Ploafmaster General

Peep this slick video of the first test flight for Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGWk_rfq_bM&w=425&h=350]

Space travel fascinates me, but it's one area where I feel it's hurtful for our US Government to spend money, particularly when there's so much else that needs attention.

I say leave space tech to private industry for now, where the investment doesn't take money away from environmental programs, education, and social programs.

With people like Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson throwing lots of money into space flight, we're not far from an age where space travel becomes as attainable as air travel.

Never has it been so difficult for me to plop back into the daily routine.

It's only my second day back after my vacation, and I'm having serious motivation problems at work.

Though not really thinking of it as a "New Year's Resolution" until just now, I've decided over the course of the last week that 2007 would be the year I start performing free lance work on the side. I imagine it will take me a few years to build up any real business outside of my current occupation (and sufficient business to someday leave my current occupation), but I have to start sometime, and this year is it.

My growing distaste for working in a corporate environment has lighted the proverbial fire 'neath my arse to finish up my Ruby on Rails books and get programming.

Happy New Year!!!

Lucky number 7 on the first day of ought-seven!

As usual, post your questions in the comments section, and I'll pick one by Wednesday for answering on Friday.

Ciao!
Daniel

My wife got me "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes" for Christmas - truly one of the best gifts ever received by yours truly. The entirety of Bill Watterson's decade of genius bound smartly in three lovely hard-cover volumes, contained then in an equally eye-catching box. Each page is a faint creme color so as to set off the pure white daily strips, three to a page, with the publication dates at the bottom. The Sunday prints fill an entire page in full color, also with the publication date at the bottom.

I know what I'll be reading during my week off :-)

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”- Isaiah 9:6

Merry Christmas, everybody :-)

Peep this dude's incredible cover of Hendrix's "Little Wing":
[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31QQ1gNpAaY&w=425&h=350])

I just hit an excellent link off Kottke's site for the DrawerGeeks. These folks create clusters of illustrations depicting fictional characters and themes. They've covered everything from Harry Potter to childhood nightmares, and below is a fine example from their Santa Clause set:

As I got off the interstate this morning on my way to work, I pulled up behind, then beside a city bus covered in an ad graphic. Nothing peculiar about that in general, except this bus was wrapped to look as if it was driving in the opposite direction. The back of the bus was made to look as if there was a front windshield with the driver and a marquee that read, "Life comes at you fast", and along the side, you could see "windows" with terrified or at least worried passengers staring out. Below the windows you could see the Nationwide logo.

Pretty clever, boys. Pretty clever.

I was in Target yesterday shopping for a Christmas gift for my Mother-in-law when I approached the Electronics section. There he was - a tall, nerdy looking gentleman speaking enthusiastically to some would-be customers by the Microsoft Zune kiosk.

As I neared the fellow, I could hear him extolling the virtues of the little would-be iPod competitor. Why on earth would somebody be so excited about this device which has received so many lukewarm reviews by periodicals and consumers alike?

The camera tightens on a badge dangling from the guy's neck beside an "XBOX" logo on his shirt, and we see Microsoft employee credentials.

There it is. A paid, card-carrying MS stooge hawking sub-standard electronics to unsuspecting shoppers on the basis of what you can do with the Zune "when it gets popular." This man was on the premises from 10 am to 6 pm every day until Christmas, sanctioned by Target, to promote MS' non-software wares - the Zune and XBOX.

Blech. Just what I need at my big-box retail chain...a salesman.

What it is, my doge?

Time for week six in the dopey Ask Dan series. I know there's but one week 'till Christmas, but I have nothing to do at work these last few days, so bring on the questions!

Post 'em in the comments section, and as usual, I'll pick one by Wednesday, answering on Friday.

Please, oh please, oh PLEASE go straightway to my brother Mugs' site and read his latest poem.

It's terrifying, haunting, and awesome.

And Mugs? Now that you're pretty much finished with the semester, how 'bout putting up some more of your stuff?

I noticed a change in The Weather Channel's website. There are new icons for the different types of weather on the forecasts.

I suppose they were attempting to be more stylish; certainly not more realistic - the new icons are still somewhat cartoon suns and clouds.

