Driving down to Beantown

Eldest son was in Boston on business, so I drove down to see him yesterday.  The good news, it only takes two and a half hours driving from Franconia to Logan.  Used to take three and a half a few years back.  Trusty Mercury does 80 mph, no sweat.  Car would be happy going even faster, but Driver worries about sneaky NH state troopers hiding in the center strip bushes.  So I keep it below 80. 
   Coming down from the north, the old Sumner Tunnel route off the Big Dig tunnel is shorter than the new tunnel from the Mass Pike.  Logan parking is ridiculous, $19 for two hours.  I parked on the roof of Terminal B, which is all covered with fancy solar cells.  I wonder how much they cost and what the payback time is.  Betcha the airport is using the $19 parking fees to pay off the solar cells. 
   So for old times sake we spent the day in Harvard Sq.  The Head of the Charles Regatta was on and the crowd was huge.  Much bigger than a few years ago.  So big we couldn't even get into Charlie's Kitchen.  The Sq hasn't changed much since last time I was there, all the nice places are still there, no new places groovy enough to catch my eye. 
   So I dropped eldest son off at a hotel on Atlantic Ave.  Drove right down Mass Ave, thru Central Sq, out Main St and crossed the Charles on the Longfellow Bridge (better known as the Make Way for Ducklings bridge).  Infrastructure fans will be glad to hear that Longfellow bridge is getting rebuilt.  The two inbound lanes are all tore up and closed, inbound traffic is rerouted on the outbound lanes and outbound traffic has to find another bridge.
   On the way home I checked out the NH Liquor Store on I93.  They been rebuilding it; it isn't all finished yet; but it is open to cars (only).  Truckers suck hind teat.  They now sell gas, big self service Irving station which was only $3.16 a gallon.  Cannon contributed one of the old Tramway cars which is mounted on display at the convenience store.  I looked at it, and I do think it's real, rather than a mockup.
   Stupid Beast was pleased to see me when I got home. 
  

Do we have anyone on active duty?

Anymore?   Obama wants to deploy 3000, maybe 4000, troops to West Africa to fight Ebola.  This morning NPR announced that Obama was mobilizing the reserves to raise enough troops for West Africa. 
   We don't have 3000 active duty troops fit to deploy overseas?  We have to call up reserves?  3000 troops ain't much.  What would happen if we got into a war with even a pip squeak country like Syria?  Do we have any active duty Army left? 

Antivirus on Win 8.1

Flatbeast, my new Win 8.1 laptop came with McAfee antivirus installed.  It was a freebie trial installation with a drop dead date.  Either pay up or it drops dead.  Although McAfee is good name in antivirus, that goes way back, back even before Windows, it's expensive, and slow and I have been having good results with Avast which is free. 
   So, when McAffee  dropped dead today, I uninstalled it.  What used to be "Add and Remove Programs" has been renamed to "Programs and Features" but the Microsofties didn't move it, it's still on the control panel where it ought to be.  Removal was a major effort, taking minutes and a reboot.  Uninstalling was like pulling dandelions, they will come up, but they don't want to. 
   So I downloaded the free AVAST, no sweat.
   So I checked on my RAM usage.  With McAfee installed, I had 1846 MB of RAM used.  After uninstalling McAfee RAM usage dropped to 1289 MB.  That's 557 MB worth of antivirus code that used to be hogging RAM.  That's a lot of code.  Flatbeast feels a bit more lively after removing all that baggage. 
   Installing AVAST pumped RAM usage back up to 1570 MB, which is still 270 MB better than McAfee.

Camera bearing laptop?

New laptop has one.  It's buried in the bezel, it only can see out when the lid is raised.  All it can see is my smiling face when I am using the machine.  There is an app to take a selfie for use as account photo.  I have much better selfies I took with a real camera on a tripod.  If there is an app to do video conferencing with it I haven't found it.  I cannot image using it to take pictures the way you do with an Ipad or a real camera. 
   I suppose it's there 'cause it's so cheap as makes no matter.  A couple of bucks for a chip, the lens is molded into the bezel so that's basically free. 
   There is a LED that comes on when the selfie app is running the camera.  I wonder if the LED is hardwired or software controlled.  Could an embarrassment app take a pix of me in my underwear and keep it secret by not turning on the LED?  Not that I work my computer in my underwear very often; it's too cold around here for that.
   Anyhow, to satisfy my paranoia, I placed a bit of masking tape over the lens.   Just in case NSA or KGB wants pix of my kitchen table. 

Dow is down 84 points, just this morning.

It's close to breaking thru the 16000 level, which takes the Dow back better than a  year.  The TV newsies haven't picked up on this yet, but Win 8.1 stock market app has.  The TV newsies are chatting up Ebola, although there is little that hasn't been said, repeatedly, to report. 

Isolation, Texas Health Presbyterian style.

With a second nurse contracting Ebola at the Texas hospital, it has been announced that 70 odd hospital workers are still under observation due to contact with the index patient.  For a guy who was "in isolation" that's a lot of contact.  I'd think you could give first rate care, 24/7 with no more than 4 or 5 people coming in contact with the patient.  Seventy odd sounds like every curious person in the hospital visited the index patient, just to see how he was doing.
   As to how the poor nurses got infected, could be a lotta things.  Some fault in the protective gear, a bad or missing zipper, a loose elastic, a rip, a tear.  Getting out of the gear is tricky.  There are live infectious Ebola virii on the outside of the garment.  You gotta get out of it, without ever touching the outsides of the gear.  Easier said than done. Or Ebola may be much more infectious than is believed.  
   Either way, they both have my best wishes and full sympathy.

NYT reports Iraqi Chemical Weapons coverup.

