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. :)

Cloudy eclipsed moonrise

Two weeks after seeing a partial solar eclipse at sunset, the full moon rose eclipsed.  Unfortunately, it was a very cloudy day.  While others watched the sky from the catwalk of the UH 88-inch telescope, I hiked out to the true summit of Mauna Kea, and for a little while was completely surrounded by clouds.

As the clouds cleared, I got a few photos, but until I got home, I didn't even realize I had captured a thin sliver of moon coming out of the eclipse in the cloudy twilight.

On my way down the mountain, I found clearer skies, and took one more photograph late in the eclipse.

Partial solar eclipse into sunset

A couple nights ago, noted amateur astronomer David Levy (as in Shoemaker-Levy 9, one of 21 comets he's discovered or co-discovered) gave a talk at the local university campus about his love for astronomy, finding comets, and his new hobby, chasing eclipses.

Not coincidentally, yesterday afternoon there was a partial eclipse of the setting sun visible from the top of Mauna Kea, so a few of us from the Institute for Astronomy took David to the summit to see it.

We were joined by local resident Steve O'Meara, who is perhaps best known for photographing volcanoes for National Geographic, but has also authored multiple astronomy books.  Steve graciously lent me a piece of mylar to shoot through, since I didn't have any proper solar filters for my camera at the time.

In this group shot from the AstroDay Institute, David is sitting, Steve O'Meara is at the right, and I'm the one in the ash-colored hoodie.  On the left are some students from the University, who had been observing the eclipse from near their 24-inch telescope.

Luckiest. Tourists. Ever.

Every Saturday and Sunday, the Visitor Information Station at the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy on Mauna Kea offers free guided summit tours. There are, of course, some restrictions for liability purposes - you can't go if you're under 16, pregnant, have a history of heart or respiratory problems, have been scuba-diving in the last 24 hours, or have failed to bring a vehicle with 4 wheel drive and low-range gearing (unless you can talk someone who brought one into giving you a ride, of course).

So, obviously, scuba-diving pregnant teens with heart problems and sports cars are right out.

Folks show up at the Visitor Information Station, watch the "First Light" video about the mountain (which debuted on PBS Hawaii in June), then we all caravan up with a ranger along for safety, tell them about the mountain, the geology, Hawaiian history, culture and religion, and oh, yeah, the telescopes. And, we actually go into two of the observatories, which is, well... two more than most people go into?

Anyway, on some (though not all) Saturdays and Sundays, I'm one of the guides. Earlier this month I finished my training and started working on my presentation, eventually devising a single page that can serve as both my "cheat sheet" and a "take-home" for tourists, covering all the observatories on the summit as well as some cultural and natural sciences bits. And earlier this week, I got my 4WD test out of the way, demonstrating that the 5-mile, 12-percent-grade washboard we call "road" wouldn't kill me or people in my immediate vicinity.

Ordinarily, we talk about geology, culture and stuff like that outside the Keck observatory, go inside the visitor gallery to talk about Keck, briefly go into a viewing area in one of the domes and talk there, come back out, drive over to the University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter telescope, talk in the lobby, climb the stairs, talk in the visitor gallery, go into the dome, talk there, go into the control room and talk a little there while people take pictures, then go out onto a balcony sort of thing outside for a really great view and a little more talk, then go back down and give them parting guidance about sunset, getting down the mountain, etc.

Today, a few strange things happened.

First, our senior guide, Jonn Altonn, called in sick. That left me (just barely qualified), my friend Kent (a fairly recent volunteer who'd never been to the summit before, but wanted to learn), our cultural guru Koa in lieu of Jonn, and our senior ranger Kimo (who's also a practitioner in the Hawaiian religion) along for safety. Koa gave everyone printouts of some Hawaiian chants and their translations, and did a half-hour cultural presentation outside Keck, including two audience-participation chants, an introduction of Kimo, Kimo talking about stuff, and Koa and Kimo doing a third chant together. It was... very cool. And I videotaped it, yay.

While I was talking about telescopes, someone decided it'd be a very good time to silently spin Keck 2's dome around, so everyone got to see that. When we went into the Keck 1 dome, technicians were actually working on stuff above us, rolling instruments out to the scope for the night's viewing. Finally, NASA's infrared telescope facility dome was open when we got over to the UH scope, so people were able to get photos of that, too.

All in all, a most excellent adventure. And (scarily?) some tourists somewhere have video of me explaining all manner of silly things. :)