wake up!

Have you ever noticed how much more valuable sleep is in the morning? If we craved evening sleep like we do those "ten more minutes" after the alarm goes off, the world would be a different place.

That's the only random thought I will inflict on you for now. Likely to be next year before I put something else on here, so everybody enjoy the holidays, Randy

Just a nice picture, and maybe a lesson:

Funny clip.

About two weeks before Charlotte was born this segment was aired. Mind you this was LIVE TV so they couldn't do it over if he slipped. Funny stuff.

Expensive wreck

In Japan a bunch of car enthusiast were out for a quick drive. Apparently the lead car spun and a chain reaction ensued, ending with over a dozen cars wadded up. What's unusual is the caliber of the cars involved. Eight Ferraris, a Lamborghini, some Mercedes, and some other expensive rides. I thought it was bad when I hit a deer this year. This wreck will cost a couple thousand times more to fix. Here is a link.

math

From somebody’s son, doing math homework:

“If there is a number called Pi why isn’t there a number called Bacon?”

Made me chuckle. Till next time, Randy

quote

It probably says a lot about my resistance to new technology that I didn't know who Steve Jobs was until he stepped down a couple months ago. So this isn't any sort of a tribute post, just the result of his untimely death bringing this to my attention. At any rate, it is well said and great advice:

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

—Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005

A million diamonds

A researcher devised a way to examine the contents of a candle flame. He found that an ordinary flame produces over a million very tiny diamonds every second (along with other forms of carbon). They are normally consumed as fast as they are made.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2027335/Flickering-candle-flame-contains-millions-tiny-diamonds-created-disappear.html

I am always fascinated by the magic we discover in "ordinary" things. Probably, no matter how much of the puzzle we figure out there is always another layer of discovery that we open up. That may be the most magical thing of all.

Winter Storm 2010 (Picasa album)

Winter Storm 2010

We love taking pictures!  And we (mostly)) love shooting the same subjects.  But our photos are in need of organization, and the link above is also an indication that I have recently spent some time on the problem.

Enjoy the snow without the hassles of the real deal!

Pluto has more moons than real planets

NASA just discovered a fourth moon orbiting around Pluto. The amazing thing to me is they found it by looking at it with the Hubble telescope. "Ah" you say, "but why is that such a big deal?" The new moon is between eight and 21 miles in diameter and Pluto is three BILLION miles away. In case you forgot those charts in grade school, that makes it almost 40 times further away from us than the sun. If my math is right, that's like being able to see the period at the end of this sentence from 124 miles away.

That's all the numbers I have for you today, hope you found it as interesting as I did.

Dorthy traveling to Oz today:

I'm still shocked when I see half the people in public so absorbed in their phone that they wouldn't know it was raining unless somebody sent them a message to clue them in. So I laughed at this little sign.

Skyline drive

We headed out this weekend to explore a little bit of the Skyline Drive. It's so interesting that we spent a good part of the day taking pictures. I'll start with a couple and maybe add some later. By the way, we stopped at a yard sale that was a first in my experience, as we actually bought a tiny piece of the yard! It was a Day Lilly sale, and they dug them up when you (actually Charlotte) pointed out the ones you wanted.

Anyway, on with the show:

The top pic looks like a giant dandelion from a distance, but when you close up a bit you see the fantastic gold highlights shimmering in the sun. It's really quite striking in person.

The other is a traditional view of the mountains, with the distant ones looking a little blue, thus the name Blue Ridge.

Hope you like those, Randy

Back Roads

I was reading something from a gentleman in West Virginia about our (I'm from WV too) roads. His wife was from New York and was used to straight and wide roads. She was somewhat surprised by the character of the roads when she was introduced to that fine state and said:

"Oh, I get it. Interstate highways have four lanes. US highways have two lanes and no shoulders. State highways are two lane dirt roads, and county roads have grass growing in the middle."

Maybe just a little exaggerated, but it captures the feel of the place. I remember hearing about Uncle Earnest who was blessed with the mule mindedness that some say runs in the family. At Big Sandy there is a one lane bridge, and he arrived there at the same time as a coal truck coming the other way. They sat there for an hour or so, each waiting for the other to back up.

So anyway, that ends this ramble about the roads in West Virginia and the cooperation required to drive on them.

Tennessee

Just got back from a trip to the state and enjoyed the scenery. I had forgotten how nice the country was in that area. Just a few pictures even though they don't show the landscape. The first is because of our last name and the second is just a pretty bird. Hope you enjoy them.

zombies

The CDC has a new campaign, using currently trendy zombies, to get people more prepared for a disaster. I've talked to a lot of people who believe that is a good thing because it spreads the word better than a boring "straight" message. I guess I'm still a little resistant to our government using something close to an inside joke in that way, but the goal is a good one. Considering the recent natural disasters* the world has seen I would urge you to take a minute of your spare time to think what you would take with you if you had to leave your house in a minute, or what would be handy to have if a smaller storm knocked the power out for a day. Simple things, water, medications, your keys, etc are worth way more than gold when you don't have them.

