Among our weapons are surprise, fear, and redundancy!

I'm not sure what a "Headquarters Headquarters Company" does. Maybe they handle all the forms that have to be submitted in duplicate? 

I saw these folks from the Headquarters Headquarters Company of the 2d Battalion, 299th Infantry, marching in the Royal Parade of the Merrie Monarch Festival today here in Hilo.

April Fool's Day

Not bad overall. Went up the mountain. Drove an Expedition (fullsize SUV) instead of the Explorer (midsize SUV) I usually drive. The Explorer is a lot nicer on the road; the Expedition just wallows along. But on the steep dirt road near the summit, the Expedition is a bigger, heavier, more powerful vehicle, so it doesn't bounce around as much.

Got up there, spotted some tourists, gave them a quick tour of the observatory. They were from the Los Angeles area. Got my work done. Gave some more tourists a quick tour. They were from New York, but had grown up in India. This was funny since I was in New York early last month, and in India last fall. Drove back down. Recorded my trip as Hilo-Mars-Hilo in the vehicle's mileage log, since it's April Fool's Day.

Watched part of the Merrie Monarch Festival, except when my daughter demanded that we channel-surf over to "Trauma: Life in the ER" on Discovery Health.

Eventually, got some sleep. 

Recipe: Saint George and the Graham Cracker Dragon

Special Consideration:		Kids
Servings:		300

Description:
Cryogenic crackers turn science fair attendees into "smoke"-breathing monsters.
Ingredients:
Liquid Nitrogen (in a styrofoam bowl)
Graham Crackers (not iced)
Tongs

Directions:
Make sure you have an audience.
Break graham crackers into bite-sized pieces.
Use tongs to dip each piece into liquid nitrogen for 5 seconds
Use tongs to wave cracker piece in air for 10 seconds (cracker will appear to "smoke" or "steam")
Juggle cracker piece between hands until it is safe to touch (spots of frost on your hands mean juggle faster!)
Hand the cracker piece to someone who will eat it quickly
OR eat it yourself.

The continued gasification of the liquid nitrogen in which the cracker was dipped creates cold nitrogen. As the person eating the cracker exhales, the cold nitrogen causes the temperature of the air it mixes with to drop below the dew point, resulting in condensation of water vapor in the air, and clouds of "steam."

(Our outreach officer was quite worried when he saw me doing this, and told me to stop before our associate director noticed.  That's when I told him the associate director already ate one...)

A Farewell to Access

Today, I used Microsoft Access for what I sincerely hope will be my last time.

I had been using it on a quarterly basis, as part of perfoming a reporting process for a company in my area. The process - which was created far before I got involved - went something like this:

• Get the backup tape from the SCO OpenSewer/Advanced PICK machine
• Restore the tape on the Linux/PICK D3 machine
• Do a bunch of mucking about on that machine to create ODBC-accessible SQL views
• Use Excel to pull data off via ODBC
• Muck around with the data in Excel
• Feed parts of the data through Access, with a bunch of macros
• Muck around with the data in Excel some more
• Print out lots of results.

Anyway, the company recently got sold, so the SCO box, and everything associated with it, no longer matters.

On the down side, I'll have a little less work and pay as a result of this. On the up side, the work I'm losing involved technologies I'm really not a fan of, like SCO and PICK and Access.

Of course, I've been running Access (2000) on Windows XP SP 2, under Virtual PC 6, on a Mac. With this process gone, I really won't have any reason to boot into Windows - other than to run Windows Update, which I already do far more often than I actually do anything productive with Windows. That says something!

Bookworm 2: The Return

A couple weeks ago, my daughter got her very own library card. This was an extremely big deal, and still is. It did get lost in her room (as things tend to do) but was found quickly today, for her return trip to the library.

The return trip involved, of course, returning books - something she'd never had to do before, but now knows about.

Then she decided she wanted some science books, so I showed her where the kids' non-fiction shelves were, and she picked books about germs, centipedes, mosquitoes and grasshoppers. Then she picked up "Franklin is Messy" from the fiction shelves. 

The librarian pointed out the shelves for circulating magazines and new books, and we finished up with 2 issues of "Spider" magazine (it's not about spiders; it's the follow-on to "Cricket" for slightly older kids) and a huge thick book containing ALL the "Thomas the Tank Engine" stories that had just arrived.

We got to checkout, and after watching the circulations lady stamp the other books, she noticed that there were no stamps in the front of the Thomas book. I was just about to point out that she was the first one to check it out, but she blurted out, "Am I the first one to ever get that book?" and was tremendously excited about it.

We wound up with a bit more than she could easily carry on her own, but that's mostly due to the Thomas tome. And she's down to a "mere" dozen books out at once, which is an improvement over her first-week binge of 20 books.

Define "Upbeat"

A friend of mine recently announced that he was going to coordinate a mix-CD swap. If I wanted to participate, I'd have to pick a bunch of songs I liked that matched the theme, burn a couple CD's of them, and mail them to addresses I'd be provided. In return I'd get a couple CD's of songs picked by other quasi-random people. So I decided to participate.

Theme: upbeat.

Now... there are at least three definitions I can think of for "upbeat." Things that are up-tempo, things that inspire, or things that cheer one up. So... it wound up being a little bit of a mix. Up-tempo songs and instrumentals, songs with inspiring lyrics, and songs that were just plain funny or silly to make people laugh.

Here are the songs I chose. If you recognize every group named here, let me know immediately - that would indicate that you're me, and something is wrong with the fabric of reality.

1. Greetings by Star People.
2. Starman by Star People.
3. Princes Of The Universe by Queen.
4. Future Girls by Smile.dk.
5. Milligan's Fancy (instrumental) by Tempest.
6. Surf by Ka'au Crater Boys.
7. Bodhrans On The Brain by Black 47.
8. Stiletto In The Sand (instrumental) by Shadow Gallery.
9. My Heart Is A Flower by King Missile.
10. Beautiful by Marillion.
11. Breath Of Fresh Air by Echolyn.
12. Until You Fall by Steve Hogarth.
13. Cinema (instrumental) by Yes.
14. Rhythm Of Hope by Queensryche.
15. Finding The Strength by Finneus Gauge.
16. Mission Statement by Fish.
17. Everything In Life by Uriah Heep.
18. Someone Else? by Queensryche.
19. Plague Of Ghosts VI: Wake-Up Call (Make It Happen) by Fish.
20. Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life by Monty Python.

This doesn't really cover the full scope of my music collection, but it might give you some idea of some of the things I listen to. :)

Time of Useful Consciousness

Time of Useful Consciousness (TUC) is the sort of number none of us ever want to have to deal with in everyday life. Simply put, for any given altitude above sea level, TUC is how long you have before you black out - and probably never come to. Wonderful, eh?

For example, at 35,000 feet - a nice, normal cruising altitude for a jet airliner - the TUC is about 30 seconds. So when the nice cabin crew tell you "in the unlikely event of a sudden change in cabin pressure, a mask compartment above your seat will open automatically," they leave out the that by the way, you've got 30 seconds to get it on and get that oxygen flowing.

Anyway, as you go lower, the TUC gradually gets longer, and at 15,000 feet or less, it's presumed to be "indefinite." This doesn't necessarily mean that everyone can hang around at 15,000 feet for as long as they want without blacking out, but some people might manage it, so there's not a handy little number.

Of course, even below 15,000 feet, there are other issues to deal with, primarily hypoxia or "blood oxygen starvation." As altitude above sea level increases, availability of oxygen in the air decreases, as does the saturation of oxygen in your blood. Spending time at 10,000 feet, it's only about 90% of what it is at sea level. At 14,000 feet, it's about 84%. And so on. As your blood oxygen saturation drops, so does your ability to think clearly, react quickly, make good judgements, etc.

This, of course, is why airliner cabins are pressurized to the equivalent of 8,000 feet or less. And why Air Force crews are required to use supplemental oxygen at altitudes of 10,000 feet or more. And why there are FAA regulations about using oxygen at various altitudes. And why tourists who are going up for a 2-hour tour of the summit of Mauna Kea (nearly 14,000 feet) are required to acclimate at 9,000 feet for at least a half-hour, and preferably longer.

So now that you have a good understanding of the risks involved with spending lots of time above 10,000 feet... I'll confess to being an intermittent telescope operator on Mauna Kea. Every now and then, I find myself at almost 14,000 feet for a half-night (6-7 hours), or a full night (12-13 hours), or, in some cases, for four 12-13 hour nights in a row, sleeping days at 9,300 feet in between.

And no, they don't give us supplemental oxygen. :)