It's history by now, but the Times reports that US troops occupying Iraq discovered sizable quantities of artillery shells filled with poison gas.  The troops claim they were told to hush the matter up.  This just came on the TV news this morning.
    Somehow this just doesn't sound right.  Much of the justification for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein came from the belief that Saddam was building nukes.  Colin Powell went before the UN and laid his reputation on the line accusing Saddam of having or building weapons of mass destruction.  After the occupation of Iraq we launched a serious search for the weapons which continued for a year.  When it failed to find much, if anything, of nuclear weapons it was a serious embarrassment to the Bush administration.  It is to Bush's credit that he refused to allow the manufacture of evidence  of nuclear weapons.  A few small caches of rockets with chemical warheads were discovered and made the news.  Small means they would have fit in back of a single pickup truck.
  There was a strong desire to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's Iraq, and I cannot believe that a sizable cache, like the NYT is talking about, was not publicized at the time.

Indian Summer

Enjoy it while it lasts.  Sun is out, leaves are bright, it's good and warm (72), warm enough to bask on the deck.  Winter is coming.

Telephone Scam

The phone rang today.  The accented voice on the line claimed my computer was sucking in bad stuff off the net, and he worked for Microsoft, and wanted to help me.  I was suspicious but decided to play along and see what his scam was.  About the time he got me to download from www.teamviewer.com, I told him I would call him back.
   A quick Google for PNF scam turned up a dozen accounts of this scam.  So, I never did find out just what the scam was,  but, I can repeat to all of you, that unsolicited phone calls from companies are scams.  This call was trying to get me to download some dreadful virus.
  If you don't already know, beware of phone scammers.

Alamo In the Ardennes. John C. McManus

A reasonable WWII history book about the bitter fighting of the Bulge.  The Germans secretly built up a vastly superior force, three full fledged armies, and hurled it against the Ardennes sector which was held by a single American division.  The outnumbered Americans put up a stubborn resistance which slowed the enemy down until Patton's Third Army could come into action.  It's a good story, although the author's prose gets sort of pedestrian. 
    The cover illustration is striking.  A photo from the national archives shows three US soldiers walking thru a snow covered forest.  The weather is miserable and the expressions on the soldier's faces do not show happiness.  And yet, they are well equipped.  All three of them have good warm parkas and good boots with puttees to keep the snow out of boot tops.  They are heavily armed, each carries a personal weapon, they have two bazookas and are lugging 250 round steel boxes of machine gun ammunition.  Grenades dangle from their web gear. 
   It's a long way from the industrial heartland of America to the Ardennes, but we managed to get these soldiers and a generous supply of weapons and gear, into action, at the right place and the right time.

Susan Rice rides again.

I never expected to see Susan Rice on the Sunday talk shows again.  Not after her Benghazi lying tour a couple of years ago.  But there she was, on Meet the Press this morning,  looking and sounding like an administration pundit.  She went on and on about how ground troops were not necessary against ISIS.  For some reason that I don't understand, she, and the rest of the administration still calls the enemy ISIL rather than the ISIS used by all the media.
   I wonder how many people out there believe anything she says?  

So how bad is this Ebola stuff anyway?

Hard to tell.  It's not my field, all I know is what I see on the TV news or read in Tom Clancy's 1996 thriller "Executive Action".   The TV newsies are all motivated to make it as bad as possible in order to sell advertising (if it bleeds it leads).  The TV guys are all poorly educated, with no real world experience in anything, so their judgement is suspect.  So far the only really hard facts we have are 4000 Ebola deaths in West Africa and only one in the US so far.  That's pretty good isolation in my view. 
   There is a lot of talk by TV newsies about shutting down air travel to West Africa.  Dunno if that will do much, if any, good.  There ain't much traffic with West Africa in the first place, the Dallas Ebola case had to go to Belgium in order to get a flight to the US.  We have a lot of our citizens in West Africa, missionaries, medical workers, soldiers, and some of them will come down with Ebola.  They are Americans, and we must bring them home and cure them.   We don't abandon Americans to die in African jungles.
   We have to do something about Africa.  The deaths are doubling every few weeks.  First it was a thousand, then two thousand, now it's four thousand.  That's exponential growth and a little more of it will kill everybody in Africa.  And infect the rest of the world.  Trouble is, there ain't that much anyone can do.  Other than isolating the victims so they don't infect more people, you just keep 'em fed and watered ("hydrated") and watch 'em die.  Ebola's kill rate is 60% or worse. 
   Technological advances may save the day.  They have a vaccine undergoing trials right now.  There is talk of drugs.  If anything pans out, it will be a game changer.  Given a vaccine that works, we could vaccinate all of Africa in a year.  

Great Costume Drama, Prisoner of Zenda

It's an oldie, released in 1952.  But it's pretty good.  Stewart Granger has the lead role, James Mason is the dastardly Count Rupert of Hentzau.  Debra Kerr is the Princess Flavia. The costumes are wonderful, both for the men and the women.  Granger and Kerr look fabulous entering the royal ballroom.  It's in Technicolor.  The dialogue is witty and good.  There is plenty of daring do, including a sword fight in a castle, a cavalry charge, a gun fight in a deserted urban summerhouse.
   Netflix has it, but it's a long wait.  I have it on a VHS tape I got from Amazon a long time ago. 

Making Win 8.1 less hostile

Go to Control Panel, Select Personalization.  I prefer a solid color background.  The icons show up better and the eye is less distracted with solid as opposed to a wall paper (some photo on your disc, blown up to fill the entire screen.  There are two basic schemes, dark background with white text (aka white on black)(, or light background with dark text (black on white).  Win 8.1 allows you to choose the color of the window frame but every thing else (text, selected menu item, etc) is automatically set by Windows.  For amusement you can watch Windows switch from white to black text and back again as you alter the background color.  And the Microsofties like soft pastel colors with little contrast.  Win XP gave much greater control to us users.

Once you have the background and frame colors to your liking, click on "Display".  Take the top item, "Change Size of all Items".   I made it 125% (the only choice besides 100%).  This yields a text size close to my old manual typewriter.  The 100% setting makes all the text  really small, I can still read it, but the 125% setting is easier to read.  I sacrifice some screen space but for me it's a good tradeoff.  I'm on a 14 inch laptop, bigger displays might work better at 100%.  There are a couple of other settings in "Display" that I haven't tried yet, but going with  a solid dark blue background, light blue windowframes and 125% gives a screen that I like.