*we recently had a nearby tornado. It wasn't anywhere as devastating as the recent one in Joplin, but seeing broken trees littered with debris from a destroyed house that was a half mile away will give you a new perspective on the power of nature.

Long time I guess since the last post.

Just a quick note to say have a good weekend and to wish all the Moms out there, especially the one in Hampton who knows who she is , a very happy Mother's Day.

sunset

We took a little drive this evening and saw a really nice sunset from the ferry on the James river. Here is one of the shots:

http://img.geocaching.com/cache/9d7ad56c-3bba-4b6c-a915-d270140195dd.jpg

How to throw away money

Those of you that know me already know I am more than a little skeptical of unmeasurable things. That said, when I saw this it struck me as so silly that I thought it must be a parody. But no, apparently people actually send this guy money to (get ready for what should be a punchline) call him and have him play a recorded message over the phone that improves the video and audio quality of the room. Yep, for only 60 bucks your stereo will sound better and your TV will have a better picture. If you aren't laughing too hard, go to his home page and see the other "products" he sells. Adhesive dots, small bags of rocks, etc. all at high prices and all designed to do magic but unexplainable things.

http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina60.htm

I really did think it was satire at first, so I did a search and found a lot of audiophiles that have actually tried this. Of course most found it didn't do anything and used the money back guarantee, but there seem to be a few believers. Interestingly, some of them defend the product even if they agree it might be a placebo effect. They used a new-to-me word to explain the people who did not get results. They said it was a Placeno, meaning the skeptics had already made up their minds that no result was possible. Counting myself among the skeptics it occurred to me that they might be from the company, but I have no way of knowing. I wondered how he managed to avoid prosecution for fraud, but I guess it's like psychics in that as long as they don't promise something tangible it's OK. Anyway it cracked me up.

Have a fine weekend, Randy

I think I messed it up by posting a picture wider than the page. Anyway, that's the only pic I have seen so far of the wave hitting from the coast. It's hard to believe that there was actually space between those trees and the ocean just a minute before the picture was taken.

Tsunami wave hitting Japanese shore

Today's Quote:

The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity" --Abraham Lincoln

You know, I started to write about how silly this was, and I still think it's one of those cases of marketing over practicality. It's an app to let you confess your sins on your phone.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/02/09/confession/index.html?hpt=C2

So instead of an indicator of where the hand basket is headed, maybe it's just a sign that my knowledge of phones (or how much I care?) is much more limited than the more modern folks out there. So I'll just present it for your inspection and save the snark for later.

I feel almost guilty that we are looking at a 60 degree day when almost the rest of the country is snowed and iced in. But not too guilty because we (the Charlotte and Randy "we") paid for it with several days of having a cold or something vile. I'm about over everything but a little coughing while Charlotte had to go to the Doc yesterday just to get some medicine that would push back the virus enough for her to sleep.

So other than a somewhat depressing update I guess the only point to this is to tell everybody to hang in there, Spring is on the way.

Memory

The other day I heard something from one of my favorite philosophers, a gentleman named Albert Einstein. He may have done some work in other fields too, but that’s for another day. I liked it and it goes like this:

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything one learned in school."

Don’t run away yet, I’m not going to write about education. Instead this got me to thinking about how you learn and remember things, and in the wonderful and weird way that a mind can wander, it lead me to the slight similarities, and huge differences, in the way computers “remember” things and the way we people remember things.

I think almost the only similarity is that they are both called memory. From there the two systems seem so different that it is amazing we think they have anything in common. Computers need only be told something once, then they remember it until told to forget it. But they are so different they can’t really “forget” as we think of it. They erase or delete, and even then it’s still “there” until some newer bit of info is written over top of it.

People remember things depending on, well....,everything. How many times they hear it, whether or not it’s interesting, how it was presented to them, the list is long. Once remembered, they may remember it long after they wish they had never learned it (I wish I could forget the theme song from Gilligan’s Island) or forget it altogether, or even not know they remember it until the memory is called up by some unexpected retrieval cue. Can you imagine a computer saying “that smell brings back memories of...”, or maybe “that song takes me back”? Well no, that’s not the way machines work. They file things away in whatever order they are told, at least sort of, and then retrieve that thing when needed or ask for. The machine knows right where that information is because it will always be there. People on the other hand work so very differently. Do we even have a retrieval system? Think of all the odd ways we work to remember things, mnemonics, association, and other little tricks are exclusive to us because our brains are such complicated organic devices. We think about things, look for patterns, and try to figure things out. We learn, while computers remember. I guess it’s no wonder that it takes a decade or two to have our operating systems installed, if that quickly.

I was going to say something else but I forgot what it was!

Have a nice weekend everybody, Randy