Spinal Staircase

Parenthood is an aching back from shoveling snow for hours coupled with a sincere and gentle request from over 80 pounds of daughters to be carried up the stairs to be put to bed. Something's gotta give, and it's gotta be the back.

Reinforcements Have Arrived

I was recently supplanted as the most experienced member of my engineering group. Not by just a little bit, either, we got a new worker who has been with the company twice as long as me. The department lost work on one project, so we gained him on another. The fellow knows a great deal more about specific systems than I do, and at least as much about things in general. In other words, I'm no longer the sole go-to guy for the project we are working on. I normally flourish as the one source of information, and even leading the group. As I thought this through, it seemed like the addition of this guy should, on some level, be a struggle for me. Nobody, least of all me, likes to be demoted in any sense. The reality is that this whole affair couldn't have turned out better. I have somebody to help do homework, to answer questions with confidence that I would have had to issue an I.O.U. on, and to bounce ideas off of. I am responsible for less, I am not front and center taking all the stressful questions, and with all that I end up looking better. Now this is a great turn of events, the additional help is probably helping me get home just a little bit soon. I'm just glad I didn't let my pride get in the way.

Walking Small

There was a movie release a few years ago named Walking Tall. It stars Dwayne Johnson. I never saw it, but I have heard that the premise is a man returns to his home town and it has been overrun by criminals. He somehow becomes sheriff and begins to dispense justice via a 4" x 4" cut of lumber. The picture above is the poster for the movie. The recent release is a remake of an older movie, same premise, very similar picture shown below:

Fast forward to last month. Samnation toddled down the stairs from my bedroom, carrying around a loose piece of trim he found. The only thing that I could think of was little Sam running around the house dispensing justice for leaving toys out or moving his sippy cup. I fear there is a new sheriff in town, and I've got pictures to prove it. Fortunately, no busted skulls in the household just yet.

Astuteaphilia

I love the British Navy. The Royal Navy has a little bit of everything the American Navy has, but on a very scaled-down magnitude. It does not seem likely that this will continue for long, as the proud Royal Navy will be cutting back drastically to save money, alongside the rest of the armed services of Great Britain. Despite that, the Royal Navy has, in my lifetime, become the only Navy to sink a surface ship with a nuclear submarine. They have also been the only post-WWII navy to conduct an amphibious invasion completely unsupported by other land forces.

They also have far superior ship names when compared to our navy. A shining example of this is the Astute class of nuclear attack submarines, pictured above. The names are Astute, Artful, Ambush, Audacious, Agamemnon, Ajax (again with the Greek, but they were mighty kings, at least), and Anson (not intimidating, but the man the boat is named for circumnavigated the globe by sail power, so I think it's fine). We in America are now naming ships after battles, which is mildly OK, and states, which is lame, and every single president, which is really lame. Our lone bright spot is the littoral combat ship, and even that is going sour with the Fort Worth and Coronado.
I found the picture above on Google Images, and is very revealing. The Brits apparently eschew the domes that the United States puts on the bow of its submarines. There are also six torpedo tubes, which is a bunch, and some attempt seems to be made to balance the system pressure, based on the overall layout. The extensive use of superstructure is surely expensive, heavy, and costly to maintain, but it is a great environment for putting large mechanisms such as the bow planes seen in the top pictures. A fine looking ship, but unfortunately for the Brits, submarines are not so great as scotch when on the rocks.

Gum Flappin'

The one who guards his mouth preserves his life; The one who opens wide his lips comes to ruin. -Proverbs 13:3

So, what are you to do when your job is to keep a room of 40 people talking until problems are solved? It's all well and good for each of them to remain quietly in their chairs until they feel ready to speak, but when you are the team leader it's your job to uncover every nugget of knowledge in the room in order to build a consensus pointing in the best direction. So, half of your questions make you look like an idiot, and the other 40 attendees have a chance to show how smart they are. Properly handled, even the most taciturn of the group contribute their knowledge, which is often substantial. If the guy at the head of the table says nothing, the biggest natural talkers just take over and whatever they want is the outcome (at least in the short term). Of course, being a natural talker is what got me here in the first place. So, I look like a fool crawling through the conversation, we hopefully get to the right answers, the project rolls on, and I get paid every two weeks. It works for now.