Count your lucky stars

The Dallas Texas ebola case died this morning.  That's too bad, a tragedy to his family and friends, and  I offer my full sympathy.
So far, nobody else had been infected.  That is a blessing and we should be thankful.

Robots and employment, NHPR this morning

A long talk on the radio this morning with science fiction overtones.  Kinda future oriented, clearly all the talking heads were thinking about Robbie-the-Robot walking talking robots competing for jobs on production lines. 
   None of them seemed to understand that the situation is with us now.  Back when I started in engineering, companies all had drafting rooms, with dozens of draftsmen cranking out drawings.  They all had bevies of secretaries who typed stuff up. 
   As an engineer, I would do pencil sketches on squared paper, and when the design was reasonably firm, I would go down to drafting, negotiate with the drafting supervisor, and a draftsman would be assigned to me.  The schematic for a two layer 3 inch by 7 inch electronic board filled a D size drawing and took a week to do.  The printed circuit artwork for the same board took a couple of weeks. 
   Stuff I had to write, proposals, specs, test procedures, user manuals, application notes, assembly and tuneup procedures I would write out long hand on yellow pads.  Then the a secretary would type up a rough draft, I would correct the rough draft, she would type the final draft.  This took days. 
   When I retired from engineering both the drafting department and the secretarial pool were gone.  The engineers all had CAD programs running on their desktops from which beautiful machine lettered drawings, artwork, and parts lists would flow out the plotter.  We all had Word-for-Windows running on our desktops and in one pass, decent documentation flowed off the laser printer.  No need for typists. 
   Dunno what all the draftsmen and all the typists did when the desktops took over.  For that matter travel agents are pretty much gone, every body makes their reservations on Orbitz or Travelocity.  Most companies now have  automatic answering machines picking up the phone.  Sometimes the automatic is good enough to connect you to sales, and sometimes it isn't.  Robocallers pitch political candidates. Websites have replaced salesmen. 
   Don't worry about the future, worry about the present.

Scum Fighting on the kitchen floor.

Today was clear and sunny, good day for drying. So, haul the kitchen table and chairs and stuff out on the deck.   Wash the dishes to empty the sink.  Fill sink with Pinesol & hot water.  Do floor with sponge mop.  Notice that a scrummy film stays on the floor.  Pinesol doesn't seem to have the sack to cut thru it.  End up on hands and knees with 409 and a Scotchbrite.  That cuts the scum but it's a lot of work.  Wet mop after scrubbing and the rinse water comes out pitch black, so at least the dirt is coming up.  Four changes of rinse water and it's still coming out black.  But the floor is cleaner, and a shot of mop & glow and it's not too bad.  Dunno if it measures up to my Mother's standards, but it's good enough for me. 
   The world needs a better scum fighter.  Something that will cut the scum with just a sponge mop. 

Troop ships?

Meet the Press ran a video clip of Rand Paul worrying about Ebola contagion among our troops while they are packed onto troop ships.  Paul cited the cases of some cruise liners stricken with wierd virii that turned all the passenger's tummies.  As well as laying out a lot of the crew.
  The White House guy on camera, a white guy, didn't get his name, said "Oh we will screen them and everything will be OK."
   The White House guy should have said, and didn't,  "The US hasn't transported troops by ship since WWII."  Which is true.  They flew me out to Viet Nam in 1967, and they flew me back in 1968. 
    Anyhow, put one "idiot" chit against Rand Paul and a second one against the White House guy, who ever he was.  And by extemsion, one against who ever hired the White House guy.
   BTW.  Meet the Press and its competitors would make life easier for us poor viewers by placing name plaques on the table in front of all the players.  Even a news junkie like myself doesn't know everyone by sight.  Betcha plenty of viewers don't recognize anyone at all. 
   Then the discussion rambled on about Ebola, and the need to run in circles, scream and shout.  I give Gwen Ifil and David Axelrod one attaboy for not joining in the war dance, and saying we have just one case, where as West  Africa has more than a thousand deaths, and we can keep it that way. 
   There was a little talk about shutting down air travel out of Africa but it didn't really go anywhere.  There are few direct flights to that part of the world.  In fact the case in Texas had to fly to Brussels in Belgium to get a flight to the US.  Plus,  we have a lot of US citizens over there, and infected or not, they are Americans and America does not let its citizens die from a loathsome disease in African jungles.  We bring them home, we treat them, and so far we have had really good luck in curing them. 

Jeh Johnson, HHS secretary on Fox News

Bret  Baier had him on the 6PM news show last night.  Put a good long 20 minute interview on the air.  Asked Johnson about Ebola, and the Secret Service.  Johnson did not do well.  He came across as evasive and a man with something to hide.  Several somethings in fact.  I thought Baier did a nice fair interview, but Johnson kept evading the questions or changing the subject, or replying with meaningless platitudes. 

Easier to see scrollbars in Firefox

Some how in making the jump from XP to 8.1 Firefox messed up his scrollbars.  They went light grey, almost invisible, and the slider, or thumb, was just a shade or two darker than the scrollbar and damn hard to see.  PITA.
  There is a fix for Firefox.  Down load an add-in called NewScrollbars, or sometimes NOIAScrollbars 1.21.  Google will find it for you.  Good fix, you can set any color you like and the slider is a nice high contrast easy to see.  Significant improvement. 
Too bad I haven't found something like this for Windows 8.1 itself.  The M$ people were into very soft pastels this time which are hard to see.  User friendly those Microsofties. 

