Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

Lie to Me

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Choosy mothers may not choose Jif any more 1 .

The price Jif is going up by more than FORTY percent today, according to published reports.

Social Security checks are going up by less than FOUR percent, according to published reports.

Decades before she collected Social Security, my (very choosy) mom branded us a Skippy Peanut Butter household. After all Jif is just creamed peanuts in a jar but Skippy is peanutbutter.com.

Monthly Social Security for more than 60 million Americans will increase by 3.6 percent starting with checks issued January 1, 2012 (the Supplemental Security Income increase starts with checks issued December 31 of this year).

The San Antonio Express News reported that “the Cost of Living Adjustment ensures that the purchasing power of Social Security and SSI benefits is not eroded by inflation. It is based on the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) from the third quarter of the last year a COLA was determined to the third quarter of the current year. If there is no increase, there can be no COLA. There was no COLA in 2010 and 2011 because the CPI-W, as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor, for those years did not increase above the level of the third quarter of 2008, the last year a COLA was determined.”

Some recipients, may see their Social Security partially or completely eaten by the rising Medicare premiums.

Is Lie to Me Real?

Lie to Me was a Fox television series that spanned three seasons from 2009 into 2011. The show centered on human lie detection based on applied psychology including interpreting microexpressions, a Facial Action Coding System, and body language. Lie to Me was cancelled by Fox in May but probably not because people can’t detect liars.

Nearly 80% of Americans said they do not trust the government to do what is right, according to a Pew Research Center public opinion survey released in 2010. It was the highest level of distrust of Washington in half a century.

That was 2010.

A New York Times and CBS poll released last week shows now, just 18 months later, 89% of Americans do not trust government to do the right thing and 74% of us say that we believe the nation is on the wrong track. That’s higher than the highest level of distrust of Washington in more than 60 years.

There are plenty of partisan political reasons for discontent but I figure it is simpler than ideology.

Uncle Sam lies.

From Vietnam body counts to “I am not a crook” to “I did not have sex with that woman,” we have become lost in a misery of misstatements, mistruths, misdirections. Lies.

I don’t believe the statistics that show my cost of living has risen only 3.6% since 2008. Somebody monkeyed with the numbers. Somebody lied.

I don’t believe Harry Reid who said “It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine. It’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers,” last week while pimping a $35 billion bailout for public employee unions. Somebody monkeyed with the numbers poorly. Somebody lied.

I don’t believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming. Lots of somebodies monkeyed with the numbers to make that case. Somebody lied.

Of course it may be entirely because that well-known inventor of the Internet, Al Gore, lied to us in order to feather his own very noble but lightbulb-intense mansion.

Unfortunately, the result of the lies is that choosy mothers can’t afford Jif and really really choosy mothers will have to give up on Skippy for the peanut butter cookies in my Halloween basket.

Winter Wonderland

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The squirrels think it may be a mild winter this year. The geese have been flying north this week. The National Weather Service says it may be a mild winter this year.

That must be why the National Weather Service announced yesterday that Winter Weather Awareness Week begins today in North Puffin.

Believe me. No one in North Puffin needs a reminder of winter weather.

Except research shows that about 70 percent of the ice and snow related fatalities occur in automobiles, and about 25 percent of all winter related fatalities are people caught off guard, out in the storm.

The best awareness plan, then, is not to drive; stay inside with your feet next to the wood stove.

Today, the National Weather Service will offer tips on ways to prepare for winter hazards.
I have a winter car kit in each vehicle, the wood stoves and generators have all passed their test run, and I obsess over the weather forecasts.

The harder part of living in the frozen north is the lack of a single planning checklist. That surprised me. In South Puffin, every television station, every radio station, every newspaper inundates us with Hurricane Preparedness guides.

Not here. I found the public information statement from the National Weather Service-Burlington at the Victoria Advocate. (At 165 years old, the Victoria Advocate, is Texas‘ second oldest newspaper. The Advocate can be found exactly where it has been for 62 of those years, on East Constitution Street in downtown Victoria, exactly 1,998 miles from North Puffin.)

A family emergency plan and an accompanying emergency kit is a good thing. This season is a good time to over warn and over-react: “Prepare for the worst. Pray for the best.” I distilled the best advices I could find into a Winter Preparedness Guide on my business site, harperco.net.

