We're doomed

This just in. A scientist involved with the development of the Large Hadron Collider has completely destroyed the fabric of space-time in a single quote.

We're doomed.

BRAS for Everyone

I'm taking a graduate class, "Digital Telephony". I have to write a research paper. The topic is going to be a comparison of different broadband services to the home. I'm already researching different types of broadband services, including FTTH (Fiber to the home, which Verizon markets as "FiOS") and DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). While looking through different documents for DSL, I kept seeing the word "BRAS".

That got a Tim Allen, "Bah-ROO!?!?"

It stands for "broadband remote access server". That's a special box in the network that allows for a great deal more of data to flow.

The question is whether the engineers who came up with that acronym were hard up, or just have a sense of humor.

My money is on both.

From the Archive: Republicans are 12.329 Times Better than Democrats, and I Have the Proof!

I originally posted this on my personal web site back in 2003. I decided to add it to my blog. Yes, it's political. I want to transfer as much as possible from the site because it's going to be completely changed.

The original post, with one minor correction, is as follows:

On 11 September 2001, Al-Qaeda mass murderers committed the most egregious attacks against the U.S. that she has ever suffered. Ever since that day, Congress and the American public have asked the question of, "How could the U.S. Government have allowed such a thing to happen?" Mind you, the U.S. had been subjected to attacks from Al-Qaeda before, namely the attacks against the World Trade Center (the first time in 1993), the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the attacks against our soldiers in Mogadishu, Somalia, the USS Cole, and the simultaneous bombings of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya on the African continent. All of these attacks occurred during the administration of Bill Clinton, who entered office on 20 January 1993. The first attack was the bombing of the World Trade Center on 26 February 1993. He had from that date until he left office on 20 January 2001, a total of 2885 days, to deal with the problem. His maximal effort was the launching of cruise missiles at a couple of sites in Sudan and Afghanistan.

After the attacks of 9/11, everyone began pointing the finger at George W. Bush as responsible for "letting this happen". Mind you, he had only been in office since 20 January 2001, a total of 234 days.

Doing a quick bit of math, that means that George W. Bush was being held to the same standard as Bill Clinton. Since Bush only had 234 days to deal with the same problems that Clinton had 2885 days with which to deal, this means that we, the US citizenry, consider Bush, a Republican, to be 2885 / 234 = 12.329 time better than Clinton, a Democrat.

Hence, Republicans are 12.329 times better than Democrats. At least, this is how I see it.

It's At Times Like This That Homeownership Sucks

I was walking through the family room, in an area right next to our laundry room, when I noticed that the floor is wet. I didn't think anything of it since it's raining outside. It wasn't until a short while later that my wife called me into the kitchen to tell me that there was no hot water. Long story short, the new hot water heater installed less than 2 months ago has a leak. It's not in the water heater itself, but on the output pipe. It's at a difficult-to-reach area between the heater and a wall. It's not hard to imagine that the plumber who connected the pipe had an equally difficult time getting back there to seal it.

Unfortunately, we had water out under out carpet to a radius of about 3 feet. I shop vacced it as well as possible. Then we pulled the carpet, shop vacced it some more, then sat it over some chairs. We have a fan blowing over it. Hopefully, it and the padding will be dry before the weekend is over.

Q is Overrated; Barney Collier is Underrated

Face it, Barney Collier is the be-all, end-all of engineers. As the electronics whiz in "Mission: Impossible" from 1966 - 1973, he was the US response to Great Britains "Q". But he was not simply Q's equal. Barney was the true master. Q was a pompous, beancounting REMF who was not worthy to work Barney's slide rule. Barney didn't put things together, hand them off to the team, and say, "Here ya go. And bring it back in pristine order!" He was right there in the field working them himself. For Q, field work was the exception, not the rule. We never saw Barney in a lab environment, unless it was a field-expedient one. I'll bet Barney didn't even own a lab coat. Q tended to make things that were complex; Barney understood that "complicated" meant "more things that can fail". Barney provided enough technology to solve a problem. Barney, being a field operative, understood all too well that sometimes things go wrong and that the primary law of fieldwork is Murphy's. And if something went wrong, he was there to fix it on the spot. Not sitting back in a lab chiding a field operator for not returning some piece of equipment.