Presque Isle River

The picture above is one of several waterfalls on a stretch of the Presque Isle River in the Porcupine Mountains of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The circular cutouts in the bedrock are not just from water flowing downstream. Each one has been carved by an eddy of water that appears to the eye to be completely unaffected by the mainstream of the river. Inside the cutout, water just circles inexorably and slowly bores away the stone. These steady, hydraulic drills have bored as deep as 75 feet in an otherwise relatively shallow river, I am told. Walking by rivers like this in the Upper Peninsula, you can stumble upon green rocks, which are laden with copper. Some of them are perfect cylinders, core samples taken by geologists, or mining engineers, or whoever has a drill 1" diameter, 6" deep bit like that.

When I visited the waterfalls with some college classmates in 2000, I mentioned a line my father told me in my own childhood. I had asked him if it would be fun to jump in the water and ride down the waterfalls, and he replied "those rocks would skin a man like a deer". I suddenly recalled, in this young adult excursion perhaps 15 years later, that very thing had almost happened to me at that exact spot. My father and I wandered along the rocky banks of the river, high above its tumult. I don't know what happened, but misty spray on rock is not a safe combination with a child's boots. I slipped, and then I was looking straight up at the edge of the bank, holding on with my hands. My father darted the step or two it took to reach me, then quickly hauled me up. I hadn't though much of it, but I could tell it was a big deal because my father really looked shaken up. That reaction didn't happen again until the day he had to draw his firearm with the intent of shooting a fugitive, so the situation must have been pretty hairy, if one were mature enough to grasp it.. And that whole episode had been shelved in my mind, completely forgotten, until I revisited that exact spot many years later.

Clear As Mud

Writing is thinking, to write well is to think clearly, that is why it is so difficult

-David McCullough, author

So true, and something that I have had to learn so slowly within the engineering field. I used to think other people were dense when they didn't understand my arguments, until the sun shone through the clouds and I realized that I was doing an AWFUL job of explaining my perfectly reasonable points. So, if my blog does not make sense, read it again. If it still makes no sense, I was not thinking clearly. The quote above comes from a free podcast available on iTunes, APM: Garrison Keillor's Writers' Almanac. Not my favorite, but there are a few gems and each segment runs only 5 minutes. I also listen to APM: A Prairie Home Companion/The News For Lake Wobegon, which is more consistently excellent. There's a lot of great free media out there, if you just poke around a bit.

The Holy Spirit Indwells the Big 10

From an article on AOL:

In South Bend, Ind., plans should be underway to replace the mural of Jesus on the south wall of the Hesburgh Library with one of Job.

Right on. This was after the delightful overtime win over Notre Dame by Michigan State on a fake field goal. We all know Jesus does NOT cheer for independent NCAA programs. Or the SEC, for that matter.

March to the Sound of Nones

I got home today and immediately had a sense something was wrong. The sort of sense that something is out of place, or that something imminent was loitering in the air, or, that's it, something is missing. I stood for a moment, and I could hear myself breathing. That was it, I could hear myself breathing. The house was still, somehow even more still than when I awaken at 5:30'ish in the dark hours of the morning. Maybe it was the contrast of coming back home from a hectic day at work as opposed to coming downstairs right after waking up, but it was the most still sensation I have had in a long, long time. Five seconds after closing the door, I knew with complete confidence that Wifey and the children were out of the house running errands, which was perfectly fine. If they were not coming back, that would not be fine.

Having adjusted (more or less) to the daily pace of a young family and the centrifugal struggle of having three children and their energy flowing through our home, this one moment was positively shocking. And, cosmetically, I would expect to treasure any moment of peace. Surprisingly, I missed the energy, I missed the focus, I missed the purpose of having every second balanced on a knife's edge of joy and exhaustion.

The thought of living without children, maybe even combined with retirement down the road, seems like a husk or cruel facade of a life. This is enjoyable, so long as my youthful strength and vigor hold up.