On Tuesday: What to do if stranded on the road during a storm.
Reality check. We are all far more likely to be stuck in a parking space than stuck in a snow drift off the Mountain Road. 90% of what you’ll find on the Winter Preparedness Guide will help even if you are in your own driveway. And the other 10%? Why not finish the test so the real test doesn’t finish you?

On Wednesday: Protect yourself from the wind and cold.
Take a look at how skiers, ski patrollers, and your highway guys dress. Take a lesson.

On Thursday: Winter flooding and ice jams across the North Country.
Almost freezing water on your floor? Flooding can come from broken pipes or a broken roof just as easily as it does from the lake or river near your house.

On Friday: Winter weather terminology. What exactly does “A winter storm warning is in effect” mean?
See my better plan below.

On Saturday: Review preparedness activities for winter.

Americans live in the most severe-weather prone country on Earth, so I have a better plan.



Random Scribbles

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Over the weekend I happened to see a commercial for Audi’s new handwriting recognition pad in the center console.

Handwriting recognition pad?

In a car???

It’s no longer breaking news that texting while driving is a bad idea. A 2009 Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study reveals just how dangerous it can be. The VTTI examined the behavior of truck drivers over more than 6 million miles and found that people who send text messages while driving are 23 times more likely to be in a crash (or what they call a “near-crash event”) than undistracted drivers.

The study used in truck cameras to capture where the drivers’ eyes were looking as they drove, dialed cell phones, talked on the cell phones, reached for objects around the cab, and texted. Not surprisingly, the tasks that took a driver’s eyes off the road caused ramped up the risk.

In crashes or near-crashes, texting took a driver’s focus away from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds. That’s more than three times the average reaction time to jam on the brakes when a tree — or a kid — jumps out in front of you. It’s enough time to travel the length of a football field at highway speeds.

I crashed my mom’s Comet convertible when I was a teenager. I didn’t have a cellphone. I couldn’t text. But I did have a car radio. I took my eyes off the road just for an instant and a culvert jumped right out in front of me.

Mom was not pleased.

The VTTI agrees. Avoiding any task that takes your eyes off the road avoids taking your car off the road.

Last month, Audi announced a national initiative to have drivers across America take the Audi “Driver’s Pledge” to make the road a more intelligent and presumably safer place. They encourage all drivers to take a stand exemplifying responsible driving:


pledge
I added the final promise, the one in italics, to the list. Audi apparently forgot that one.

GIYF

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Have a little whine with your cheese and crackers? I have mine right here:

Rufus is fond of believing he knows everything and that anything anyone else says is wrong. Period. Paragraph.

That’s healthy.

Except when the anyone else is, well, me.

Rufus particularly likes to dispute pronouncements on technology, on God, and on history. He insists, for example, that there’s no advantage to increasing the sensor size in a digital camera. Doesn’t matter that I’m a pretty knowledgeable daylight photographer. Doesn’t matter that most other digital camera experts agree with me. Doesn’t matter that large format film cameras have already won the “size” battle. Rufus knows better.

The most recent example comes from the very large (about 800 million population and growing) world of very small issues (Facebook). Our mutual friend Brock posted a note about why a cop should take a gun to a knife fight; I added an anecdote about the army adopting the .45 Colt after Philippine-American War. Brockley Mann is the chief of the South Puffin Police Department.

The “suspect’s momentum may continue forward with enough force for the edged weapon to end up injuring the officer” even after the suspect has been shot, Brock posted.

I recalled that the reason the army switched from a .38 to the Model 1911 Colt was to stop the Filipino Moros running full tilt (a “bolo rush”) with their 18″ machete-like swords at the officers who had only side-arms. Even a dead running man can decapitate a soldier on sheer momentum. Experiments showed the .45 caliber punch could almost stop that rush. Almost.

Unfortunately, the M1911 design wasn’t finished and it never saw service in the Philippines.

Rufus responded that he “thought the ‘service .45’ was ALWAYS a .45 starting with the original Colt revolver. But you say the Army had a dalliance, for a time, with a little .38. How long did that last? (I could Google it, but YOU brought it up…)”

Let’s keep that thought. Rufus could Google it, but I brought it up…

Another poster commented, “I can’t imagine the Army using .38s. I have a .38 and it is really small.”

I might note that it’s not the size. OK, it’s the size.

Thanks to Liza Arden who spent the 30 seconds on Google that Rufus had no time to do, there is plenty of firearms history available:

I cited these examples not (just) to pick on Rufus. OK, maybe to pick on Rufus, but also to talk about how so few people are willing to reach out to the sources we have to store our history even when it is crucial.