There hasn't been anyone like him since. In the 1980s, "Revenge of the Nerds" premiered. It set back engineering as a respectable profession by two decades. "Nerds" reinforced the stereotype of engineers as spectacle-wearing, pocket-protectored social inepts. Greg Morris, the man who brought Collier to life and a truly underrated actor, refused to play stereotypes. Of any kind. After "M:I", he would fall into obscurity because he refused to play stereotypical black roles. As an engineer, he never played a stereotypical technology buff. He looked just as comfortable in a suit with cufflinks as he did in dirt-covered coveralls. He knew and practiced analog and digital circuit design, electromagnetics, chemistry, physics, and power engineering. But he had no problem with social occasions. I'll bet he knew wines as well as he knew Ohm's law.

You may argue that there are others. MacGyver, for example. He's a tree-hugging hippy liberal, so far as I'm concerned. Doesn't want to pick up a gun? Great. Tell that to a man running at you firing a weapon. Barney never had a problem pulling the trigger if he had to. And sometimes, he did. Put it this way, who would you rather have at your side if you're doing an op? Barney? Or MacGyver?

I thought so.

I'm an Extremist? Yeah, baby!

So, according to a study done by two professors from Oxford University (though one has now moved to University of Durham, England), engineers make up the highest percentage of jihadis. Go figure. You're highly trained in all things technical, where watching a TV show that the guy says "Today, we're going to learn to make plutonium from common household items" sounds like a good time, but you can't get a job because you don't know the right person to bribe.

Oh, and women are strictly verboten.

You have an overabundance of hormones, no outlet, and after graduation, golly, gee, you also have a lot of free time.

Here's what gets me. Engineers are upset by this, calling it "ethnic profiling".

WHAAAAAAAAT!?

Ethnic profiling? Oh, get a clue. Better yet, here's a nickel. Go get a personality. And bring me back my change. I never realized wearing pocket protectors and glasses-with-tape-on-the-bridge made me a legit ethnic group. If so, do my flood pants put me in an extra special category?

Okay, I, a Purdue-trained electrical engineer, am not the least bit surprised by this finding. Not even a little bit. Unfortunately, it's not something I can put into words. I just understand it.

Second, it's this type of information that, if accurate, will help us to either (a) root out these "engineers" and kill them or (b) stop them from becoming bombers and extremists. It's another data point.

So, all you who are calling this "ethnic profiling" need to grow up. Stop trying to kill the messenger. Deal with the message.

UPDATE: I just checked and the paper is not available from the author's web site. Shouldn't be too hard to find elsewhere on the Internet, though.

From 1 to 60 in One Blog

Seems I've made it. Big time. Skippy's List dropped a little love on me during what he coined Operation Leafblower.

I went from 1 comment in 3 years to 60 in a couple of hours. And among the more notable comments, I have:

• You might want to see about making posting easier.
  
• I'm going to say that you probably need to write more entries. You've been around nearly three years, but you only total in at 30 entries.
  
• Turn off owner approval for your comments. You can always go back and delete any offensive/spam comments later.
  

To which I'd have to reply:

• I'll be posting more often, and I've made it much easier to post.
  
• Based on the very perceptive comment posted on Skippy's List, to wit: "good gods, his stuff is dry and boring. Maybe a few booger jokes would increase his traffic." Ya think? Which is why I point people towards "Skippy's List". He and his cohorts are far better writers than I. Face it. Anyone who comes up with the list of things they are not allowed to do because they lived it (as opposed to just fantasized about it) is probably going to be a bit more fun than I. Sorry. Besides, I don't know any booger jokes. Would a good fart joke count?
  
• I've now turned off owner approval for comments. They should go directly to the page once you've posted them.
  