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital

The one that failed to diagnose Ebola and sent the infectious patient home with some antibiotics.  I wonder if they are on the narrow Obamacare network?   According to the TV news, a nurse actually asked the patient about travel, and the patient said he was from Liberia.  The nurse didn't tell the doctors, she just typed it into the electronic medical records system.  The doctors didn't read the electronic system.  The hospital is blaming the computer system.  I'm thinking that nurse should have known that Liberia was Ebola country and she should have brought it to everyone's attention.  As it is, the electronic medical records system recorded it for later embarrassment of the hospital.  Obamacare has been demanding everyone go over to insecure electronic systems, claiming they improve care.  Right.  In actual fact, they make everyone's medical records available to anyone who cares to snoop, such as potential employers. 
   Any how, I would avoid Texas Health Presbyterian.  The goofed, big time, allowing an infected Ebola patient to wander around infecting people.

Australia's over-the-horizon radar.

Standard radar is strictly line of sight.  It's like using a searchlight.  The radar transmitter illuminates the target and some of the energy is reflected off the target back to the receiver where it is "seen".  Should the target be over the horizon it is just out of view.
   Down under, the Jindalee system uses extremely low frequencies, at least low for a radar.  The Aviation Week article didn't mention the frequencies used, but its got to be  10 meters or longer.  CB band and below.  At low frequency the ionosphere acts as a mirror and reflects the transmitted pulse back down to the ground far beyond the horizon.  The Australians have constructed three low frequency over-the-horizon (o-t-h)  radars spread across their sub continent, looking northward, covering the sea between Australia and Indonesia. 
  O-t-h radar, since it reflects off the unstable and fluxuating ionospheric mirror, suffers from image distortions, blind spots, and difficulties computing range.  You might say the picture is blurry.  But usable.  And operating three radar stations has got to be cheaper than flying reconnaisance, or launching recon satellites. 
   I notice that the o-t-h radar covers the sea areas in which they are still looking for that lost Malaysian airliner, the one that dropped off radar and was never heard from again.  Could the searches be guided by Jindalee o-t-h radar tracks? 

Leaves are beginning too fall

Leaves will be quite good this weekend.  By next weekend they will be mostly on the ground.  Or brown.

Airborne tower of Babel

Long article in Aviation Week deploring the lack of a common data link standard between USAF combat aircraft.  Apparently older aircraft like AWACs and F16's were equipped with a datalink system known as Link16.  The newer F22 has a different system called IFDL and the even newer F35 has a system called MADL.  As you might imagine, the various systems cannot talk to each other.  There is a project, hoping for funding, to build a "translator" box that can talk to all three systems and translate between them. 
   Of course, old fogies like myself wonder just why such a datalink is needed.  Is it to allow aircrews to websurf on their way to target? 
   Way back in the day, the F106 fighter had a data link to the SAGE centers.  When it worked, it allowed the ground based SAGE computers to drive the horizontal situation display in the fighter, and set a steering needle to point to point right at the target.  When it was feeling especially clever it could put a bright circle on the fighter's radarscope highlighting the area in which the target was expected to appear. 
   Headquarters ADC loved datalink (dollie they called it) and insisted upon its use on every practice intercept.  When dollie broke, and the aircrew used trusty voice radio to get vector and altitude to target from the ground  controller, HQ would go ballistic and chew out the controller, the aircrew, and avionics maintenance (me) over the "broken dollie sortie". 
   In actual fact, voice radio worked just fine, everyone knew the procedures, and it doesn't take long to say "Vector 034, Angels 18" over the air.
   But HQ ADC was on a dollie kick and we all did a lot of running around  to make them happy.  Only the then new F106 had dollie.  The older F102, F101, and F89 interceptors lacked it, and my controller friends always said the oldest (F89) was the most likely to score a kill.  Dollie didn't make the F106 more effective. 

Can he fire anyone?

OK, Obama dumped the head of secret service and appointed a new old guy.  Name escapes me, despite a lotta TV coverage I haven't cuaght his name yet.  Not a good sign.
  Clearly Secret Service has some problems, fence jumpers making to the East Room, agents on trips getting drunk and laid, ex-con with a gun riding the elevator with the president. 
   I'd guess these problems come from ineffective supervisors, officers we called 'em in the military, dunno what the secret service calls 'em.  To fix things, you gotta fire the ineffective supervisors and replace them with good people.  Will the new guy (who is retired secret service and ought to know the people) be able to fire the inefficient?  On his own say-so?  Fairly quickly, like within a few weeks rather than after years of hearings and appeals?  Does secret service have a union to protect the guilty?  Are they under civil service, which basically forbids firing even for very strong cause?

F22 Raptor finally goes to war

They sent a couple of F22's into Syria the other night to bomb some big building in the boonies of Syria.  Aviation Week has before and after reconnaissance photos.  Shows a multi story flat roof building, surrounded by a paved parking lot and outside the parking lot, a really stout fence.  No cars in the parking lot, not even painted lines.  The after photo shows a whacking big hole in the roof and piles of debris all over the parking lot.  Hole in one.  You can see where ISIS has shoveled paths thru the debris to get vehicles in and out. 
   Of course you gotta wonder why Aviation Week gives such nice coverage to a fairly plain vanilla ground attack mission.  An old F-4 Phantom could have done this one.  F22 is the super expensive, super secret air-to-air fighter that got so expensive that defense secretary Gates canceled production after getting billed for only 187 aircraft.  Final price was $130 million per airplane, which is a helova lotta money for a single seat fighter. 
  F22 is stealthy, hard to see on radar.  To get stealthy, all ordinance and fuel is carried internally so it won't give a radar return.  F22 had cute little missile bays, just big enough to take a Slammer air-to-air missile.  To do the Syrian building, the F22's used 1000 pound, JDAM smart bombs.  Those certainly won't fit in a missile bay barely large enough for a 4 inch diameter missile.  1000 pounders are better than a foot in diameter.  Aviation Week didn't say how they hung the 1000 pounders on the aircraft, presumable on non stealthy under wing rails. 