What bothers me is that the new icons are actually less clear than the previous versions. If you're using any screen resolution over 800x600, then the differences between "partly cloudy" and "mostly clear" are meaningless. One gray blob versus another? Please.

Yeah, yeah, I could just read the words. But in my opinion it's poor design. Not that Weather.com is going to win any design awards :-)

Imagine you had a Starburst candy. You unwrap it and are greeted by the faint aroma of strawberry, so you toss the chewy morsel 'twixt your choppers and start gnawing.

Then you remember that it's not Starburst, but Zicam, masquerading as strawberry candy until the fifth stroke of your jaw, whereupon you realize that the "candy" is a starchy, chalky paste which threatens to coat the entirety of your mouth's interior with it's unholy textured homeopathy.

Ack! I need to wash this foulness out of my mouth. But WAIT! I can't drink anything for fifteen minutes - thirty if it's citrus! No matter, I'll just eat somthi -- nope. Can't eat anything for fifteen minutes either. Drat.

I'll just have to stick it out for a little bit.

And repeat every three hours.

I think it's time for my annual malady, and it appears to be striking me around the same time as last year - in that precious home stretch before my 10 day Christmas break.

Thankfully, I've started hitting the Zicam much earlier this time, so my hope is the illness will depart soon. Last year was a self-inflicted hell - dragging myself to work so I wouldn't have to give up any of my days off between Christmas and the New Year. I'm hoping I don't "have" to do that again this year.

I just have to report that one of my best friends, and indeed one of the two best men in my wedding, Dave - proposed to his girlfriend last night atop Libbie Hill Park. Naturally, she said yes :-)

I'm not sure exactly when they'll be getting married, but I believe it will be sometime in the summer.

This is the kind of news that makes me happiest - hearing about the joyous events in the lives of my friends and family.

Go Dave!

Just a quick note before I head out to a party...

Val and I got our Christmas tree today, and it's all decorated now! It really feels like home!

Now we have to decorate the rest of the house!

Q: How does a Thermos work?

A: You know, everybody asked relatively mundane questions this week - even Jake, though asked in a goofy tone. Unless I were to make up patently ridiculous answers, it's pretty difficult to make any response humorous. So I chose the question that I recklessly assumed my half-dozen readers know the least about. The Thermos.

The Thermos, of course, is a colloquialism of "Vacuum Flask" much in the same way the we Americans use Kleenex to describe a tissue. For simplicity, and the sake of efficiency in my otherwise bombastic typing style, I'll refer to our subject as a Thermos.

Continuing down the road of reckless assumption, I'm going to postulate that we all know the main purpose of a Thermos: to keep hot things hot, and cold things cold. A rather rustic description, but adequate no less. So, to paraphrase the question posed by my brother Mugs: How does it work?

The theory behind a Thermos is to remove as much of the transfer of heat between an object and its surroundings as possible. This works because of a vacuum surrounding the flask (go figure). "Why does this work?" you ask. Why, I'm glad you inquired! Let's talk about the riveting world of heat transfer!

There are three ways to transfer heat: conduction, convection, and radiation.

Conduction is the direct transfer of heat from one body of matter to another: the heating coil on your stove gets hot, and it's in direct contact with the bottom of your sauce pan. It conducts heat from the coil to the pan, bringing your red sauce to a slow boil that spits flecks of staining marinara all over your stove top and surrounding counter. Next time put a lid on it, buddy.

Convection is transfer of heat through flowing matter, most typically gas or liquid. This is how a convection oven works - hot air blows over the food. Because the air is moving, the turkey in the oven that you forgot to thaw doesn't get a chance to cool off the surrounding air. That surrounding air is constantly replaced. Convection is the biggest culprit in home heating and cooling problems, and that's what 99% of home insulation is designed to block.

Radiation is transfer of heat through electromagnetic waves or particles, such as microwaves or light. There need not be any contact between matter for radiation to work because radiation heats by exciting the particles with which it comes in contact; in the same way you warm up by jumping around in place while waiting at a cold bus stop, the particles heat up when the radiation causes them to vibrate in place.

The vacuum in a Thermos prevents two of the three forms of heat transfer - conduction, and convection. The inner wall of a Thermos is surrounded by a vacuum which cannot transfer through conduction because there's no matter inside the vacuum. The only places to conduct heat are where the inner wall is bonded to the outer wall near the cap, and the cap itself.

