Posts from — October 2009

The ABC reports on the worsening fire conditions in Queensland:

About 100 homes are under threat in central Queensland where a large bushfire continues to burn out of control.

A fast-moving blaze is travelling in worsening conditions toward buildings on the fringe of Frenchville, near Mount Archer National Park on the outskirts of Rockhampton.

Queensland Fire and Rescue Service (QFRS) officials say the fire is moving erratically, with structures likely to be burnt in addition to one home lost overnight.

Strong winds are hampering efforts by more than 100 firefighters to contain the blaze and helicopter water bombing continues.

South of there on the coast near Brooms Head in New South Wales they hope to be able to contain the most threatening fire today, as the weather conditions have been better than in the North.

Across the country the Broome fire in Western Australia isn’t a direct threat to people or property, but the fire has burned 260 miles² to date and they suspect it was deliberately set.

[For more information go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Fires” for all of the posts related to wildfires on this site.]

Position: 15.0 N 105.9 W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [290°] near 14 mph [22 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 180 mph [285 kph].
Wind Gusts: 220 mph [355 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 155 miles [250 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 45 miles [75 km].
Minimum central pressure: 906 mb ↓.

It is 605 miles [975 km] South-Southeast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Rick is now second only to 1997 Hurricane Linda on the list of strongest eastern Pacific storms.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

The media seems hellbent on having the family involved in the Colorado balloon incident publicly stoned at a minimum. They want the parents charged and the children taken away and all their money seized and personal apologies delivered to the millions of people who who caught up in the frenzy involved in this event.

There is no recognition that a local missing child report was turned into a national event by the media, not the family.

I probably wouldn’t even comment on this if I hadn’t read Fallenmonk’s piece, Childhood Wilderness, which brought back memories of my own childhood down here, which were very similar.

The thing is, I was one of three boys, like the Colorado family, and my Dad built things.

We didn’t have a large mylar balloon, but we did have a 14-foot boat that occasionally wandered around the bayou with no one in it, as my Dad worked out bugs in remote control systems that would be used to control Air Force drones and guided weapons.

My Dad built the boat, and water skis, and anything else that was felt to be necessary on the bayou.

My brothers and I sprang up in the morning, during the summer, pulled on shorts, grabbed a quick breakfast, and headed out in the morning. Meals were the only time my Mother saw us, and no one asked what we were up to. They really didn’t want to know, because it would have just upset them.

I can relate to the kids in Colorado. I understand about having a personal hiding place that your brothers don’t know about, because there were occasions when you were hiding from your brothers.

As near as I can tell, the real reason the media is mad is because the event didn’t end the way they wanted it to. They need to grow up,

Mother and Child

When does this child leave?

[Editor: KT-2 is ready for a return to the single life. Weaning is taking longer than she thought.]

Friday Ark

in an old carpetbag.

The Miami Herald writes that a South Florida Republican to seek Orlando House seat

Republicans eager to unseat a brash Orlando Democrat who said their party’s healthcare plan amounts to hoping people “die quickly” have so far been unsuccessful in finding a candidate.

But now comes a willing Republican — all the way from South Florida.

Armando Gutierrez Jr., son of one of Miami’s best-known political consultants and a member of local civic boards, voted in the city of Coral Gables as recently as April.

But he says he’s the right person to take on Rep. Alan Grayson, who likes to call Republicans “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals” and has become one of the party’s top targets in 2010.

Gutierrez, a 28-year-old real estate developer and Republican Party fundraiser, said he has already lined up endorsements from three Central Florida Republicans: U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis and state Reps. Chris Dorworth and Bryan Nelson.

Well, like the other “Republicans” who have announced they are running, Gutierrez is not now, nor has he ever been an elected official. He is an unknown in the district running against a now nationally known incumbent who has been raking in money to supplement his own considerable personal wealth.

There are already wealthy local Republicans running. I can’t imagine what anyone believes that Gutierrez adds to the race that would make him any more likely to unseat Grayson. I don’t care, but it looks like a political money pit to me.

The BBC reports that Microsoft recovers Sidekick data

Microsoft says it has now recovered the personal data lost when its Sidekick servers suffered an outage on 13 October.

The online service backs up contacts, photos, calendar appointments and other personal data stored on the mobile phones of Sidekick T Mobile customers.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Roz Ho says that all data will be restored, beginning with personal contacts.

She believes that only a minority of Sidekick users are still affected.

“The outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back up,” she wrote in an open letter to customers.

My guess is that they rebuilt the data base, which is often successful if the structure was designed in accordance with industry standards. As the original was not designed by Microsoft it is possible that most people will be able to access their data. A minority of users is one less than half, so any number below a half million is a minority, but it is probably a group in the thousands, and not tens of thousands if the rebuild was successful. My guess is based on the amount of time involved. If they had found a valid backup, they would have been running in a day.

[Read more →]

The ABC reports that Crews battle blazes across 3 states:

New South Wales

Fire crews are working throughout the night to bring large blazes across three states under control.

About 150 volunteer firefighters and national parks officers are fighting three blazes that are still burning in the Clarence Valley on the New South Wales north coast.

Queensland

More than 30 teams of firefighters are working desperately to bring a large bushfire under control at Mount Archer, east of Rockhampton.

Western Australia

Meanwhile fire crews will continue to monitor flare-ups near the North Cable Beach area in Broome.

Firefighters have contained a fire at Coconut Well, which was threatening homes, and have established containment lines near the Crab Creek Road area.

These are all on the coast. The first two on the East Coast, and the third on the West Coast. In Australia the average temperature increases as you go North. The peak of their fire season is normally the first months of the year.