Win 8.1 does network nicely

It's not much of a network, just my router, Trusty Desktop (XP) and Flatbeast (skinny new laptop Win8.1).  For just powering it up, Flatbeast found the wireless router, and got logged in.  I actually had to go down to the router and push a magic router button that told it "new authorized member on wireless, let him in."   Windows 8.1 supports a brand new networking concept call a HomeGroup, but XP does not.  Win 8.1 also supports the older networking concept of Work Groups.  By concept, we mean a protocol for saying hello, asking if anyone is home, and sharing files and printers.  Workgroups have names, and all computers with the same work group name are allowed to play.  Windows (all flavors) ships with it's Workgroup named WORKGROUP.  Once connected, the files on the distant computer show up in "Network"  looking just like files on the local drive.  You can open them, move them around, and delete them.   Win 8.1 is better at doing Workgroup than XP was.  XP was picky about linking up, and often failed to find computers on the local area network.  8.1 is better. 
  On XP "share" meant mark a file or folder as visible over the network.  Explorer allowed you to share files on a one by one, or a folder by folder basis.  If you never shared any files the distant computer would not see any files.
  On 8.1 the verb share means something else.  When M$ invents something new they ought to give it a new name, just to avoid confusion.  PITA.  On 8.1 you don't get to share file by file, you can turn on sharing for the whole machine or nothing.  Click on Control Panel.  Click on Network and Sharing Center.  Click on Advanced Sharing Options.  Turn on the obvious things like Network Discovery and file and printer sharing.  Click on save changes, and all your files become visible to distant computers. 
   The only people with access to my home  network are family and friends and I don't have any files I need to conceal from anyone, so  exposing every file on my harddrive to the local area network doesn't bother me.  Your Mileage My Vary.  

Is it murder, terrorism, or "workplace violence" ?

This has come up in the Oklahoma beheading case.  The TV newsies  argue back and forth between "terrorism" and "workplace violence". 
Me, I'd rather call it murder in the first degree.  Murder is a well established crime, it's been a crime since Moses brought down the Ten Commandments, and that was a long time ago.  The newer trendier crimes are vague, not well established, and subject to endless bickering by lawyers.  Worse, they are thought crimes, depending upon the state of mind of the perp.  I don't like thought crimes, men ought to be free to think anything they like, just so long as they keep their thoughts to them selves.  Plus, proving thoughts in court is touchy, the perp merely denies thinking wrong thoughts. 
  Plus, terrorism is a political thought crime.  One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.  Convict the perp of terrorism and bunches of unpleasant people will say that his cause was righteous, and he is a martyr to the cause.  Convict the perp of first degree murder and it is harder to generate sympathy  for him.  And the penalties for murder are still quite drastic.  Judge Neopolitano was on Fox a few minutes ago saying that under Oklahoma law, a conviction for murder is straight forward and quite possible, conviction for either "workplace violence" or "terrorism" is problematical .  So let's go for murder. 
   The "workplace violence" just seems pretty wishy washy for cutting off a worker's head.  Let's go with murder.

RD180 Rocket Engines

RD180 is the engine that powers the United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas V heavy lift booster rocket.  One little problem has emerged lately, the RD180 is made in Russia.  Just how a Russian built engine became the main engine of an American booster is a little hard to tell, now.  Tracks are being covered even as I write this.  At a guess, the Russians were low bidders, and someone decided that they were a reliable supplier. 
  Anyhow, after the late unpleasantness in Ukraine,  the Americans started huffing and puffing about "sanctions" and the Russians retaliated by threatening to cut off the supply of RD180 engines.  Which would put the Atlas V and ULA out of business.
   So, ULA is talking about having Blue Origin, a secretive Seattle based rocket company, started by Jeff Bezos the Amazon.com zillionaire, design and build an RD180 replacement engine right in Seattle.  Dubbed BE-4, the engine would burn compressed natural gas and LOX and produce  550,000 pounds of thrust.  Blue Origin has been doing some design work on BE-4 using in house (Jeff Bezos) funding.  ULA has signed a deal to provide more funding.  Target date for first flight is 2018, four years from now. 
   We have a stockpile of Russian built RD180 engines good for two years.  I guess they are hoping that the Russians will sell us another couple of years worth of engines.  Or, that with a LOT of more money the BE-4 could be rushed into production.
  Or, we could drop ULA and Atlas V and use the Space-X Falcon 9 booster rocket which has roughly the same performance as Atlas V.

Navigating Windows 8.1

Two ways to make the Desktop easier to navigate.
First put up some Really Useful Icons.  Namely Control Panel, Your files, Network, and My Computer (well M$ now calls it This PC) .  Once up you can tweak, look at your files, look at system files, and look on the LAN with  just one mouse click on the Desktop.   

 Next clear off the Desktop clutter.  New computers come with all sorts of "helpful" applications cluttering your desktop.  You have never heard of most of 'em, but you hate put them in the recycle bin 'cause you never know when you might want them.  Create a new folder to hold them.  I named the new folder "Craplets" and put it on the desk top.  One day, when I have the time, I will research the craplets and decide if I want to run them or uninstall them (zap them).  But in the mean time they are off my desktop. 

How to?  
1. Right Click on a blank portion of your Desktop  (Shades of M$-DOS, typing magic words to the prompt).  The Personalization Screen appears.
2. On the Personalization Screen left side, Click on Change Desktop Icons.  The Desktop Icon Settings window appears.
3.  Check all five boxes, Computer,User's Files, Network,, Recycle Bin, and Control Panel. Then click "Apply". 
4. To make the icons stay put, uncheck "Allow Themes to Change Desktop Icons.

Once done, you find most of the useful functions of the late, lamented "Start Button" are now available on your Desktop.  I found Win 8.1 less user hostile after doing this. 