There is almost no way to transfer heat by convection when there's an air-tight seal on the Thermos. No air or moisture flow can effect the contents. There are minimal effects of what are called, "convection currents," but the impact is so negligible as to be nearly ignorable (unless you kept something in the Thermos for weeks).

Even though radiation can heat through a vacuum, we rarely have to worry about radiation affecting the contents of a Thermos. The outer wall of the Thermos blocks light, and you wouldn't be microwaving a Thermos unless you intended to heat it. Certainly we don't worry about radiation cooling the contents of the Thermos.

There you have it! My thermodynamics course in college found a use after all - the bloated pedantry of a blogger!

Start thinking of your questions for next week's installment!

Man, I've been hooked on Heroes since the first episode. But now I have to wait until the vaguely-defined period of "until the new year" before another new episode.

I still feel like it's a total rip-off of the X-Men concept. I still think half of the acting is cheesy.

I still think the show is totally freaking awesome.

Heroes is like the Pop Music of TV shows. Not a lot of substance, but full of hooks, and just good enough to get stuck in your head. The next new episode (whenever that is) can't get here soon enough.

I have to link to this hilarious post on my friend Alexis' site...SO funny.

Here's a ripe ol' commercial from 80s land:
[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lO4j3wbpZM&w=425&h=350])

Just read a fine piece of humor at a fine site called the nonist.

Chicky-check it.

Hey there, hi there, ho there!

Time for Ask Dan #4. Post them thar questions in the comments section, and I'll pick on by Wednesday evening, answering by the end of the day on Friday.

Howdy howdy!

My parents are truly lucky. Nestled in the middle-of-nowhere town of Keysville, VA, they have access to pizza and Italian food that's hard to beat until you travel north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Pino's Pizza serves up some of the finest pie outside of New Jersey, and certainly better than most anything I can find in Richmond. I have to drive at least 15 minutes to find passable fare while my country-dwelling parents are about a mile from a treat.

I gathered new appreciation for the joint today, however, when Val and I took my mom and step-dad to Pino's for lunch in celebration of Mom's birthday. See, we used to get pizza there almost every Friday evening when I lived at home, and Mom and Paulie continued that tradition even after all the kids were out of the house. I found out when entering the restaurant, however, that my parents had stopped going regularly in the interest of preserving their collective health. Mimo, the proprietor, chided Paulie in a thick Sicilian accent for his absence, but was clearly happy to see us show up. Discussion, as between friends, followed for a few moments about zeppoli (an off-the-menu treat), life, and work before we were told to sit wherever we liked.

Paulie and my mom are each half Italian which is rare in a small Southern town, so perhaps that enables such camaraderie, but it was pleasant to see a business owner treat a regular (or former regular) with such genuine friendliness. In honor of my mom's birthday, ALL OF US were offered a serving of tiramisu. While I paid for the meal at the front counter Paulie, Mimo, and I discussed off-the-menu ideas that would bring my parents back to regular status.

I left with a feeling of connectedness to that establishment - a mutual feeling of provision, in that we provided a portion of the success of Mimo's business, and he our gastronomic pleasure. I felt a real desire to foster that feeling of neighborliness - an Old World interconnected sense of community, whereupon each citizen contributes to each other's well being. A sense of community that's fading even from the small towns here in the American South, where you know the tailor, the butcher, the restaurateur, the mail man, the sheriff, etc.

This is what draws me so to small businesses. I want to operate one. I want to work with them. I want to help them succeed. I want them to help me succeed. I'm not talking about a veiled form of nepotism here - I'm talking about community.

Not to implicitly create a Dan Asks post, but am I a bad person for going to my company's "holiday" party exclusively for the free food and alcohol?

I feel less and less connected to Corporate America with each passing week and with the exception of a few coworkers on my team, I stared blankly around the reception hall this evening, wondering what the heck I was doing there.

Of course, by fabulous chance, the John Wynntet was the band, and they definitely rocked "Take the A Train" and "So What."

And my oh my...the roast beef was awesome.

Holy crap...It's McSweeney's time again, folks.

Read this collection of food reviews, but take particular note of the description of "oven baked brownie squares."