dmk
It’s been a while since I posted anything – family visiting from England gave me a long and very pleasant vacation – though it’s never long enough of course…
I’m currently(finally) looking at adding a garage to our house and the whole thing seems like a nightmare.
First of all our lot is not ideal for such an endeavor. We have an acre of land but most of it is next to useless for geological and/or topological reasons. The only place that seems to make any kind of sense is at the far-side of the house away from the street. Hardly the best location.
Secondly, the planning requirements for any kind of construction now seem to be ridiculously over the top. Because I want a garage of reasonable size (bigger than a postage stamp it seems…) I have to have an ‘engineered floor’.
What this means is that I have to do the design and drawings, give them to an engineer who will then (rubber) stamp them in exchange for several hundred dollars. Yes, that’s right, I do the work, some engineer stamps them and says “yeah, okay” and they collect a handful of cash. Talk about money for nothing! I really think I’m in the wrong career…
Of course it’s not that simple. Because of the building regulations (codes) here I am supposed to have a minimum twenty feet (feet/inches! Yes, we are back in the stone age!) setback from the front lot line. Now, tell me, who wants a twenty feet driveway in Northern Ontario? That’s right, no one. In my case, with the general topography of our lot, would put my garage underground!
Of course, I can apply for a ‘minor variance’ to bring the garage forward. That only takes a minimum of two months and again costs about seven hundred dollars. No wonder it’s called a ‘setback’.
With that and the actual permit application fees I will have spent around $3000 in bribes fees before a shovel even touches dirt! This seems to be just a money-making scheme for the city and ‘jobs for the boys’ with the engineers.
That also means I can’t possibly get this built this year. Which is infuriating to say the least.
On the other hand I had some good quotes for garage kits from our local Home Hardware store. The price contains pretty much everything and is very reasonable. I tried to get a quote from the local Rona as well for comparison, but they haven’t bothered calling me back – something that I have seen with them several times previously. I really wonder how some of these places manage to stay in business – they certainly don’t seem to want to!
An article published by the NPR reveals the astonishing detail that part of the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq includes $20 billion spent on air-conditioning. This figure was estimated by Brigadier General Steven Anderson, a now -retired chief logistician for the Pentagon.
So let’s see:
- NASA annual budget – $5 bn (2011)
- Estimated cost to finish and Launch James Webb – $3 bn
- Estimated cost to build a space elevator – $6-20 bn
Even this doesn’t scratch the surface of the sheer waste involved here. The article goes on to detail how the fuel to power all this air-conditioning is transported through extremely risky convoys, putting countless lives at on the line.
Of course, you could argue that the soldiers are putting their lives at risk to protect democracy and deserve to be comfortable, though that argument might not stand up to scrutiny. But there’s more to it even than that.
These soldier’s are living in temporary shelters – tents. Now everyone knows that tents aren’t great insulators – anyone who has spent a couple of cold days in one can tell you that. Well, all of these tents could be cheaply insulated using polyurethane foam spray, which cuts energy use by over 90%.
So the U.S. could save lives, cut energy costs, finance all of NASA, a space telescope and go a long way to building a space elevator – just by insulating tents.
Universe Today has published an update on the planets that have been found orbiting star HR 8799. Using the Keck telescope and some amazing and incredibly detailed processing Astronomers have been able to gain an even greater insight into the make up of the HR 8799 system.
All the planets discovered so far are huge: the smallest being approximately five times the size of Jupiter. None of them are even close to being habitable. The amazing thing to me is this image.
Isn’t that amazing? That’s right – you’re looking at a direct image of planets around another star. An astronomical observation of a different planetary system.
I somehow missed the original reports on this. So I am glad to catch up on it. That image alone is just incredible. I have to wonder just how long it will be before we can detect planets that are truly Earth-like – direct imaging of those can’t be far off.
All of which makes the proposal to cancel the James Webb Space Telescope programme so incredibly short sighted.
The Canadian Grand Prix should have been subtitled “Someone sneezed, get the safety car out!”. The race started under the safety car, depriving everyone of what would have surely been a historic battle off the line, and continued to have the safety car deployed a further five times during the ‘race’.
Formula One racing seems almost unrecognisable these days: Don’t try to overtake too hard or you get penalised, don’t try to defend too hard or you get penalised; overtaking now granted by the whim of the stewards rather than the skill of the drivers, and now finally – let’s not try and race in that nasty rain…
It’s like watching a couple of oh-too polite people at a revolving door.
Driver 1: “You go first.”
Driver 2: “Oh no, please you go first.”
Driver 1: “Really. Please, I insist.”
Driver 2: “No, no. After you.”
F1 Steward: “Driver 2. You now have our permission to overtake.”
Driver 2: “Really? Oh thank you awfully.”
