Persid Meteor Shower

The Internet said it was peak last night.  So I got up at midnight and went out to see.  And I did see three good bright meteors in about 20 minutes.  To get a good view I went up to the Peabody Slopes parking lot.  The sky was lighter than optimum, the moon hadn't quite set yet although it was below the tree line.  All I had to do was look straight up, and there they were.  The flash was too quick to photograph, at least not with my humble point-n-shoot.  If I do this again, remember to bring a flashlight and a folding chair. 

Estate Tax, small business killer.

Small businesses employ a lotta people, and a few of 'em grow up to be the next Apple Computer.  We need more of them, and we ought to pass laws to make things easier for them.  Eliminating the estate tax would help a lot.
   Typical small businesses, a gas station, a retail store, a motel, a general contractor,  a farm, a medical practice, or a restaurant.  Typically a sole proprietor  deal.  Sooner or later (death comes to everyone) and the sole proprietor dies.  His estate is the small business.  He may have a few bucks in a checking account, but over his lifetime he put everything into the business.  And now that he died, Uncle Sam wants 50% of the value of the business for estate taxes, in cash, right now. 
   Few small businesses have that kind of money.  Not now, not ever.   So the business is closed, sold off, the employees laid off.  The owner cannot will the business to an heir, he has to give half of it to Uncle Sam.  And paying half the value of the business kills it. 
  Me, I think business owners ought to be able to pass the business down to heirs, tax free. 
  The estate tax was invented to confiscate the fortunes of  people like the Rockefellers and  the Gates.  It does skin some of them, but they hire clever well paid lawyers who construct tax shelters for them.  The estate tax really does hammer small businesses, so hard that many of them die. 
  We ought to repeal the estate tax, all the way. 

Delta computer crash. Again

This morning's Wall St Journal had a few words from Delta's chairman.  He says an equipment failure on Delta's site both knocked out the system AND started a small fire.  A fire?  Where are the Halon fire extinguishers that any decent computer room has???   We actually had them go off once at my old place.  It was a false alarm, and it's a good thing that Halon just puts out fires and doesn't wreck electrical equipment like water will do.  But the question for Delta is, why didn't your Halon extinguishers work? 

Delta admits it was their own equipment that failed.

The local power company, Georgia Power, said that their power had stayed on all night.  Delta admitted that a "power control module" (which might be anything)  failed early Monday morning and crashed their computer system, shutting down Delta flights world wide.  And apparently rebooting the world wide systems isn't working so well.  Delta is announcing further flight delays and cancellations for tomorrow.
   Delta clearly needs to decentralize their computer systems, preferably down to the local airport level, so that a failure only knocks out ONE airport, not the entire world.  The only thing that has to be centralized is the airline's seat reservation system.  Agents sell seats all over the world.  Before an agent can sell a seat, he has to know that the seat in question is available, not already sold to someone else.  So all the seat sales go to the central computer system, which keeps track of which seats on which flights are available and which are sold.  This function has to be centralized.  But a lot of other  stuff, like running the airport kiosks ought to be local.
   Good luck Delta IT dept.  You gotta lotta work to do, and a lotta flak to catch. 

Words of the Weasel Part 38

Optics.  The politicos are now saying "The optics are bad".  Us real native born English speakers still say " It doesn't look good." 

No backup generator for Delta?

Delta's main computer system went down early this morning, and Delta announced that it was canceling flights world wide until they bring the computers back up.  Delta claims a power failure at their main computer site caused the outage.  And stranded passengers all around the world.
Question for you Delta.  Where was the back up generator at your site?  In the Air Force we had diesel backup generators for crucial stuff, the tower, the radar approach control, the runway lights, the instrument landing system, the electronic navigation aids.  Where was Delta's backup power for this absolutely crucial computer system? 

Ethnic voters, Black, Hispanic, Muslim.

Endless talk on TV about how Hillary and The Donald are doing with this or that ethnic group, who's ahead, who's behind, where they stand relative to previous races.  Endless yak.
None of the TV newsies are talking about the largest ethnic group in the country, women.  Fifty percent of voters are women.  Romney lost the woman's vote to Obama by 10%.  That was the election right there. Hillary and The Donald's race will be decided by women's votes.  But the TV newsies, not even the Wall St Journal ever talks about it.
  We know that The Donald has his problems with women's support.  So does Hillary.  A lotta women think she should have divorced Bill over the Monica affair.   How many of each sort of women voters do we have?  Would those women admit their real feelings to a robo calling pollster?