Root Is Loot

1 Timothy Chapter 6:6-11: But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.

One thing of great interest to me here is the distinction between the root of all sorts of evil from the American/New American Standard translations of the bible and the root of all evil from the King James translation. I have long thought that people have a great capacity for evil in their hearts, one that ranges from mundane to truly monstrous. Mere money, even to include the thought of how to jealously horde the money one already has at the expense of others in addition to the typical greed of getting more, just doesn't cover all this. Crimes of passion, hatred of those who are different, lashing out at others due to self-loathing, plain old sadism... these things all exist, and certainly don't require money as an inspiration or 'root'. If one were able to read Greek (I cannot) or truly devote time to studying the differences in translation (I have not), I would be curious to know further why the translations differ. By my reckoning, the correct one is obvious.

Push The Tempo

Recently rediscovered an oldie (2001) but goodie in the archives. Always loved it, found that whatever I was doing when the track started was being done a breakneck speed by the time the track ended. And then, I found this by accident. Rednecks, a banana republic, a black market economy, broken eggs/pottery, a marketplace riot, and a little bit of a story. It's got it all.

A la commode

Sirs,

I know that everybody's job in any sort of large team is of some import. And I also know that everybody feels a natural bias that there own job is really more important, and, if asked after a few cocktails, would admit that they believe their job is also more difficult than the jobs of others on the same team. That being said... if I have to sit again for two hours while people argue about where to locate bunks, toilets, and freezers while I sit patiently waiting to discuss details of weapon launchers, it's not going to be pretty. The hurt locker has a busy agenda, and does not like to be left waiting.

Framework

While spending some quality time in Michigan I had time to take in the following:

• Miles and miles of roads ranging from interstate to unpaved, toll road and public alike
• The Great Lakes and their natural waterways as well as freighters churning up man-made channels; I guess the channels were there before but they were dredged and widened so man-improved is more appropriate
• Railways for freight and commuters alike
• Airports
• Oil pipelines

Some of this was during the 1000 miles each way on the trip, but a surprising amount of this could be seen within perhaps 10 miles of the small farm we stayed at. This brought something to mind that is of great significance to me:

For all that we debate as to the role of government and how it should focus its limited resources, we are foolish to ever ignore our fundamental physical infrastructure.

This means that while we as a society debate foreign aid, defense, health care, and social policy, we still rely on immense public works to support our livelihoods. It is our nation's throbbing vascular network for people and services to travel that allows America to be awesome. It is seductively simple to hop in the car, run a few errands, and go home without thinking twice about the road we and our purchases traveled, literally and figuratively. So many products go from raw form in the United States or elsewhere on this infrastructure to places where they are processed in one or more ways, then redistributed to warehouses or wholesalers who in turn pass the products down to retailers. Which is where we drive to pick things up. Roads, rail, runways, ports, rivers, pipelines... all these critical elements have been built up to support our insatiable desire to consume, most within the last 50 years or so. Even those means of transit that have been around for over a century, like some highways or railroads, have been rebuilt much more recently.

If we didn't have reliable roads to drive from Chicago to San Antonio, or open sea lanes from Duluth to San Francisco, or (reasonably) reliable cargo and passenger flights from Orlando to Denver, much of what we take for granted in our daily lives would vanish or become unaffordable to all but the most obscenely rich. While our leaders wave flags and posture over things are primarily ideologically driven, let's hope they recognize this, as well.

The View From The Top

I have flown to Virginia a few times lately for work. Some great scenery, some disappointing cloudy days, lots of good time for thoughts, not enough time to collect them. One thing that is interesting to note is how much of our landscape is occupied by fields for athletics. All manner can be found, but primarily football, soccer, and baseball. One thing is clear, though: baseball is king.

Prior to making these flights, I would have hypothesized our nation's societal passion from a community investment standpoint would be soccer for our youth, with football holding reign for adult entertainment. Soccer draws in bazillions of youth whose parents want them to play a sport that requires virtually no training to get started, hardly anybody gets their self-esteem ruffled; while fields require grass, a few pipes, and not much seating because nobody watches the games. Football probably draws the biggest revenues and biggest crowds for its less frequent games, but not everybody can play, and few can play for long or beyond a certain age. Basketball is ubiquitous, as every city park, suburban driveway, and barn have a hoop hanging. But for number of sanctioned playing fields, where communities show where their hearts lie by slapping down funds, nothing comes close to baseball fields. Of course, from thousands of feet one cannot differentiate between baseball and softball fields, but since they are just gender-specific cousins of the same sport, I'm grouping them together. It is clear, as one surveys our countryside that for all our talk of other endeavors, from team-based battle simulators like football and basketball to the more recent, individual-is-king interlopers such as skate parks, that the position of baseball as our nation's pastime remains concrete.