And, for the record, yet another comment back on Skippy's site was: "He’s gonna check his admin page one day and shit bricks at all the comments there." Yes. I did. I was actually trying to figure out how to make a simple change to the page using the "poke and hope" method when I clicked on the tab for comments and saw... everything. I thought, "Holy Crap! The spammers have found me!" Then I started reading the comments and realized, "No, these are for real." THEN I kept seeing "Skippy says Hi", and "Skippy this" and "Skippy that".

Didn't take long to realize that Skippy had passed some love my way.

To which I can only reply, "Thanks, Skip. I owe you one."

Okay, one more rant...

I said in my previous post that I'd turned over a new leaf. I was going to simply blog on technical subjects, especially my interest in the scientific programming of Freemat. Unfortunately, I have to break my fast on all things opinionated.

I'm about to start a graduate program. It's been awhile since I was an undergrad, so I need to freshen up my classroom skills. I've been studying probability, and it's led me to remember one thing I truly hated about textbooks. It's that textbook authors have a penchant for using phrases such as, "it's clear", "it's obvious", "it's easy to see", and "it is apparent". Frankly, those words should be instantly banned from any textbook. Period. Knowledge is a journey with pit stops along the way. The path from one stop to the next is only obvious to those who have been down the path before. Authors must always bear in mind that they've been down a particular path probably many times. The people reading their material, most likely students, have not.

The problem I have is that, every time I see these phrases, if I'm having a difficult time with the material, I begin to feel like an idiot. I mean, the author said "it can be clearly seen", which makes me feel as if I'm on the front of the Titanic, the lookout is screaming "Iceberg ahead!", and I can't see anything but water. Why do they do that? Is it easier than actually spelling out that which is "apparent"? Does it give them a feeling of superiority? Both? Neither?

Regardless, I reiterate my belief these phrases should be banned from all textbooks everywhere.

Obviously.

A New Leaf

Let's see. I've been online now for well over a year, and received a whopping 1 comment for any of my articles. The "Hmmm" factor is going gangbusters here. Considering that most of my posts have been political in nature, and considering that I obviously cannot write a well thought out political piece, I'd say that's a wrap. End of story. Full stop. Think I'll simply point people towards others, such as Mike the Marine and Blackfive (for military discussions) and Skippys List (for humor).Instead, I think I'll concentrate on technical discussions, primarily concerning Freemat and its many uses.
UPDATE: Okay, so I can't read a calendar. I've actually had this blog since November 2005. That means that I've been here for almost *3* years, with only one comment to show for it. One.
Sigh.

One Helicopter Away from Two Pieces of Lead

I'm one of those people that looks at history and imagines what would be if things had happened slightly differently. For example, what if the bomb placed under the table as Hitler was working in early 1945 had worked as planned? On that one, I think the war in Europe would have ended several months sooner. Berlin may not have fallen to the Russians because the Germans would have sued for peace with the Western Allies and surrendered to us. So long as we were able to get the Russians to stop right now.

I look at today's news and the BBC has an article on Mahmoud's visit to Iraq. All hugs, kisses, and kumbye-allah. He even said, and I quote, "Without the presence of the foreign troops the region will live in peace and brotherhood."



And I wonder, what if we hadn't lost all of those helicopters during the raid into Tehran in 1980? What if those Delta operators managed to get into the trucks, as planned, blown out the section of wall on the outside of the US embassy compound, and stormed the embassy? Old Mahmoud is lucky. Very lucky. Because when the Delta guys were storming the building, those holding our people captive were going to get a very special gift, courtesy of Uncle Sam. They were going to get two pieces of lead. Right between the eyes. Despite the fact that this was going to make our then-Secretary of State a bit queasy, they were going to meet their 72 virgins. (And, as Jeff Dunham said, did they realize that no one has ever said those virgins had to be female?)

There wouldn't be any doubt about Mahmoud's complicity in the takeover of our embassy. Because, buried in a file somewhere, would be a picture of his lifeless eyes staring into space, two (probably just one) neat holes dead set between them.

You got lucky once, Mahmoud. Once.