Congressional authorization to whack ISIS

Does Obama need it?  Or does the 10 year old Authorization for the Used of Military Force (AUMF) that George Bush obtained to overthrow Saddam Hussein  cover zapping ISIS in 2014.  Who knows?  Call in the lawyers and let them quibble. 
  Let's get real about the issue here.   Obama is commander in chief, the armed forces will do what he orders them to.  So Obama can order up air strikes, or anything else, and it will happen. 
   On the other hand,  any president with two brain cells firing, wants to go to war, or something less than war, with Congressional, political and media support.  Obama has already gotten funding for the anti ISIS effort into the "continuing resolution" a stop gap bill to fund the entire US government at least thru the new year.  That's not too shabby for Obama.  That will keep the bombs falling for a while. 
   If Obama isn't very serious about ISIS, and will settle for a few fireworks shows, no ground troops, that's probably all he needs.   If he actually wants to zap ISIS into the next dimension, he probably wants to have a brand new  AUMF that specifically names ISIS as the enemy. 
   To my way of thinking, there are only two reasons for NOT going to Congress for a new AUMF.  One, Obama fears that Congress would vote it down, making him look weaker than he already looks.  Two, Obama isn't really serious about ISIS, and doesn't actually plan on serious operations to wipe them out.  Take your pick.

Gold Plating hikes costs on KC-46

The KC-46 program is supposed to produce new jet tankers to replace the Eisenhower era KC-135 tankers that are still in service with the Air Force.  It's a reasonable program to have, tankers get a LOT of use, and everything has a service life.  The KC-135's have been flying, hard, for 60 years, and there comes a time when a new aircraft is indicated. 
   The idea was to buy Boeing 767 airliners, remove the seats, and install fuel tanks and a refueling boom.  Take advantage of the well proven, reliable Boeing design, hundreds of which are still flying passengers today. 
   The Air Force couldn't resist the urge to gold plate.  USAF has been into gold plating since I was in the service and that was a long time ago.  USAF insisted on rewiring the entire plane.  The new wiring scheme called for double and triple redundancy on a lot of circuits, and shielding and separation to prevent electrical crosstalk in the wire bundles.  Boeing has built 6 aircraft and now, finally, the Air Force inspectors noticed that some of  the new wiring wasn't up to spec.  The commercial 767 had about 70 MILES of wire in it.  The Air Force added another 50 MILES of wire. 
  The commercial 767 flies just fine, has been flying just fine for 20 years with the standard wiring system.  There was no need to change anything.  The Air Force insisted upon messing up a good thing, and it has bought them a 3 month program slippage.  Good work USAF.  My tax money at work.

Leaves are close to peak north of the Notch

Tomorrow will be a fine day for leaf peeping.  Peak color doesn't last long. 

Economic Growth in Northern NH

Maggie Hassan, incumbent Democratic governor, seeking re election, came to Littleton the other day.  She got decent coverage in the freebie local paper, The Littleton Record.  They quoted Maggie waxing rhapsodic about Littleton's economic improvements.  She cited a multimillion dollar expansion at the hospital, and a second, smaller but still multimillion replacement of a public school building, and the famous Littleton main street rebuilding (they tore up all the paving on main street, rerouted a lot of sewer and water pipe, and then paved it over)  
  All this is cool, and needed to be done, but Maggie doesn't seem to understand that all this money spent is money spent on maintenance and services.  Where is the money spent on new manufacturing plant, new mines, new farms, new electric generation, new ski areas,  investment that makes stuff we can sell to pay the bills, to pay for new hospital expansion, and nice new school buildings?  You have to make stuff to sell before you can afford health care and education and well paved streets. 
   Manufacturing and farming and mining and recreation create wealth.  Hospitals schools and roads consume wealth.  If you don't have the wealth, you cannot afford the goodies. And that is why our children, after graduating high school, leave the area to find jobs.
   Maggie, like the average Democrat, doesn't understand the difference between weath creation and wealth consumption. 
   Vote for Walt Havenstein.

The Economist ignores Scotland secession vote.

The Economist, London based,  naturally has taken the Scotland secession vote of last week much more seriously than the American media.  They had been running articles on it nearly weekly, editorializing that secession would be bad for everyone.  Scotland's economy would be weakened, and British morale would be torpedoed.  In the last weeks before the vote, when the polls started to show secession could win, they did a lot of hand wringing. 
   After the vote, where secession was voted down by 10%, a solid win, the Economist had nothing to say.  No "Thank God they came to their senses" editorials, no letters to the editor, no post election vote counts, zip zippo zilch.  Not  a word.  I expected at least a sign of relief.  Maybe the whole topic was so distasteful to the Economist that they were glad to drop it?  The Brits have not been happy about their loss of empire, prestige, and world leadership over the past 60 years.  To have Scotland, pull out of the United Kingdom after 300 years would have been totally demoralizing to the Brits.
   One thought I saw some where.  The real driver behind the secession voters was the takers against the makers.  The secessionists promised far more socialism than the UK parliament would ever do.  Parliament has been on an "austerity" kick trying to bring the UK budget deficit down.  Perhaps the Scottish makers realized that secession would make them poorer to do more handouts to the takers. 

Leaves are turning up here.

Color will be fair to good this weekend.  Next week end ought to be very good.  Two weekends from now may be past peak.  If you want to see the leaves in fall, now is the time.  It doesn't last long.

Mini Coalition

Obama managed to get Saudi and the other little Gulf states, to fly some missions into Syria.  That's a good move, probably the best he has make.  But it would be more effective with some video of aircraft with Saudi and Kuwaiti, Qatari markings bombing up, taking off, flying formation with USAF aircraft, landing.  And maybe some interviews with some dashing Arabic looking fighter pilots, wearing flight suits, talking about how they put the bombs in a pickle barrel, and perhaps a few words on the rightness of the cause. 

What do the Greenies have against cell phones?

For last weekend's greenie rally to support climate change, they filmed at least two greenies being challenged to give up their cell phones to save the planet. 
Cell phones?  The chargers pull a measly 10 watts and the battery charges up in an hour.   I buy electricity for 25 cents a kilowatt hour.  That's enough for 100 cell phone charges, about a year's worth.  This is wrecking the planet?  You gotta be kidding me. 
   Let's talk real energy use.  Like my oil burner.  Each fill of the oil tank is 200 gallons, at $4 a gallon, $800 a tankful.  I need five fillups, to make it thru the winter. I keep the heat down to 60, I wear a sweater in the house, I have good tight Andersen windows, and decent insulation.  That's $4000 a year for oil.  Who cares about a cell phone?  That's greenies for you.
  Other amusing item.  All the demonstrators interviewed on TV looked old, like they had been doing peace marches in the 1960's.   Could it be that they just like going to demonstrations?  Doesn't really matter what the demo is about, they just enjoy getting out and putting on a show for the TV newsies.
  