No-one wants drivers to get hurt, but you can’t just keep increasingly sanitising it and still call it ‘racing’. Motor sport is dangerous! It says so right here on the ticket.
Day 1:
Last Thursday we got home from work to find a fountain in our furnace room. No this isn’t the start of a bizarre fantasy, although the chain of events following certainly does seem like something out of a comedy farce.
The fountain was courtesy of our newly installed water pump, which was just over a week old. Like the old one the new one had blown off the water pipe (different pipes the first was the inlet, the second the outlet) and provided us with our very own ‘internal water feature’.
We were supposed to be taking the weekend off for some well needed R&R but that followed the water down the drain quickly.
Day 2:
Friday we called our handy man. He came and looked at it and couldn’t understand it either. Rather than waste our time, he suggested getting a professional plumber in to sort things out. Finding a plumber isn’t easy though and the only one we could get couldn’t come out until Saturday.
Saturday, the plumber comes around and is also confused by the multiple pump explosions. He starts methodically working through the system and finds that the new pump is broken and won’t pump properly anymore, probably as a result of overheating. Return pump and get a replacement. New pump installed, but cant get it to pickup properly.
Looks like we have a problem with either the line from the well to the house being broken or possibly the foot valve at the bottom of the well has a problem. The plumber pumps out well to inspect the foot valve and pipe into the well, as he’s looking down the well his Blackberry (clipped to the front of his overalls) flips off and down in to the well!
He’s not happy, I’m not happy. I think for a while and remember the Blackberry has a metal frame – so hey! Maybe it’s magnetic – I have a magnetic probe in my tool chest, maybe we can fish it out.
I open the garage and stop. Actually my heart stops! Somehow my tool chests have fallen over and are now on top of the hood of my ‘vette!
I staggered back in the house. tried to explain to Hil but literally couldn’t speak. Eventually I managed to gurgle the word ‘vette’ and she ran out to see what had happened. Minutes later she came back in and tried to comfort me. Honestly I was sick to my stomach, this was my dream, my baby – I don’t know if it would have felt worse if Hil or Kyla had been lying there wounded.
The chests were so heavy we couldn’t lift them and Hil called a friend of ours to come and help. I still have no idea how they could fall, they were on level slab, no drawers were left open. It just seems impossible.
After pumping out the well the plumber goes down to look at things and see if he can find his Blackberry. No luck on that, but the foot valve has been buried in a build-up of mud and sand at the bottom the well. This explains the pump problems. Pump kicks in, tries to pull water up but either can’t or gets restricted flow, overheats and BANG!
Plumber goes to get another pump and installs it. Tries to get water working and kind of does, only trouble is that all the plastic fittings in our water system are now leaking from being taken off and re-tightened multiple times. He says he wants to get new fittings but its getting late so he’ll come back the following day.
Day 3:
We wake and go downstairs for breakfast. What the – ! We have no power? Racking our brains we vaguely recollect that we got a phone message saying we would have a ‘planned power outage’. Of course we forgot all about this because we had no plans to even be there over the weekend.
We try to get hold of the plumber to tell him not to come till noon when the power is scheduled to be back on but we can only contact his home phone – his Blackberry is down the bottom of the well of course…
The Plumber shows up shortly after, he hadn’t got the message until too late. He’s got a gas-powered pump and his going to pump the well out again in hopes he can get his phone out. I think he was a little worried when I started talking about the Lithium from the battery eventually leaking out and poisoning the well…
This time he finds his phone so we’re good on that front. When the power comes on again he replumbs the connections to the pump and tank and finally by late afternoon we have some water.
10 minutes later I look in the furnace room and realise we have way too much water! As in way too much water running off the basement ceiling… I go outside and tell the plumber. The water is coming from above the furnace ducting, so after a great deal of dis-assembly and removal he finds one of the pipes has now burst…
The pipe get’s patched and we now have water in the upstairs bathroom. Plumber leaves and we jump in to have our first real shower in days. Pure heaven! A hasty one though as we had a Corvette Club meeting at 5.30 and it’s the last one before our big annual car show and I’m the president!
We get back from the meeting, pretty frazzled and exhausted. As we enter the house, Hil manages to catch her toe in the mat outside the door, falling and landing right across the door jamb. Huge bruising across both legs and her toe is swollen and bruised as well. We’re now wondering just what exactly we did in a previous existence to deserve this…
Inside we start trying to clear up a bit and soon realise something strange. We have water – but only in the main floor bathroom… everything else is as dry as a desert. It’s far too late to do anything about it so we resign ourselves to another night with our plumbing screwed up.
Day 4:
We call the plumber and he’s booked all day. He’ll try get out to see us in the late afternoon. We use this opportunity to go and talk to some of the local body shops to find someone who can fix the damage to the ‘vette. We have some good recommendations and they can do the work – estimates at $2300!