Let's hope that some of baseball's virtues that develop patience, decisive-almost-reflexive response, and a respect for the archaic (oh, those rules are more perplexing than the English language!) can continue to develop our youth. It is a blessing in a society where our activities are timed to the nearest minute a game thrives that only acknowledges the number of 'outs', not the clock.

Fresh Produce

Our clan recently spent some time in northern Michigan, relaxing, spending time with extended family, and doing outdoors summer-type things. Saw a lot of farms; hay, corn, and fruit of all fashions. Spent a lot time watching tractors, patrolling acreage like sentinels, really more like drones, with their circuitous patterns, sometimes giving to the soil, sometimes taking away from it, always plodding and always wringing a crop from the land. This farming toil was not the slightest bit glamorous, is not likely to make one wealthy, and requires knowledge of the craft to be successful. And it is a classic example of the dwindling portion of our population that actually produce things.

So few of us now directly manufacture or otherwise produce things that people use. By "use", I'm excluding things such as food handed out at a drive-through, because that's just repackaging of food other people made; and things like newspapers, because that is the circulation of an idea that could come across through primitive means like face-to-face conversation. There is still a contingent of men & women in the United States with leathery skin, gnarled hands, stooped backs, bad knees, and all manner of scars and illnesses from the time they spent or are spending making things. I think this is an easy thing for many of us to forget if our days consist of writing traffic tickets, administering vaccinations, pumping gas, flipping burgers, tracking corporate accounts, writing legal documents, setting up computer networks... or any of the other trades the service-based economy we live in requires to keep growing, or even surviving. All of these service-based jobs function to improve the efficiency of fundamental production trades, like the corporate accountant who tracks expenditure on a factory floor or the computer ace who facilitates online ordering. But our lives, generally speaking, are growing more remote from the mining, farming, and building of things. There is a chicken and egg riddle about this and the outsourcing of so much of our nation's manufacturing capacity to other nations. Have we become the way we are as a society because we outsourced, or was outsourcing possible because we had already turned in the direction of not making things?

Consider the things we attend college for, or what the college students we know may be studying at this moment. How many college study disciplines can even remotely be considered to be involved in the production of things? I say this knowing that, as a mechanical engineer, I am surely near the top of that list, but I am still only tangentially a part of the manufacturing and installation of parts for ships. I make decisions about what is acceptable and what is not on the shop floor on on the boat, but I certainly cannot say I am making things.

If you get the chance, make something. Grow a garden. Make a bookshelf. Build a go-cart. Whatever it is, you have my applause.

Let Freedom Ring

Please spend a minute of your life to watch THIS. It is truly epic, and made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it. I think there are a couple of spin-offs that need to be made from this:

King Theoden at the Battle of Pelennor Fields

King Leonidas at Thermopylae

William Wallace (Braveheart) just about any time he unsheathed his sword

I'm sure there are some other good ones. Any suggestions?

Can't Touch This

I recently broke my little baby 3 lb. sledgehammer while splitting wood. This was unfortunate, but the hammer was over 6 years old, so not entirely unexpected. I did a little shopping, and look... at what... I... found:

When you've got something as awesome as a mid-size, fiberglass handle sledge, you've got to name it something awesome...

...by combining two of the greatest words in the english language into what is now the greatest single phrase in the english language.

That's right, there is an "official" Engineer Hammer. I love this thing. This is just another reason that engineering is awesome. There are no banker hammers or teacher hammers or or landscaper hammers. While we're at it, let's be honest that things like farmer's tan, baker's dozen, or tennis elbow are nothing to get excited about. As far as I can tell, the only thing that comes even close is a fireman's axe.

Any other specific tools or other implements named after occupations?

Lumberjack of All Trades

Part of clearing the new I Tell You What estate has involved two projects that I highly recommend to any red-blooded 'merican male. We are talking serious exercise of dominion. One is to cut down a mighty tree, definitely big enough to wreak havoc (see below). The other is to harken back to days of wooden axe handles and iron... axe heads, I guess. Yes, chopping down somewhat smaller trees with axes. It is a good kind of feeling to hack away at the base until you know one final swing is about to fell the tree. I have stolen a sports phrase to describe this: the walk-off swing. Just like a baseball player knows when his swing has driven in the winning run late in a game, you know that one more swing of the axe will topple the tree, bringing a satisfying groan as the tree leans, then a thump as it lands on the ground. Great times, and my hands are getting to where they've stopped complaining about blisters and just deal with it. Of course, even on axe days I am using a chainsaw for clean-up because, well, I do have other things to do and I AM a big fan of 2-cycle mo-chines.