All plastic lawn mower

Here we have Husqvarna all plastic lawn mower after three summers of grass cutting.  I bought  it new  from Lowes back in 2012.  Note the handle is crooked.  That's cause this plastic piece broke while pushing the mower across the lawn.  The bright metal patch is my attempt to glue it back together with epoxy.  Didn't work.  The epoxy failed at first push.

 I was able to find the  users manual and the sales slip. Kudos to my home filing system.  Even found  the illustrated parts breakdown showing the broken piece and giving a part number.  Manual gave a customer service number.  Reached a robo answer machine which asked me to leave my number, they would call back.  Haven't heard from them.  Tried the web.  The Husqvarna website doesn't sell parts and didn't even show my model number.  The dealer finder on the site didn't find any dealers, anywhere at all.  A disti website offered parts, but never heard of my model number or part number.
   Moral of the story, Stick with steel for lawn mowers.  There is no future in plastics. 

My Swiss Army knife has a 3 inch blade

The TV newsies now describe the White House fence jumper as being armed with a knife with a 3 inch blade.  That has become a "deadly weapon".  So what was the jumper carrying? Really?  Just a pocket knife?  a switchblade?  A lock blade knife?   I keep a short lock blade knife in my desk drawer to open the mail. 
   Was this jumper really carrying a real weapon?  Or are the TV newsies making a big deal out of a pocket knife like most Americans carry all the time?

Is the media after NFL & Roger Goodell ?

Goodell and the NFL have certainly been chewing up air time.  Could this be to distract the voters from serious problems, like no jobs, ISIS, outrageous energy prices, Lois Lerner and the IRS, and the likely GOP landslide in November?  
   Football is a rough game, played by rough men.  Up til that video tape of Mr. Rice cold cocking his fiance in an elevator, everybody pretty much ignored players behavior off the field.  Most NFL players are decent men, but the few bad apples (there are ALWAYS a few bad apples) can spoil the whole barrel.  The media, all lefty greenie types who think football is too violent and too red-neck, have decided to cover the warts of the NFL in detail, and over and over again.  So the owners have decided that bad player behavior on or off the field, is bad for business, and bad for team revenues.  So the owners, thru Goodell, have put the word out that bad behavior, he listed a dozen sorts, gets you kicked off the team and out of the league.  This will be effective, the players are players 'cause they love the game, and getting blacklisted will really hurt them. 
   Maybe the media will gt tired of Goodell and the NFLs troubles and get back to something important.

Words of a Weasel Part 35

Heard on Meet the Press this morning, a pundit said "The voters want representatives that will compromise and support bi partisan solutions and get something done in Washington."  I wonder what universe she comes from.  The voters I know want representatives who will vote for the right  way and vote against  the wrong way.  And not allow themselves to be bought off by the other side.
   And a lotta things don't compromise well.  Either we build the Keystone XL pipeline or we don't.  Either we go to war against ISIS or we don't.  Either we grant amnesty to illegal aliens or we don't.  Either abortions are illegal or they aren't.  Either we hike taxes or we don't.  Either we legalize marijuana or we don't. 

98.6 Not too hot, Not too cool

Normal body temperature for people.  Back in the day doctors and mothers paid a lot more attention to temperature than they do now.  As a kid I had to run 100 degrees before Mom would feel I was too sick to go to school. That didn't happen often.
  I notice that a fair number of mammals run the same body temp.  Stroke a cat, it feels warm, just about the right amount of warm.  If the cat 's body temperature was much removed from 98.6 it would feel either cold and clammy, or hot and feverish.  Same goes for dogs.  And horses.  I am guessing that 98.6 is pretty much normal body temperature for all mammals. 
   I suppose there is a scientific bio chemical reason  for this magic temperature, but I don't know what it might be.  I don't remember reading anything about it, and I do a fair amount of reading.
High school chemistry taught me that the speed of chemical reactions depends upon temperature.  Mammals run on bio chemical reactions, and to stay active when it's cold, they generate heat and keep their bodies warm.  An evolutionary trick that reptiles never learned. 

Shopping for boots

Boots to put on the ground that is.  Other than Americans, we have the Iraqi Army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and some shadowy Syrian rebels.   Our Prez doesn't want to use Americans for political reasons.  The Iraqis haven't fought well since Saddam Hussein's early days.  They put up a good fight during the Iran-Iraq war on the 1980's.  That war lasted 8 or 10 years.  The Iranians had a larger population, a lot of good US equipment left over from the Shah's regime, and a scary level of fanaticism on all levels, from Ayatollah Khomeini right down to the teen age Iranian soldiers who conducted human wave attacks on Iraqi positions.  But when faced with the Americans in 1990 and 2003 they crumped.   Iraqi units didn't fight much, or very hard, and a lot of 'em just deserted under fire.   After a good ten years of rebuilding under American guidance, they aren't even as good they were in 1990.  ISIS was able to brush them aside with ease. 
   The Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have a decent rep.  They fight hard and they don't run.  Trouble is, there aren't all that many of them, and they lack heavy weapons, mortars, artillery, tanks, armored personnel carriers, even trucks and jeeps.  We could help out there, but the  Baghdad government thinks that Kurdistan is still a province of a greater Iraq, and refuses to give  the Kurds any weapons, lest they use them to declare independence from Baghdad.  And Baghdad gets huffy with us when we suggest shipping arms direct into Kurdistan. 
   Then we have the Syrian rebels.  They have little to no rep.  They have been fighting for years to drive out Assad with little success.  They have been able to stay alive, and prevent Assad from offing them all, but that ain't much. 
   And then there are the Iranians.  Lots of 'em, close by, and they have a pretty good rep.  Trouble is, they are bad guys, trying to go nuclear and nobody wants that.  Iran is Shia, and Iraq is split Sunni Shia.  All the Sunni Iraqis would rather die than allow Shia Iranian soldiers into Iraq.
  Bottom line.  There ain't no good boots to put on the ground in Iraq.  (except ours of course).

Keyboard Flakie Wakies. Windows and HP Bios

This is a software problem.  Touch typing  causes odd effects like cursor jumping back at random, weird programs starting up, and other badnesses.  Impossible for typing.  There are two bugs causing this behavior that are correctable.  First bug is that the touch pad is active, so that stray finger touches turn into mouse clicks, which make a lot of bad things happen.   

   Touch pad fix.  Do the Touchie-Swipie thing on the right hand screen edge and touch the gearwheel charm for "Settings"   Touch or click on "Personalizations".  Click on "Ease of Access" (text string  in lower left hand corner.  Click on "Make the Mouse Easier to use."  Click on  Mouse Settings (text string toward the bottom.  When the Mouse Properties box opens,  select the "Touchpad" tab.   Uncheck all the boxes.  Then check "Disable internal pointing device when external mouse is present".   Write all this down somewhere, you will probably need to repeat this because Windows sometimes messes this setting up.  This one fix will cut down, but not eliminate the flakie-wakies.

   Sticky Key turn off.   I think this is an HP Bios bug.  HP makes some keys "sticky".  Not sure what sticky is supposed to do, but it is bad for typing.  Press the left hand shift key FIVE times.  This will bring up a little window that allows you to turn off sticky keys.

  Once BOTH patches were applied the keyboard works well enough for touch typing.

  Wasn't that easy?  

Something nice in 8.1

On the touchie-feelie-swipie page they have a "news" program.  Plain maroon square with "news" in the center.  Opens up and it has the sort of stuff you find in USA Today.  Longish (by web standards) articles, nice color photos.  Not bad.  Fairly light weight, but no perceptible political bias.  
  And they have improved the boot time.  8.1 only takes 15 seconds to boot up to the wanna-a-password screen, which is a good deal quicker than XP. 

What does Scotland have in common with Quebec?

They both wised up and voted not to secede.  In case you missed it, French Quebec had been agitating to secede from largely British Canada since Rene Leveque and Parti Quebecois came to power in Quebec in the 1960s.  By the 90's they worked up to a province wide referendum on secession.  It lost, by a very narrow margin.  And, surprise, surprise, they never tried it again.  At the time I expected the French to gather their strength and try it again in a year.  Didn't happen.  Far as I can tell from south of the border, the French decided that the pain in secession outweighed the emotional benefits.  They had done some lobbying on Wall St to see if an independent Quebec could borrow money from American banks.  Apparently the Americans poured cold water on the idea and let the  Quebeckers know that there would be no bank loans, no investment, and no favors done to their new currency.  I think some of this sank in, and a lot of Quebeckers who had liked the idea of secession decided that the economic pain out weighed the fun of being independent.    
   Despite last minute polls showing Scottish secession running neck and neck, secession got voted down in Scotland last night by a 10% margin.  That's a solid win.  And I wonder why the polls got it wrong. 
   An independent Scotland would be fun, but terribly small, only 5 million people, little industry, short cold growing season, harsh winters, and few natural resources.  They would have some North Sea oil but those fields have been exploited for 40 years and the wells don't flow like they used to.   I don't think you can keep a country solvent merely on export of Scotch whiskey.   Tasty as it may be.  And, a country of only 5 million people would be a doormat to the rest of the world, like Luxembourg or Grand Fenwick.  Whereas the United Kingdom has been an international heavy weight since Queen Elizabeth the First.  You are better off as a section of an international heavyweight than you are as an independent sub sized doormat.   
  

Windows 8.1.double.bleh

Windows screen had been looking shabby,  menu items would turn invisible under the cursor, title bars were pure black, with no title.  I had to Google to find the the color controls.  A swipe, a click and I was informed the screen was in high contrast mode and nothing could be changed. 
   Back to Google.  I found an obscure workaround, I tried it, and it worked.  Dunno how the screen got into High Contrast mode, and M$'s failure to provide an button to turn it off is inexcusable.  Anyhow the appearance shaped up a lot, and I was able to select the classic windows color scheme.  The 8.1 color settings are feeble compared to XP's.  XP let you set the color, text color, font, font size of every object on the screen, background, title bar, border, buttons, ordinary text, emphasis color (pushed button color), selected object color.  For instance you could make the selected menu bar item turn bright red.  8.1 is not as good, you only get to change background and title bar, nothing else.  So I have blue background and light blue title bar and border.  I'm stuck with brown close buttons on a light blue title bar.  Tasteful that is. 

Shipping out to Ebola country

The TV news says we are sending 3000 troops to West Africa to help in the Ebola epidemic.  I wonder how the troops feel about that.  Me, I'd rather go to Iraq and bag me some ISIS.  That Ebola stuff is very dangerous, with a mortality rate worse than 60%.   You have a better chance of surviving a rifle bullet than that.  

Congressman Sensenbrenner calls to abolish BATFE

Article here.  A fine idea.  BATFE are the people that brought us Ruby Ridge and Fast and Furious.  They haven't done anything useful since Elliot Ness retired in the 1940's.  They were originally set up as Federal agents to collect the federal whiskey tax (the revenooers).  A tax that has caused friction since George Washington's time.   Later when cigarette taxes were invented, that job was handed to the revenooers.  And even later when they started passing gun control laws in the 1930's  the revenooers got the job of enforcing that too. 
   For one reason or another, BATFE is heavy handed, corrupt, and expensive.  Far as I am concerned, the laws on whiskey tax, tobacco tax, and gun control are just laws, and can be enforced the way all the other laws are enforced.  Police, courts, marshals, and FBI are plenty adequate.  Shutting down BATFE would eliminate a lot of corruption and wrong doing and save money to boot.