You might have a problem reconciling your checking account and need to look for calculation tools. You might need to know when Louisville Slugger first produced a bat with a knob on it (Babe Ruth ordered the first one in 1919). You might have a leaking PVC sink drain and need to look for repair techniques.

I mostly enjoy researching, but I don’t enjoy doing your research. Or Rufus’.

Google Is Your Friend.

It was not always thus. I grew up before the Internet so I had to use the books in the house, the books in friend’s houses, the books in the library. Remember e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-as? Me, too. I still have a Marks’ Handbook that I rarely use and a Machinery’s Handbook that I use all the time. Mine is the 18th Edition, printed in 1968, because tap drill hole sizes haven’t changed much in the intervening years. I don’t have the CD version but I do look up work gear temperatures online more often than in the Handbook. And I’m more likely to find the mechanical engineering facts, figures, standards, and practices of the Marks’ online. On the other hand, my favorite reference book here is the Oxford English Dictionary my folks gave me more than 30 years ago.

See, it doesn’t matter if you use an Internet search engine or the local library to find your answer. It just matters that you find the answer.

Of course, where ever one reads the data, there remains the small problem of remembering what you read.

(I found that 2010 essay by Googling.)

Broke? Broke.

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HondaThat doesn’t look so bad, now, does it?

The weather was generally crappy (that’s a highly scientific, meteorological term) over the weekend. Drizzly. Gray. Cold. Dank. I couldn’t work on the porch.

Rufus says I probably could have; in fact, yesterday I did see two guys on ladders huddled under a waving plastic tarp trying to work on their porch, but there are limits. Nonetheless, I decided to do some work for a client instead. Good day to be in someone else’s heated house or office.

Drove Anne’s car in to town. Forgot my keys to the client’s office, a fact I discovered when I got there so I drove on to pick Anne up at a friend’s house. She was showing off her new shorty, fuschia, PTB cast.

My plan was to head back to North Puffin, drop herself off, start the pellet stove for her, and head back to St Albans.

Our mechanic says I hit a pothole or a rock on Church Road.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a lower ball joint shear off. BANG! It is loud and bumpy.

I thought I had hit a pothole and blown a tire. The car bucked, bounced down by the nose, but it skidded in pretty much a straight line. That was a small surprise, considering that the left wheel was pointed about due south and the right one about northwest. I was probably going only about 35 mph or so.

The City Police Department patrols the Town and a City cop was eastbound on that road, about 4-5 car lengths from me when it broke. He passed, gaping, and hooked a U-ie to come up behind me.

I told him I was pretty lucky he was there and pretty lucky I didn’t loop it into the field. In point of fact, what I didn’t tell him is that I figured he was pretty lucky I didn’t dive directly into him, head on. Maybe not, though. At low speeds, the one sideways sliding wheel acts as a brake instead of steering.

I called AAA. They dispatched Stone’s Texaco from East Fairfield rather than the local guys because the local guys never answer their phone. The Stone’s driver turned out to be Mr. Stone hisownself. Back in the day, he drove and sponsored a race car at Catamount Stadium and some of the other paved tracks around. Got out when it got to expensive.

It took him a while to get to me because he was already on a call at the other end of the county. He must have really booked to get to the Bay in under half an hour.

He took one look and turned around to drag the car on tail first. Wise move since it did pretty much no more damage. We took it to our regular mechanic where I grabbed a floor jack and we sort of gentled it off the flatbed. Coast it down until the wheel jammed against the fender. Jack up. Kick the wheel assembly back to sort of straight. Let it down to coast some more. Rinse. Repeat. The car needed only four iterations to slide off the truck.


Honda Front
Mr. Stone dropped me off at the top of the friend’s street because I wouldn’t let him try to wangle his flatbed down her narrow dirt road. It’s not more than a 1/4 mile walk.Number 1 Daughter picked us up there with the grandpuppies in tow. Lazarus is the smaller of the two, a Bernese Mountain Dog. Yogee is a Newfoundland Retriever who still doesn’t know how big he is. She calls him her special needs child. I told her she could step up in brain power to a Goldie next.The kids say having the car incident now was a good thing. See, normally Anne breaks this stuff when I’m in South Puffin.

Now I have to go do something fun like clean out a stove pipe.


Honda Side