The first tree we dropped was really just a warm-up, nothing nearby to damage

And there she goes

And now for the more precarious poplar; note the nearby garden fence

Yours truly sawing away; note the lean as things get exciting

The apple tree calls for a fair catch, but is going to take a hit either way

So... if neither end of the tree is on the ground, have we truly cut it down? Note the steep angle on the back-cut. My bad.

The intrepid crew of engineering lumberjacks who risked life & limb to help out, I Tell You What. The orange hardhat (yup, from Home Depot) is just an example of how dorks have fun. Hard workers with solid backs and shoulders all.

Lessons learned: keep your axe and chainsaw sharp, Sharp, SHARP. Keep your backcuts with the chainsaw flat, even if your experienced friends advise otherwise. Keep family members clear of the area (let's just say the apple tree was not our target)

Shady 3/2 Acres

It was a nice day to read books in the shade.

Packaged By Quantity, Not Volume

Last summer we moved into our new house. The first project I took on was cleaning and sealing the deck on the east side of the house. For that work I needed (not needed, strictly speaking, but found useful) a power washer. It's a pretty low pressure, cheaply made electric unit, which meets my needs. Until, that is, this Spring, when I pulled the trigger halfway through cleaning windows and the outlet hose blew clean off the front of the washer. The outlet T fitting, looking like it was made of cast iron, had blown completely in two pieces right across one of the threaded sections. A quick call to the Lowe's Task Force power washer hotline arranged for a replacement part to be shipped to me (being within the warranty period) free of charge. Excellent. Six weeks later, a second phone call to follow up and ask why I had not received the part resulted in the realization on the vendor's part that the replacement fitting had never been shipped. Four days after that...

...the box in the picture above had arrived. That box contained a replacement fitting, shown at the top of the box, and a bunch of crumpled brown paper. The picture also includes a can of Campbell's soup, which I included to provide scale. That's right, the vendor shipped the part in a box that could have held several hundred of those fittings. What could they possibly have been thinking at whatever warehouse they shipped that thing from? Consumer Reports often publishes pictures of gross waste in packaging, maybe I'll send this one in as a candidate.

Stay Classy, Shipyard

The other night, I pitched for a team some of my co-workers have put together in my employer's most competitive softball division. My co-workers are seriously talented, my hitting power is declining sharply with age and my legs are slowing. My contributions are definitely only part-time this year, there is a lot else going on right now that's more important than softball. That's not the point, though. The game went fine enough, we were generally outclassed by a team that, from top to bottom on the roster, featured guys bigger than me, which is a first. That's not the point either.

They were sponsored by a strip club. This group of lunks decided to do there part in the further disintegration of Western Civilization, and probably get their league fees paid for them in the process. Even in this day and age, this was a bit of a surprise. This particular crew was exclusively guys from the shipyard, and I am well aware that is a rough place. Nonetheless, didn't they feel any sort of moral conflict with wearing uniforms featuring a strip club's logo? After all, some of the guys have children, what is the message they want to send them?

While surprising, that a group of meat-heads might make this decision does not rock my concept of reality. What does rock my concept of reality, though, is that a major corporation, part of the military-industrial-congressional complex, functioning in an excruciatingly politically correct society, would allow a team in one of its athletic leagues to do this. I know less each day.

Serial Tiller

What a great weekend! After working a few small jobs in the wonderful Spring weather I to have some man-time, sweating in a shirtless toil as my skin slowly browns. Well, in the name of full disclosure it must be noted I'm redding, then browning. Full disclosure-plus mandates I note that laying down on a bench and lifting when reddened/browned is very uncomfortable, to boot.

But I digress... I found myself clinging desperately to a 100 pound, iron oxide coated monster augering its way through my garden. A kind friend loaned me a rototiller, all the better to engage in dominion over the wilderness that is (has been, really) my modest garden. The beast is about the same age I am, was clearly built before aluminum or stainless steel were commercially available, and was quite a handful to control. Knowing that, it was all the more remarkable that the machine, which I dubbed Tirpitz, started on the second pull and ran without fault for the whole morning. And that thing could chew up some dirt, I tell you what! The rototilling was preceded by extensive slashing, clipping, sawing, and digging to clear the lot, then burning all the debris along with extra piles of branches from the pear and apple trees (shown above with Sarah Joy).

This is all good news. Wifey has seedlings coming up (including about 1/2 dozen chestnut trees), the blueberry bushes are no longer choked out, and all the derelict trees that threaten structures or safety are down. And we have a tire swing up for Sweetness and Sarah Joy! Our property is slowly, painstakingly, taking shape. There will be work to do as long as we live in this blessed house, but it's starting to look less like a wildlife preserve and more like Eden. Or, at least our little slice of it.

Some-acious

We've all known somebody who is tenacious. Strong-willed, confident, well versed in their beliefs and ready for action. Willing to go the distance. Well, some are not like that. Some are, well, a little less persuasive and a little more persuadable. A little less dogged, and a little more lap-dog. I have coined a word for these types, the easily discouraged. What is less than tenacious?

Nineacious

Get it? Because nine is less than ten! Anybody at work who isn't willing to see a job through is tagged as nineacious. Of course, there is an antonym for the nineacious of the world.

Elevenacious

If you are elevenacious, you are, naturally, more than tenacious. You overflow with tenacity. You are a wolverine.

While we are talking about new words, I have come up with still another new word. It's really just a new term for a phrase I once heard elsewhere. Decorum prohibits me from getting too graphic, but it should suffice to explain that it describes talking too much about things one does not understand.

Moutharrhea

Aftermarket

When you have a helicopter, which is awesome, you still may wish to make it still more awesome. But, perhaps you had in mind the ability to fire air to air missiles and a serious radar, which the helicopter manufacturer assures you is not in the cards for the Chinook helicopter. Well, you say, if I cannot bolt missiles and radar to my massive helicopter, I shall strap on to something that can do it for me.

Ours Is Not To Question Why...

The other night Wifey nonchalantly passed me a grenade and inadvertently pulled the pin. There was no indication, no sound, heat, or vibration to indicate a fuse had been energized. One moment, all was peaceful and happy in our household. Then, the grenade blasted and spewed it's violence. I was immediately immobilized, unable to do anything other than clutch the bomb while it belched its hot fury all around. As I took the full brunt of the explosion, I could only wonder what went wrong, and my last coherent thought was what would happen to my loving children, beautiful wife, even the home and furnishing surrounding me. Then, the cleanup began. As for me and my outfit, both were a complete loss. That's right, substitute "baby" for "grenade", and that definitely happened a few nights ago.

It's a Goodyear

I saw two immature squirrels the other day, both dead while apparently playing chase. Their bodies were only a few feet apart. I'm sure there are about a thousand witty or funny or deep or insightful things you could say about their plight and the nature of life. Mine was "one was too fast, one was too slow". Any other good ones?

Multilateral Arms Race

I may have overstepped my strength this time. Being accustomed to being one of the strongest of the geeks in my engineering group for some years, I challenged some of my younger colleagues to a quest of sorts. We are in a competition to see who can be the first one to bench press 135 pounds (easy) 40 repetitions at one go (much tougher). It's great motivation for all of us to work hard to stay/get in shape. I started with a decent lead, based mostly on gristle and Old Man Strength. However, the race has really tightened up, with my two competitors hitting the gym daily at the obscene time of 5:30 A.M. It's tough for me to match that schedule. Now my lead is slim, 35 reps to 32 and 29 for my opposition. I love doing these sorts of meaningless, yet committed guy things. I do not love losing.

Lun-acy

The picture above is not the scheme of some half-educated warfreak engineer (ahem). Well, it's not just that. It's a real machine! The Lun is a Russian.. umm, I guess the phrase is "ground effect vehicle", which uses wings to create a cushion of air that lifts it above the water, drastically reducing drag. The end result, in the case of the Lun, is a 300 ton vehicle that can travel at almost 350 miles an hour! Beter than just dreaming up such a monstrosity, the Soviet Union (not Russian, stricly speaking) built one of these vehicles. Proof is found below:

Notice the 6 Sunburn anti-ship missiles (Moskit variant)carried atop the fuselage. I totally dig the blast deflectors and the cabin directly beneath the muzzle of the two forward canisters. I'll bet the most junior crew members ride in there! To quote Skipper the Penguin from Madagascar: "We'll need special tactical equipment. We're gonna face extreme peril. Private probably won't survive. "

I cannot believe the entire vehicle was airborne, as evidenced in this picture of a launch. I can only wonder how it would handle heavy surf. Both the above pictures reveal search radars, and possible communication equipment, in the tail. Judging by the sensors, gross speed and heavy armament (almost 10,000 pounds of weight per missile!), this thing must have been intended to independently seek and destroy heavily defended targets. Against most anti-ship cruise missiles, the Lun's high speed would have made interception very difficult, and higher velocity anti-aircraft missiles may have struggle at making such low-altitude attacks. Plus, the small warheads on most anti-aircraft missiles might have been insufficient to down such a hog before it completed its attack run. I can only imagine what difficulties the designers faced trying maintain vehicle balance and trim with a mere several meter margin of error when discharging 5 tons of payload almost instantaneously.

The Soviets only built a single prototype. Perhaps there were too many technical limitations. Perhaps coordinating with other elements of a strike force (submarines, aircraft, conventional surface ships) proved too unwieldy. Perhaps the turn radius was 10 miles! I can only wonder. Nonetheless, the Lun, dubbed the "Caspian Sea Monster" by Western observers, is... something else.

May Your Paths Be Straight

I recall that in December of 2008, one of our engineers left our group to take another position. He felt engineering wasn't for him, and it's certainly not for most people. Some days, I don't know WHO it could possibly be for, in fact. He ended up taking a position where his primary responsibility is training our workers on all manner of procedures, and there he remains.

In July of 2009 I ended up being asked to prepare a "combat systems for not-quite dummies" to educate a few customers on how we work. It was a good time. A few weeks later, I was asked to remove the "not-quite" and make it a lecture for anybody in the company who had an hour to waste. By November I was lecturing a packed auditorium, with geeked-ness only slightly exceeding nervousness, with cameras rolling. Now that lecture is on our company intranet which means I will get teased for years to come over this. Things went well enough that I've been tasked with turning the "not-quite" into "brand new" and making it a regular training presentation for new hires. In this roundabout way I have now gained a surprising amount of responsibility for... training, without so much as changing my desk.

Sometimes, it's not about finding the right road to get where you want to go, but remaining on the road you are on until it takes you where you need to go.

Dorkter Knows Best

Woot woot.

That is all.

The Fire Outside

We recently burned all the brush I cleared from the blueberry patch and the "garden". Most of the brush was vines and sticks, but there were perhaps a dozen small trees in the mix. Everything had a long time to dry out, and there were some leaf piles underneath the sticks. I had some friends over to carry shovels and rakes for tending the fire, set a few newspaper pages in strategic places, and got things started. I wasn't even sure if we would be able to get a good flame going, but the flames popped up nicely within a minute or two. Another minute after that, and we had a complete firestorm on our hands. I'm talking about flames reaching 12-15 feet into the air, with wood crackling electrically over the roaring maelstrom that created an actual wind that mocked the light breeze that was already blowing. The heat and sound were incredible, and it was a good thing that I had already raked most of the surrounding fuel into the pile, so the fire had nowhere to spread. After 10 minutes or so, the blaze had subsided into something more like what you would expect from a medium size brush fire.
It was clear, though, how powerless we are when confronted by the forces of the natural world around us. The fire was unable to spread, but there was nothing I could do to put those flames down, the combustion was simply out of control. We have become increasingly insulated not just from the elements, but even the humanity of our neighbors as we retreat to the Internet. That insulation allows us to build a false image of our own importance. Standing next to a howling fire, which was itself nothing compared to a 100 acre fire advancing at 15 m.p.h., clearly illustrated my own impotence.

Days of The Late 90's

Of late, I've been completely hung up on a little alternative ditty known as Enemy (click on the link, then press 'play' on the upper right corner) by Days of The New. Check it out, if you like a blend of music that, according to Wikipedia, spans "post-grunge, acoustic rock, and electronic" genres. I've not listened to the remainder of that particular album, I must confess.

I've long enjoyed the band Days of The New's first album (self-titled), and only major hit. That release is more stark and stripped down than Enemy, but if you enjoy acoustic guitar, there is at least something in it for you, and I recommend you look into this album as well, online or elsewhere.

Sacrifice

During my 2+ hour class on Monday nights, my mind often wanders far afield. What occurred to me last night:

• Love, to be anything more than simple adoration, must involve sacrifice
• God showed his love through the sacrifice of His Son
• That sacrifice would have meant nothing were it not for our own sin
• Our own sin, although not desirable, is necessary for God to show us the magnitude of His love for us.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this is part of the reason for us to have free will, with the capacity to sin. Were it not for our own imperfection, God's love could only be adoration. John 3:16.

Just Because

Wifey took this photo. It reminds me of Michigan.

The Better Mousetrap (Bumped for Medieval Rodent Domination)

UPDATE: Two days ago I went downstairs as I prepared for work. I found this.


Somehow the rodent is suspended by its face over the edge of the beam. Just when you thought Glamdring's creativity had run its course, this mouse gets it IN THAA FAAACE.

I would not go so far as to say that we have a mouse problem at our new house. What is beyond debate, however, is that we have a legion of mice living in our basement. Accordingly, I have deployed 4 of the old-fashioned mousetraps in our basement and garage. All the traps in the basement have turned up a mouse or two. One of them, however, is a cut apart. I refer to it as Glamdring, the sword known as "foe-hammer" in J.R.R Tolkien's Hobbit. It has killed mice in almost every way imaginable. I have found mice trapped in it in the usual fashion. I have found them completely decapitated. I have found a dead mouse down on the concrete floor (Glamdring is best placed on a certain beam that is evidently a high-traffic area), with the trap lying four feet away. I have no explanation. It also hungers for human flesh, as it is very tempermental to set, and has come close to pinching my fingers on several occasions.

As an engineer, I know that any time you use a torsion spring you are assuming a 20-30% variability in its stiffness. Also, using a piece of slippery plastic to place your bait (which must include peanut butter by my reckoning, if you want to bring the mice in) and also serve as the catch for the bar is going to produce a different resistance to disturbance before release for each trap. Therefore, a given mouse trap may be nastier than another. That aside, there is something especially devilish about this particular mousetrap. It leaves me certain that it was forged in some work shop on one of the lowest levels of mouse Hell.

Here Comes The BOOM, Ready or Not

In early autumn, there were 2 days of very high winds. One of those days the long-dead tree on our property came down. Hard. Wifey and I looked into our backyard to discover the tree, which was easily big enough to wipe out the deck and part of the house, fell lying almost perfectly north-south. No structural damage to our house OR the kindly 75 year old lady who lives next door. Very fortunate we are. To sweeten the deal even more, I was able to parlay this event into the purchase of a chainsaw and a maul for the clean-up. Let's just say we have ample firewood.

Rotted out completely at the base

One foot, two foot, cut right through foot

The beautiful looks & cute outfit are from Mommy, the mug of coffee on the job is all Daddy

First fire at the new house!

2010: Bring The Acceleration

In 2002 an obscure book titled Thinking Geometrically was published. In the forward, Professor Jennifer Slack wrote (page xxvi-xxvii of the forward. That's right, the forward was almost 30 pages long, the rest of the book 185 pages!):

"I cannot imagine a more powerfully frightening despot than the one who can think geometrically. And where in the training to think geometrically do we train people to be ethical? In the "Philosophy of Technology" class I am currently teaching, one of the very best "thinkers" in the class, one of those who does indeed seem to grasp and hold in his mind's eye the work of multiple views, still plans to design war ships. I must admit to not understanding why. And I'm not sure that skill at geometrical thinking is enough to overcome the violence in war and in everyday life. I fear, in fact that it is quite capable of accelerating it, just as Waisanen suggests."

Yeah, I took Philosophy of Technology in 2001, and despite thoroughly perplexing the instructor, I loved it.

I'll do my best to steer clear of "despot", but no promises about, perhaps, "tyrant", or, some of my favorite words, "warmonger" and "ironmonger". Here's to another year of acceleration, in submarine firepower and every other aspect of life. Buckle up.