, I scoff, because I'm out on the roads every day, and I haven't felt a decrease in traffic. Then again, without actually measuring traffic objectively, it might be difficult to perceive a decrease of a few percent.


I'm starting to become a believer, though. There are a few key bottlenecks along my commute that have been noticeably better in the past few months. One is along I-90, traveling west from Cleveland -- as you approach the West 117th St exit during afternoon rush hour, there would almost always be a slowdown due to the heavy merge of on-ramp traffic. However, I haven't had to slow down there in a while.

Image of traffic from respres' Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Creative Zen Review, Part 6

Previously, I had described some of the experiences I have had with my new Creative Zen [creative.com] portable media player (PMP). This is part 6. [Go to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 7.]

As a device for listening to talk radio or audio books, the Creative Zen does an admirable job. However, as a tool for listening to music, this PMP fails in many areas.

First off, even at the lowest volume setting, the audio is too loud. Fortunately, there is a customizable equalizer that you can use to make it quieter.


The steps between volume levels are also too large.

The next problem is that you can't sort your music by folder. The player only lets you sort by genre, artist, album, etc. This is pretty irritating, and it forces you to have very clean tags on all of your files.

The screen on the player is very good. It's just large enough, and it is fairly bright. Unfortunately, the screen is almost impossible to read in sunlight outdoors, but I haven't had too much difficulty seeing it in the car.

In normal playing mode, the backlight on the screen never turns off. NEVER. The backlight does dim after a configurable delay, but the only way that you can get it to turn completely off is to engage the keypad lock.

I regularly use the PMP for 11 hours between recharging, which is plenty for me. However, when I am worried about battery life, I do engage the keypad lock whenever possible (which turns off the backlight and thus saves power). Your mileage will vary of course, but running with the keypad lock engaged as much as possible seems to at least double the battery life (in my unscientific tests) -- meaning that you should be able to run at least 20 hours between recharging.

As a final note, the fast-forward/rewind does have acceleration (which is a detail left out of most reviews). The acceleration is relatively fast, so it isn't irritating to use. When you are fast-forwarding and rewinding, you do not hear any audio. I wish that you would hear little blips of audio that you are scanning over, which would help to determine when you have fast-forwarded or rewound enough (I have had older MP3 players that did this).

[Go to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 7.]

US Presidential Debates

I have been pretty disappointed in this round of US Presidential Debates. At best, they have been really boring. I haven't been able to get through an entire debate yet -- most of the time, I am bailing out halfway through.


For me, most of the problem is that the moderators allow the candidates to recite their talking points instead of answering the actual questions. I don't want to hear the talking points. I've already heard those ad nausea. What I want is for them to answer the questions.

Back in the primaries, there were all of those CNN/YouTube debates. And one of the great things that I saw in those debates was that Anderson Cooper didn't allow the candidates to skate -- when he saw any of them try to weasel out of giving a straight-forward answer, he would stop them and make it clear that they weren't answering the question. For example, recall Sen. Clinton's weasel answer on the issue of American ground troops in Darfur:



If the embedded video doesn't work, use this link [youtube.com]. This is the kind of thing that I want to see more of in future debates. The moderators should stop allowing these bastards from weaseling out of answering the damned questions.

Linkdump

Latest linkdump:

• Top 10 Everyday Things People Do To Ruin Their Cars [ridelust.com]. Lots of interesting tidbits in there. [edit: link fixed.]


• The Next Meltdown: Credit-Card Debt [businessweek.com]. From the article:

  "Credit-card losses are already taking a bite out of lenders' balance sheets. Bank of America, the nation's second-largest issuer behind JPMorgan, revealed on Oct. 6 that roughly $3 billion of its $184 billion credit-card portfolio has soured, a 50% increase from a year ago..."
  
  "Likewise, American Express (AXP), which caters to wealthier borrowers, upped its provisions for credit-card losses from $810 million to $1.5 billion in the latest quarter, a sign that even upscale consumers are having trouble."

  About a year ago, when the stock market really started going down, I pulled almost all of my money out of the market and started buying CDs (thinking this would be the ultimate safe investment). I never imagined that we'd be looking at bank failures a year later. These days, we're looking at silent bank runs [charlotteobserver.com] that can very quickly sink banks. It makes me wonder if a healthy bank could be sunk these days by a media story hinting that it may be in trouble.


• Here's a video of a F-35B Joint Strike Fighter perform a vertical take-off, maneuver while hovering, and then vertically land [youtube.com].
  
  
  
  That is incredible.

Never Moving

Earlier this year, I mentioned that the facility that I work at might be relocated to the Nashville area. For a while, all of our long-term (personal) plans were put on hold while we waited to find out if we were either going to move or whether I was going to look for a new job. Fortunately, it was announced later that although the facility I work in is moving into a brand new building, it will be built nearby.

At that point, we reverted to our previously plans of moving closer to work in a few years (Heimlich and I both currently commute a long distance in the same direction). We weren't thinking about moving immediately because of the downturn in the housing market and because Heimlich doesn't think that she has built up enough seniority at work to feel long-term job security yet.

Recently, it has occurred to us that she may never have the kind of job security that we would want before moving, due to the nature of her job. So, our current thinking is that we're not going to be moving. At least, not for the foreseeable future.

The upshot is that we love our house, and we'd get to stay in it. It is a modestly-sized house, so we are living well within our means. And it is also a very nice house, with refinished woodwork throughout, so we love having it. We have also spent a lot of time and money fixing it up, and it's finally at the point where we want it. Here are some shots from a few years ago, when we bought it:



We're also in the inner ring of Cleveland suburbs, meaning that if Heimlich needs to find a new job, she would have the best chance of finding one around here. If we moved closer to where we both work now (out in the country), her job choices would be very limiting.

We also live in a great city (Lakewood), with tons of like-minded people, and almost everything within walking distance.

The downside of staying where we are is that we both have long commutes right now (which become even worse when it snows). I'm putting around 30k/year on my car. However, our commutes are against traffic, so even if the drive is long, it isn't in stop-and-go traffic.

Articles About Housing Prices

About once a month, we are bombarded by financial articles about how the latest data shows that housing prices have dropped yet again. Here's an example on Bloomberg:

"The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index dropped 16.3 percent from a year earlier, more than forecast, after a 15.9 percent decline in June. The gauge has fallen every month since January 2007, and year-over-year records began in 2001. "

I'm annoyed by these articles, and I'll tell you why. I get that the year-over-year change in housing prices is a good metric. I get it. I'm in no way suggesting that they should stop using that metric.

However, they should pair this data with the change between this month and last month. Almost no articles do this. For instance, take the following hypothetical example:


In this hypothetical example, home prices increased between Aug 2007 and Sept 2007. However, average home prices largely stayed the same between Aug 2008 and Sept 2008. The result would be that the year-over-year change would look a lot worse in Sept 2008, compared with Aug 2008 -- except that home prices largely stayed the same between those two months. That is the type of information you lose when you only report year-over-year change and don't pair it with the difference between this month and last month.

Creative Zen Review, Part 5

Previously, I had described some of the experiences I have had with my new Creative Zen [creative.com] portable media player (PMP). This is part 5. [Go to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 6, part 7.]

With the Creative Zen comes a comically short USB cable:


Is this a joke? Forget about using it with any USB ports on the back of your computer (laptop or otherwise). The good news is that both ends are standard USB connectors, so I already had at least one spare cable lying around that I could use. Both a previous digital camera and a previous MP3 player use those exact same connectors, so I was all set. This cable is both used to transfer data to and from the PMP, and also to recharge it.

When you connect the Creative Zen to a computer, it goes into "Docked Mode" and prepares itself to receive files. In "Docked Mode", it disables the UI on the device itself -- thus preventing you from recharging it and listening to music on it at the same time. If you want to recharge it while listening to it, you will have to plug it into a USB power adapter [amazon.com].

When you plug it into a computer, it will show up as an "other device" in Windows Explorer (see below screenshot), but doesn't get assigned a drive letter. That is annoying to me, because I use custom scripts to transfer data to my MP3 players (which require drive letters) instead of using a UI like Windows Explorer.


Transfers of files to the device are rather slow. I typically copy groups of 50MB files to the PMP. In my unscientific tests, it takes about 100 seconds to transfer just under 500MB to the Creative Zen, averaging about 4.8MB/sec (well under the theoretical max transfer rate of USB, and significantly slower than many of my other devices and older MP3 players).

One last note about data transfers... I have two WinXP SP2 computers. On one computer, I was able to transfer files to and from the Zen without installing any drivers. On the other computer, I did have to install the software suite that comes with the PMP to be able to transfer anything to it. Unlike many other devices, you can't count on being able to plug it into your friend's computer and assume that it will work.

[Go to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 6, part 7.]

Toxicity of Grad School

I've written before about how difficult it is to finish a PhD -- specifically, the middle portion is very depressing and it often difficult to summon the motivation to continue.

There's a whole long, boring back-story to this that I won't go into, but one of the regrets that I have about that era is that I declined a lot of wedding invitations. Because I was a single guy in my 20s with not a lot of social skills, I didn't think that it was a big deal. The weddings were in California, or Texas, or wherever. And I figured that the wedding party probably wouldn't even notice that I wasn't there, might even welcome not having to pay for my plate at the reception, or want to have a seat that they could fill with someone else. Now that I'm married and have a completely changed perspective on weddings, I realize how misguided my thinking was.

Looking back on my life when I was in grad school, though, I realize now that the real reason that I declined a lot of the invitations were because I was depressed and embarrassed about being in grad school. My perception of myself was that I was languishing away in grad school, while all of my peers were working in real jobs, getting married, having children, and getting on with their lives. Most people don't understand what the PhD process is like, or why you would even want to get one. Can you imagine being at a wedding and having this conversation?

"Terence, it's been a while! What have you been up to?"
"Uh, I'm working on a PhD right now."
"Wait, you didn't get enough school in college and want more?"
"Uh... something like that."
"You're almost 30 and you're still a student?"
"It's not really like I'm a student..."
"Well, are you almost done with your PhD?"
"Yeah, I'm probably about a year away from graduation."
"Wait, isn't that what you said last year? And the year before that?"
*sigh* "Yeah..."
"And you're not married?"
"Uh, no, but this conversation is making me think about using heroin."

By the way, I don't harbor any resentment towards people who didn't come to our wedding. By the time we got married, everyone had children and in-laws, limited vacation time, and all kinds of other complications. It wasn't like when I was in grad school, and could take off whenever I wanted to.

Early Voting in Ohio

Is this election season ever going to end? Like the Christmas shopping season, it seems to start earlier and earlier every time. It makes me wonder about whether we'll eventually get to the point where we are voting in next primaries in a president's first year in office.

Anyway, with the election less than a month away now, voting has already begun in Ohio [rte.ie].

Howard Stern recently created a funny bit to show just how ignorant the average voter is. He had someone go out on the street with a microphone and ask them about the election. Here is a typical exchange that was recorded:

"Are you voting for John McCain or Barak Obama?"
"Obama."
"Are you more for Obama's policies because he is pro-life or because he thinks our troops should stay in Iraq and finish this war?"
"I think our troops should stay in Iraq and finish this war. I'm really firm with that. Definitely."
"How how about as far as him being pro-life? Do you support Obama in that case?"
"Yeah. I do. I do. I support him in that case."
"And if he wins, would you have any problem with Sarah Palin being vice-president?"
"No, I wouldn't. Not at all."

It's funny, but at the same time, really sad. You can hear the original audio here:



If the embedded video doesn't work, use this link.

By the way, the guy holding the mic is one half of the comedy team in this CNN video [youtube.com] making a mockery of the coverage of the Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy report (which became a small internet sensation [postchronicle.com]).

Styling Improvements at Mercedes

I was into cars even when I was growing up. One of the brands that didn't even register on my radar was Mercedes. And the reason is because every time I saw a Mercedes, I thought that the styling just screamed OLD PEOPLE. Here's an example from the 90s:


Back then, the "exotics" that I wanted to buy when I grew up were the BMWs, the Porsches, the Corvettes, etc. Those were the cars that really made me impatient to get old enough to drive. As far as I was concerned, Mercedes, Bentley, Buick, Rolls Royce, Cadillac, and Jaguar were all the same -- cars for old people.

I'm amazed at how Mercedes has turned it around. When I look at a Mercedes these days, the styling makes me want to buy one:


Don't get me wrong -- I would never buy one, because the styling doesn't change the fact that they are stupidly heavy, and needlessly (mechanically) complicated cars. But from a styling point of view, I dig them.

It kind of makes me wonder whether Mercedes styling has actually changed that much relative to the rest of the car market, or whether I have just "matured" as a car buyer and am starting to like the cars that are traditionally aimed at old people. I'm pretty sure that it's the former. And I think that Lexus has gone in the opposite direction -- their styling is clearly aimed at old people and is no longer appealing to the younger audiences.

Picture of 1990 Mercedes 190E via michieldijcks' Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Google Maps

Google Maps is generally great (when it isn't sending you to the wrong location). And the idea that you can hit a print button, and it will reformat your current view to be more printer-friendly is a great idea. But there are several problems with the print-friendly versions of the maps.

The major problem that I have is the lack of scale on the printed map. Let's say that you search for a location:


On the lower left-hand side of the map, there is a nice scale (outlined in red), indicating what distance on the map is equal to 2000 real-world feet. This is fine and dandy. Except that when you switch to the printer-friendly version of the map and actually print it, the scale doesn't show up.

I regularly print maps from IE and Firefox on two different WinXP computers and two different printers. One printer is a fairly old HP LaserJet 4, while the other is a relatively new model. No matter what combination I use, the scale doesn't get printed, so I'm fairly sure that the problem isn't specific to my computer.

Maps without scales are fairly useless. Especially if you aren't familiar with the area. Nowadays, I usually end up print screenshots of Google Maps, because the screenshots will actually have the scale on it.