Plumber comes round and checks things out. All our tap screens and lines are plugged with silt and mud kicked up by all the well activity. He cleans them and blows out the pipes etc. Finally, at 7:19 pm, we have our water systems fully restored.
So $2300 worth of damage to mye prized ‘vette, $800 in plumbing costs, almost four days without water, $400 in non-refundable hotel fees and $150 in concert tickets.
A weekend from hell for sure.
While RepubliCON madness appears to be just one of the facts of life we have to deal with, the latest message from their ranks reaches new highs in their disconnection from the real world and sanity.
Kansas legislators have just passed a bill banning health insurers from including abortion coverage in their polices, even in the event of pregnancy due to rape. In an exchange on the issue, Peter DeGraaf responded to the question of coverage for abortions for rape victims with this:
“We do need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?”
Barbara Bollier then asked him,
“And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with a pregnancy?”
DeGraaf responded,
“I have a spare tire on my car.”
“I also have life insurance,” he added. “I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for.”
Yes, you did read that correctly. Peter DeGraaf believes that being raped is comparable to having a flat tire and is just something that you should plan for. I’m sure he would find a lot in common with Egyptian Generals…
How do you describe something so objectionably wrong in so many ways? How is it even possible that anyone could conceivably make such a statement?
The response from people has been quick and savage and thoroughly deserved. But where is the response from the RepubliCONs? Where is the outright condemnation of this stunted mental case? Where are the howls calling for him to be thrown out of the party?
Nowhere.
Something I’ve seen a great deal of in previous jobs is a lot of bullying and attacks on people who spoke out about problems, or were critical of bad decisions or plans. Our corporate culture seems to be increasingly happy to employ a ‘shoot the messenger’ philosophy, in complete denial and disconnection with the reality of the situation they are in.
It’s not only me that seems to be affected by this. Several of my friends, and others I have worked with in the past, relate similar experiences. Increasingly the expectation is that we are all supposed to wander around like passive, silent sheep. If you are perceived to be ‘negative’ then you’re a bad employee: immediately suspicious, undoubtedly seditious and ultimately to be persuaded/manipulated/forced to move somewhere else.
A personal example of this which left me incredulous was during a meeting with senior representatives from a company. The project I was working on already had extremely tight deadlines and in the course of the meeting I was told that the system would now have to interface with two completely different hardware technologies.
My response was that this would have a very big impact on the delivery schedule. To my amazement the senior people started to laugh at this point! They also insisted that the project deadlines could not move because they had already promised the dates to clients.
I’m sure that the problem here is fairly self-evident. Double the scope of the project but keep the schedule the same? You would have to be a complete brain-dead moron person with limited experience to even think that THIS was vaguely possible.
I can understand that people don’t like bad news – who does? But to deny it and actively attack the people delivering it, that’s just dumb. We’re not the creators of these things, we’re just reporting reality. Guess what? That quart really doesn’t fit into the pint pot, no matter how hard you try.
On another occasion with the same company, we had a situation where a manager made a successful bid on a contract for a system that involved making significant changes to software components. The manager made up his own estimates for how long it would take to implement the changes without consulting anyone from the software team and without having any personal software development experience.
When the inevitable happened and everyone realised that the bid was completely undeliverable at the bid price and the schedule couldn’t be met due to the underestimates involved, it somehow became the software team’s fault. How does that work exactly? To get out of this the client was lied to, the software team was forced to do overtime for which they were never paid and were castigated routinely for being lazy and useless!
Maybe I’m weird or something. I prefer to know the real situation. Sure the truth can be hard to swallow, but at least if I know what it is, I have a fighting chance of being able to deal with it. If I just avoid or deny that then I’m screwed. Arse-kissing has always been a factor, but when all you have is that kind of person, don’t be surprised when the only thing you have left is a prune-like rear.
This seems to be an issue increasingly apparent in IT work, but recent news on NASA suggests that it is more wide spread.
Interestingly, the behaviours I am talking about are well known and documented organisational anti-patterns. In the same way that in Software Engineering there are documented good solutions for most basic situations, there are also documented bad solutions.
In the case in point we see clear evidence of ‘Management by perkele‘ – where subordinates are deliberately made to be fearful and uncertain in order to instill unquestioning obedience. There is also more than a hint of ‘moral hazard‘ too – where someone is insulated from the consequences of their behaviour and decisions. Finally, the ‘Groupthink‘ pattern is clearly evident too – where people stop promoting ideas that are outside the ‘comfort zone’ of the organisation.
It’s hard to see how any organisation can continue when it suffers from such well known flaws, but has we know bullies are always very inventive in justifying why they act the way they do. It’s also the sad fact that in our culture these types of actions and businesses get away with it because people are just too scared to speak out.
