Soft Hitting

Take a guess who this guy is. He's famous. This picture is my latest background on my work computer.

False alarms galore

Yesterday at work - three false fire alarms!!! Ahhhhh!!

And those things are LOUD! I'm part of the security and safety team and so I have to walk around the area checking that everyone has left the building and locked their computers. So I have to put up with that screaming-loud blast for four or five minutes as I check out this wing. Basically I go around with my ears covered because it's loud enough that it physically hurts.

And there were three of them!!! Unfortunately the alarm can only be switched off by the fire department, not building maintenance, so each time we had to wait until the fire department arrived, did a search of the building to verify that nothing was on fire, and then went to deactivate the alarm.

The first time was pretty fast - we only had to wait outside for 10 minutes or so before we could head back in.

The second time, well, the fire department wasn't in quite such a hurry and it was 15-20 minutes we stood around outside.

The third time, I think someone must have just driven over in his personal truck to turn it off because no trucks came, and it was only about 5 minutes of waiting.

After that third time, most of the people went home - it was 4:00 and they had spent almost an hour altogether leaving the building, waiting, and then traipsing back in. By that point everyone was pretty sick and tired of it and lots of them just called it a day.

If they ever find who was responsible for all the false alarms, he's going to have a long line of people ready to smack him!

The Weekend in Review

Friday evening was FREE FOOD! Or, well we had to pay for the tickets, but not much, so it was almost free. PHC had its graduation on Saturday morning, and a dinner for staff, faculty, students, and families on Friday evening. So J, C and I all got to have a nice dinner outside.

A nice thing about the place was that there were lots of smaller kids there (mostly homeschool families) and after the dinner J played with the kids for well over an hour.

I had hoped to mow the lawn that evening, but J was having so much fun that I delayed leaving until it was getting pretty late. By the time I got J started on his shower, it was getting too dark.

Saturday had C heading off to the graduation while I mowed the lawn. J went over to Bro's for a while until I was done and we went over to Pville for a clogging performance. J rather enjoyed that we got a bit bag of Kettle Corn!

The evening had a wonderful ending as C took a nap, I made quesadillas, and Bro came over along with A&R with their daughter for dinner and visiting. It's good to spend time with family and friends.

Sunday had us working on Jeremiah's bike-riding skills with his new (for him) bicycle. No training wheels! He had gotten to the point he could reliably ride a bike in Kansas last year, but it looks like he got rusty. He's at the point now where he can pretty much only do it downhill. He was getting better though! I'm considering putting training wheels on this one, but keeping them pretty high up off the ground. We'll see.

Nice, relaxing, spending time with family. It's a good life.

I've got pregnancy brain

Yesterday I put some more oil in my car. It has a slow leak which typically means it starts getting low after 4000 miles or so. Typically this isn't much of a problem since I can get the oil changed (and thus refilled) every 3000-4000 miles. However, I've tried three times to get it in for an oil change and have been stymied each time. Finally, on Saturday the oil light dinged when I took a corner quickly. (that seems to slosh the oil away from the sensor and is a handy early-warning system).

I wasn't able to carve out time for an oil change this weekend, so Sunday evening I poured in an extra two quarts which brought it back up to full. I was extra careful to not spill any oil because I decided to wipe the caps and surrounding area nice and clean.

So on the way in to work I was surprised to keep smelling oil in the air from the heater. So, when I pulled into work, I popped the hood and took a look.

There was the oil cap sitting on top of the engine!

Aaaahhhh!!!

It didn't look like too much oil had splattered out of the open hole, and the oil light hadn't dinged. God is good in lots of small things, not just the big ones! Little things like the oil cap not falling off during a 40 minute drive and the oil not gushing out by the quart.

Thanks be to God; He keeps track of not just the sparrows but also the oil caps.

Programmer humor

We laughed uproariously at this when Chris mused about wives.

Wives are like Stacks. They don't blow up right away. You can Push on 99 items, but if you're Off By One, you'll Push on that 100th item and you'll be at Fault. The items all Pop off at once, are put in a Bucket and thrown at you. She might include a couple Objects in there too.

Weekend in the (Rainy) Park

Yes, it was once again the Weekend in the Park craft show! I got to go play at a craft show again!

It was extra nice since J was with me this weekend, and we all headed out. J wanted to sleep in Bro's room, but instead of a bed, he wanted to sleep on the floor in a tiny crack between a little refrigerator and wall, under a desk. Sure, why not! We put a couple pillows under there for him to sleep on, covered him up and he was happy. Especially with a story.

The motel had an indoor pool, and I think we took advantage of it at least 5 or 6 times from Friday night through Sunday afternoon. J was jumping into the 5 foot section, and was able to swim back to the wall! Considering he is 3.5 ft tall and barely dog paddles, that's doing pretty well!

Saturday was nice, but overcast. The weather forecasts had all called for rain, and I think that scared people off some, but still - a nice day. Sunday though - that was all rain. Dad and Jer spent the biggest portion of the day at the motel watching TV or swimming while it rained outside. By the time C&I got to the show after church, the grounds were an icky morass. We ate lunch at the motel room, I went swimming with J, and eventually braved the rain to head over to the show.

In spite of the mud, rain, and dealing with annoying delays while closing up, it was good to do a craft show again. J certainly loved it, though I think he got to do a bit less work than I used to do. *grumble grumble spoiled kids these days grumble grumble*

Sunday night after closing up was a good way to finish it up though. We headed out to dinner at Bob Evans, and then over to watch X-men Origens: Wolverine! I don't know what the reviewers were all concerned about - it wasn't needlessly complex, it wasn't confusing, and it wasn't just for the fans either.

Bro and I got into a discussion afterward - would Wolverine's healing factor restore his memories if he were shot in the head and had his brain ripped to shreds? His body seems to remember how much muscle mass to repair back, because his muscles don't just repair back to a non-exercised state - they repair back to a fully exercised state. Does this mean that if his brain were ripped up it would repair back to include his memories? His body supposedly repairs off his DNA, and DNA doesn't have information about things like exercise and memories.

Well? I think his memories would be erased. Bro thinks they would be repaired. Betty here at work doesn't care - she just likes that Hugh Jackman went streaking.

Cool science

(I'm building some rather large programs, so I am eating lunch while the program is building, and catching up on some reading. Don't expect all these posts regularly. *crickets chirping* Oh. Oh well.)

I think I've had a post or two on here about how frustrated I get with the really lousy stuff that gets passed off for science in the Answers in Genesis circles. Well, there is hope. A small glimmer, but hope none the less.

Here's a comment from Todd Wood - a new person with AiG who actually has some rock-solid scientific credentials and experience. First he convinced them that the horse-series really did happen and isn't an evil fabrication. And now he talks (briefly) about dinosaur soft materials found in fossils.

Don't expect AiG to take down their soft-tissue = young earth articles just because their own scientists say so, but still, it's a first step toward more responsible science in the organization.

Here's his main quote on the topic:

The latest issue of Science has some good stuff. Mary Schweitzer is back with evidence of hadrosaur collagen. I know lots of creationists that get charged up by this sort of thing, since this is supposed to be evidence that the fossils must be younger than conventional claims by millions of years. I've never been very excited about this, mainly because the Flood throws a real monkey wrench into these arguments. A major source of degradation of biomolecules is water. So anything that died in the Flood and floated in water for a year shouldn't really have many biomolecules left, right? Seems like if you believe fossils are millions of years old or are the remains of carcasses from the Flood, the outcome is the same: very little preservation of biomolecules. In this case, Schweitzer is finding collagen, which is pretty tough, so I guess it makes sense that it might be preserved in some extraordinary cases. In any case, finding the rare, hardy biomolecule from dinosaurs is nothing to get excited about, since the conventional model and the Flood model both predict the same thing: this should be very, very unusual.

Another 3 or 4 minutes of build-time.

Ahhh, vindication of a sort

After finishing that last post I across this news article: Mexican flu outbreak may be mild: CDC

Nice to hear. Now, maybe the reactions will tone down a bit if these sorts of reports start being more widely disseminated.

Swine, Mexican, H1N1 Flu or whatever

If the Swine Flu turns into a massive, worldwide epidemic killing many thousands or millions, I'm gonna feel pretty silly for this post, but on the flip side there's a pretty good chance no one will notice if the world does go crashing into disaster. Heck, no one notices this blog, period.

First off - all the breathless reporting (and asinine statements by the Vice President) about the Swine Flu is incredibly overdone. This flu virus is just like any other flu virus in most regards. There's nothing "super virus" about it and its name only indicates the original source of the virus - it came from people in Mexico who were drinking water contaminated by waste from a pig farm.

There are some major issues with that - the farm ought to be held liable for dumping pig excrement into water sources. But that's a separate issue.

The virus is much like the standard flu virus that hits us every winter. It hits people with weakened lungs and immune systems the hardest, just like the standard flu, and so far it has killed almost 200 people. To put that in perspective, 36,000 people die each year from the standard flu viruses.

It is also of note that virtually all the deaths have happened in Mexico City - a very dense population center with nasty air quality (aggravated, susceptible lungs) and mediocre health care. So far there have been a couple hundred cases here in the US and none of them have died or even come close so far as the news has reported. (and that would be BIG news) The only death from Swine Flu here in the US is a two-year-old coming from Mexico who had other issues along with the Swine Flu and arrived at the hospital already in critical condition.

I'm sure the family needs a lot of prayer and comfort.

But, I'm not exactly worried about Swine Flu causing major problems here in the US. We really ought to be thinking about making some of the effective medicines we have here in the US available to Mexico. Hopefully we already are.

The only alarming thing I've heard about the virus is that there isn't much/any immunity built up in people to this particular form of the virus. Each year the flu virus gets spread around, and people build up an immunity to the style of "markers" that the standard flu virus has. The Swine Flu virus had a different set of "markers" and so people don't have the built-up immunity to it like we do to the normal flu virus. That means it can infect people more easily and it will take people longer to beat the virus, which means people are more likely to die from the longer, harder sickness.

This still isn't some sort of super virus - it's just a nasty flu virus. There are lots and lots of medicines available today that are quite capable of effectively fighting the Swine Flu virus.

Now if the news (and that idiot of a Vice President) would just tone down the hysteria a bit to match the realistic threat.... Not likely, but hey, a person can hope.