[For more information go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Fires” for all of the posts related to wildfires on this site.]

Today is White Cane Safety Day.

For your safety, if you see a guy about 6-foot tall, 250 pounds, carrying a white cane, don’t stop suddenly in front of him, for you will surely be knocked down and trampled because he can’t see you. Trust me on this, I have seen it happen too many times.

The individual is a relative, and he sincerely feels bad about knocking you into next Tuesday, but there really is a reason he waves that white cane in his path – he’s legally blind.

CBS has an article up that apparently ran on their nightly news that asks the question: Was Massive L.A.-Area Blaze Mismanaged?

The basis for questioning the response to the Station Fire:

• There was a memo sent to Forest Service offices to watch their budgets, especially overtime, about three weeks before the fire.
• People who lost property to the fire didn’t think the response was adequate.
• At one point early in the fire, the resources used for the fire were reduced.

First off, the Federal fiscal year ends on September 30. In August of every year I was in the Air Force there was a commander’s call about watching expenditures, and I assume that the same thing happened in every Federal agency. When I worked for the state and for corporations the year usually ended June 30, and the memo was sent in May.

[Read more →]

All they require is some guts in Congress, so they won’t happen, but they will definitely fix many of the systemic problems in the banking and insurance industries.

Badtux covers the problem of banks, that are Too Big To Fail. Ban interstate banking by repealing the 1994 Riegle-Neal Act that permitted it, and the big banks will have to separate into individual banks in the different states, potentially, each becoming divided into 50 smaller banks, which can then be dealt with like any other bank by the FDIC.

A quick fix for insurance companies is a repeal of the 1944 McCarran-Ferguson Act which exempted them from the anti-trust laws. This law was challenged after Katrina because of the behavior of the insurance companies in denying claims. Whatever supposed benefit there was to the bill originally, it has outlived its usefulness and works against competition in the insurance market. There is nothing more abhorrent to true capitalists than laws that reduce competition.

It would be interesting to see how the current administration reacts if either repeal were to actually pass.

It is Spring time in Australia, which has lately meant bushfires. The ABC reports on the latest on the East Coast south of Brisbane: Bushfires spread: Fight to protect NSW village

Firefighters are now battling bushfires on three fronts in northern New South Wales, after residents rallied together to protect homes overnight.

Locals who decided to stay in the village of Brooms Head, east of Grafton, last night hosed down homes under direct threat from flames on the town’s western side.

Residents were also put on alert further west in the Gurranang area, before conditions there eased overnight.

A third fire is now burning out of control further south in bush 10 kilometres west of Minnie Water.

High temperatures, low humidity, and gusty winds, everything necessary for a nasty wildfire. They are hoping for a wind shift to on shore flow, but that will change the direction the fire is traveling, and endangers the firefighters working close to the flames when the shift occurs.

This is just the start of the bushfire season.

Here’s the location of Brooms Head on Google Maps.

[For more information go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Fires” for all of the posts related to wildfires on this site.]

I’m sorry, but I don’t wear pajamas, don’t eat Cheetos, and don’t have a basement. I, nonetheless, still blog.

If I’m traveling, or it’s cold, I wear sweats to bed. I started doing that decades ago when I spent a lot of time in Europe. In Britain it was the IRA, and on the Continent it was various groups who were constantly interrupting a good night’s sleep with their bombs. Sweats were a lot warmer and better fitting than most pajamas, so I stayed with them. That’s when I started using a small pouch that I hung on the door knob of my hotel room, so I wouldn’t leave the key, wallet, passport, etc. in the room when I evacuated.

I realize that Washington is populated with shallow people, but they should consider that they had to study the words of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle who wore sheets, Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham who wore bathrobes, and William Shakespeare wore woolen pantyhose. I don’t think that William Wallace or Robert the Bruce would have taken kindly to cracks about them wearing nightshirts and blankets. Clothes only make the man when there is no substance to fill them.

As for “the base” being happy – yeah, right, that’s why individual contributions to the DNCC and DSCC are off by a third, because the base is so thrilled by what’s been accomplished.

On a not very related note, the Agonist keeps telling me that I’m not authorized to read it. What’s with that? It’s not like I called Sean-Paul a grom for his recent surfing attempts, I know better. Grom refers to age, not ability.

Update: The Agonist is back after resolving some issues with a corrupted table. Databases are like that – they occasionally get scrambled, which is why you back them up to restore a good copy.

If you still seem to have issues, clear your cache and try again.

Well, according to an AP article on MSNBC, your Sidekick “super-cell” may have amnesia because of a Microsoft server failure.

All of the information you input into your Sidekick is stored at the Microsoft server farm. There is no way of making a local copy, and it isn’t stored on internal memory. Apparently the Microsoft server farm doesn’t understand fault tolerance, RAID, or any of the other techniques that are “industry standards”. I get the feeling from the article that they backup servers occasionally, when someone thinks of it, if there is nothing else going on, rather than on a standard schedule.

No big deal, it’s only about a million people who have lost their address books.

Update: I should add that T-Mobile is going to give their customers a $20 $100 credit for the inconvenience.

If you live in California, anywhere in the state, this is your one-stop shop for the weather warnings, watches, advisories, and special weather statements.

The remnents of Typhoon Melor will be coming ashore late tonight through all of tomorrow, with high gusty winds, and heavy rains. If you live around an area that was burned out within the last two years, there is a probability of mudslides, in addition to flash flooding, and the gusty winds.

The highest winds and heaviest rains will be in the mountains inland from the coast, and the weather will probably be worst from Big Sur up to Marin County, but, pretty much everywhere is going to have nasty weather.

Stay safe.