With regard to the ‘laughter’ experience I had. It was explained to me later that I hadn’t handled things correctly. What I should have done was to say nothing, gone away and considered things for a while, worked out the results of the changes and then come back to the senior people with these results.
At which point the answer would have been exactly the same. You see, I didn’t need to take time to consider things and work them out and mull them over. When you double the size of my project I know that the timetable has to shift – what do I need to think about? Not only that but, due to my wily, cunning, nasty, pessimist brain I can even take a pretty good guess as to the size of the timetable shift. Hmmmm hang on, off the top of my head here… ohhh double.
See, that was easy.
So heaven is a ‘fairy story’, declares Stephen Hawking in an interview with The Guardian newspaper. In the interview he relates how he regards the brain as merely a ‘computer’ that stops working when its parts break down, and that belief in heaven is a comfort for people afraid of the dark.
I can hardly wait for the mumblings, accusations and attacks to begin. Although this particular viewpoint has been stated many times in the past by many people (including myself), the fact that someone as high profile as Stephen Hawking IS saying it will no doubt have every religious extremist and nut-bag ’alternative living’ zealot in the world up in arms.
I remember discussing religion with a devout Muslim, during which I was asked what I believed in and answered simply “nothing”. My acquaintance indicated disbelief at this and suggested I must believe in Christianity or a number of other religious possibilities. I then explained that, as far as I was concerned, anyone who believed in such things was clearly both delusional and insane – “you’re all mad”.
I knew the person well enough to know that they were a gentle person and would not get upset by the expression of my opinion; though I would have said much the same even if I didn’t know that.
When I was younger I read a lot of books about myth and legend from multiple sources – Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Scandinavian, Indian, North American and more. They were always interesting and often had a lot in common with each other.
One of the things that struck me, even at such a young age, was that almost all of these tales were, at one time believed to be real; people actually worshipped, gave sacrifice, planned their lives on the basis of these screwy tales of god, giants, flying horses etc. and again which were clearly pure unadulterated rubbish.
So then when I looked at the ‘modern’ religions, it was clear that this was just more of the same. If these ancient legends were all wrong, how could the modern versions be any truer? Again it’s just nonsense of the highest order.
Apparently we are pre-disposed to believe in god and the afterlife, but I guess in my case the brain-washing didn’t take. Though, as the person leading that research describes himself as an ‘observant Christian’ and believes that God is ‘all-knowing, all powerful’, he can hardly be classed as an impartial observer. 
Let the mud-slinging commence!
That’s me, today. Numb. Disassociated. Not really connected to any feelings, good or bad. Just… tired.
Too many things going on. Too busy. Too much to think about. Too many decisions to make. Eventually a fuse blows and there you have it.
Numb.
I suppose some people might see this as a positive phase. No real emotion, so no bad emotion. Unfortunately it’s not really like that. It’s really a complete lack of emotion, apart from an almost overwhelming sadness and sense of loss.
At times like this no one can help you. No one can reach you. People and relationships that you normally covet and help sustain you feel hollow and empty – devoid of any sense of reality or substance. You can sit there for literally hours not being able to conjure up anything that is remotely positive. Positive doesn’t exist.
When I was younger I would often go out for walks in major storms when I felt like this. Hoping that somehow the storm could dissolve me, turn me back into my constituent parts and wash me away forever. I had a quiet spot on top of a hill that always bore the brunt of any local weather patterns. I’d go there usually dressed in completely inappropriate clothing and wish for the storm to somehow remove me.
What do you do when your heart is colder than the ice storm around you?
Lessons – unlearned
The Financial Stability Board, backed by the G20 members, was set up in 2009 after the financial meltdown to monitor and regulate international banking.
Last Friday they announced their list of banks “too big to fail”; this list includes twenty-nine banks. It probably comes as no surprise that many of those listed were also recipients of some of the largest bailouts from their respective governments. These include:
Add all of that up and you have over 350 Billion dollars of bailout; not including many other international banks I haven’t listed that were also recipients of bailout money or at least ‘protected’ in one way or another from the consequences of their selfish and stupid gambles.
These banks, their directors and staff continue to be the beneficiaries of huge profits and disgusting bonus rewards, while the rest of us work our collective asses off to pay for their mistakes. This is a level of payback that will see us through most of our lifetimes and more than likely into our children’s lifetimes.
The reason we are in such a mess is because when things started to go wrong in 2007/8, all of these banks were considered ‘too big to fail’ and were handed barrow loads of cash with no strings attached. Even while taking this money, the bankers continued to pay themselves huge salaries and ridiculous bonuses, rewarding themselves for their ‘success’ with amounts beyond avarice.
And now the FSB is making exactly the same mistake. Lessons from history are often difficult and painful – but now we don’t even learn them after the fact. Parasites like this should be left to fail; they need to learn the lessons and consequences of their own actions.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana