| Профиль пользователя Vijay BangaruDefenestrating things in...ФотографииБлогСписки |  Сервис  Справка |
|
We’ve moved!I’ve moved to www.vijaybangaru.com. For the past month or so, I’ve been busy looking into other options for blogging and hosting photos for the past month or so. I’ve decided to use the Do It Yourself strategy. This MSN Spaces site will stay put as an archive, since I won’t be moving all these posts over to the new site. CS LewisI came across a great quote from CS Lewis:
"Most of all, perhaps, what we need is an intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age."
This is from a speech to university students in the autumn of 1939 as Hitler's army started to roll to the west. It's extremely relevant both then and today. Outsourcing Lego ProductionThe Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that Lego will be closing factories in the U.S. and Denmark, in favor Mexico and the Czech Republic. This is part of the Lego brand redefintion to profitability.
Part of their redefinition was the shift in the children's models from emphasis on building to emphasis on playing. I talked to some of the people in the Lego store and they said that the trend is that building the lego set was getting considering more to be like "assembly" of a toy (like assemblying a bike or something). As a result, the more parents were putting the toy together for their kids to play with.
This led to an increased demand of quick assembly lego kits - mini soccer games or boats with a single piece hull . This is very different from when I was growing up, but the company needs to follow the market trends, so I guess it's necessary.
The nice thing in the new Lego strategy is the emphasis on high-end kits. This includes things like my Star Destroyer or the Mindstorm Robotics kits. The new Mindstorm kits are coming out later this year and have a 32 bit microprocessor, Bluetooth, USB, and 4 types of sensors (ultrasound, sound, light, and touch). We've come a long way since Lego Logo. Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
The book is written with a lot of flashbacks and meandering prose. Though it moves slow at times, we learn Swofford's background, his motivation to join the Marines, and his mindset at the times. Obviously, war isn't glamorous like the commercials and recruitment brochures say, but I was still shocked at the disillusionment felt by the author and his fellow solders. There were a couple of things that stood out while reading this. First, Swofford openly says that there soldiers are not allowed to speak honestly to the press. Second, I was surprised that even though the soldiers felt that they were fighting for other people's causes, they were so excited by the prospect of killing, they didn't care. Since I've never been in the Armed Forces, I can't say first-hand whether this book is realistic or not. I suspect that if you talked honestly to a vet in a bar, he would validate this as a realistic experience of a low-level grunt. That being said, I need to talk to some of the ex-Marines I know to see if they have read the book and get their impressions. Though the book was a NY Times Bestseller, so are Ann Coulter's books. It's best to take the book with a grain of salt for now. Inflation CalculatorThe Bureau of Labor Statistics is kind enough to provide us an inflation calculator.
Some interesting observations from playing with the tool:
- The value of the dollar has dropped 95% since 1913: To have the same buying power of a 1913 dollar, you'd need $20.45 of today's currency.
- A 1980 dollar is now worth $2.46. In other words, to provide the same lifestyle my parents were able to give me, I would have to make 2.46 times what my father made when I was born. Maybe I better get a second job. Or maybe a third. You owe the government half a million dollarsAccording to a story in the USA today, the government has $57.8 trillion in unfunded obilgations. This works out to $510,678 per household that will need to be paid in a combination of tax hikes, inflation and cutbacks in promised benefits.
The breakdown of government program and liability (per household) is as follows:
Medicare - $263,377 Social Security - $133,456 Federal debt - $42,538 Military retirement benefits - $25,443 State-local debt - $16,395 Federal employee retirement benefits - $14,256 State-local retirement benefits - $13,257 Other federal - $1,956 Total - $510,678 per household Football (i.e. Soccer)It's a great time of the year to be a sports fan. We have the World Cup and Stanley Cup finals happening. And if you're into basketball, I think something is happening in that sport as well.
The World Cup is the world championship of football: that game that involves kicking a ball with a foot. It's extremely popular; in 2002, 1.2 billion people watched the championship. That means 1 in 5 people worldwide tuned in.
Leap YearsI'd always thought that leaps years were for any year that was evenly divisible by 4. However, there's a "but" there: except for centennial years that are not divisible by 400. So the year 1900 was not a leap year.
According to wikipedia, this is because:
- The Gregorian calendar tries to keep the vernal equinox on March 21.
- The vernal equinox year is 365.242375 days long
Since it's .2423 and not .25, 3 out of 4 one hundred year periods we need a correction by one day.
The rest of the difference means that every 8000 years we're off by a day.
It's much more complicated then we learned in elementary school. :-) Homeland Security accepts fake IDThe Department of Homeland Security accepted a phony ID bought from a street vendor in California. This is the same agency in charge of keeping us safe from terrorists. X Men: The Last StandWe finally saw “X-Men: The Last Stand” last week. I thought it was pretty good, but I would have preferred more plot and less action/exorcism scenes. I also thought the use of so many well known actors was confusing. I still don’t understand why Frasier was helping Jean-Luc Picard and why Gandalf dumped Pepper Dennis. :-) Entertainment masquerading as JournalismSgt Peter Damon of the National Guard is suing Michael Moore for using an NBC News interview of him without permission. The real issue is that Damon feels that Moore intentionally falsely portrayed him to be anti-war, when he is in fact pro-war. This comes down to the issue that all these documentaries, whether it’s “Bowling for Columbine”, “An Inconvenient Truth”, or, to a certain extent, even “Super Size Me”, are not impartial information sources. This is unfortunate because the name documentary implies that there is a certain element of impartiality. Plus, some people think they are getting impartial info, when they are usually getting very carefully crafted manipulative sounds and images. A good example of this a very humorous edit of one of Bush’s State of the Union speeches. Unlike Bowling for Columbine, which splices together words from different speeches, this edit is, at least, all from the same speech. :-) A more recent example is one of the most popular “news” site, the Drudge Report. When Mexico beat (the soon to be invaded) Iran 3 to 1 in the World Cup, the headline screamed, “MEXICO STOMPS IRAN”. Later, when the USA lost its opener 3 to 0, the headline was a much tamer, “Czechs Top U.S. 3-0...” Things you don’t want to hear when on an airplaneFor Memorial Day weekend, Crissy and I went to Boulder to visit my family. The flight into Denver International Airport (DIA) was uneventful until we got about 30 minutes from the airport. The pilot got on the intercom and said (something to the effect of), “Ladies and gentleman, we have some bad weather around Denver, so we are on a bit of a round-about approach to the airport. There is also chance that we will be redirected to Colorado Springs.”
At this point, I’m a little annoyed. After all, I only get to go home a few times a year for short visits. I don’t want to waste time by driving from Colorado Springs.
Fortunately, we didn’t end up at Colorado Springs, since the pilot started the descent into DIA. We got the usual message about preparing for landing and then shortly thereafter we heard, “Ladies and gentlemen, return to your seats immediately.” When we looked outside, we noticed that it was had gotten very cloudy and there was tons of lightning. The stewardess then mentioned doing a final walkthrough to collect trash.
A few minutes later, the pilot tersely announced, “Flight Attendants take your seats now.” The stewardesses then ran to their seats and one announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, in case of an emergency evacuation, please leave your carry-ons behind.”
At this point, the whole plane is freaking out and the plane is bouncing all over the place as we lower our altitude. When we finally get the back tires on the tarmac, people are starting to relax. Unfortunately, the winds at the airport wanted to do two things: (1) push us off the runway and (2) push us back up in the air.
People start freaking out again and saying dumb things like, “I hope we don’t hit a mountain.” And yes, this person was looking out a window at the mountains which were about 30 miles away.
Finally the pilot managed to get the nose of the plane down and immediately slammed on the brakes. Yay! We landed safely! :-) The Alzheimer CaféThere’s a retirement community on my drive home from work and sometimes they have a sign at the entrance that is quite humorous. For some reason, if you glance at it quickly it reads as, “Alzheimer’s Cafe”. This normally leads to the initial reaction of “That’s pretty distasteful. Why would name something at a retirement community that and then advertise it?” That would be like having a "PTSD Café" at an Army base.
Anyway, I slowed down on the way back from work the other day and confirmed that the sign actually reads, “Alzheimer’s Care”. That makes much more sense. But, think of how crazy that sort of café would be… what would be the chances that you would get what you ordered? Of fast moving pucks and anklesHockey is back: the summer league for the GSHL started a week ago. In my first game of this season (also my first game since before my India Trip), I blocked a slapshot with the inside of my right ankle (not on purpose) and wow it hurts. It's been over a week and it is still really tender and swollen. In fact, just wearing a regular sock hurts, because of the pressure from the elastic.
To answer everyone's question... yes, I do have pads. But there are a few parts of the body that aren't covered and this is one of them. Plus, it's really just skin and bone in that area.
X-ray's didn't show any problems, not even micro-fractures which was surprising. Since I still have full range of motion (though an extremely painful range), there probably isn't really bad tendon/ligament damage. So no need to get an MRI. Right now, the bets are on a really bad deep bruise.
I can continue to play hockey at a reduced (i.e. asymptotically approaching zero) effectiveness. I've been taping my right skate really tight. It limits my agility and speed, but also limits the pain. But with Ultimate and Soccer seasons starting soon, I can't wait to be 100% again. Building an Imperial Star Destroyer (Part IV) - All Done!This weekend I finished the Lego Imperial Star Destroyer. You can see lots of pictures of the work-in-progress and completed with my random comments in the Photos section. Right now it's still sitting on the dining room table. Soon I will move it out of there and then finish unpacking all the random things in that room. Moving and unpacking is funny, you always seem to have boxes that never get unpacked. At home, we have boxes in the basement that were originally packed in 1985. I wonder what's in them...
The Star Destroyer was much quicker to build at the end since it was easier to find the pieces I needed. I guess there were two reasons: (1) I learned which bags had certain pieces and (2) overall there were fewer pieces left to look through. Throughout the project, I was very concerned that the set would be missing pieces, but it turned out that I had a few extra pieces. For a while I thought I was missing a piece and I improvised with pieces from the Lego Store. Later I found the piece I needed and fixed it.
Already I'm seeing some signs of Lego fatigue, so I'm probably going to do some enhancements to the ship before moving it to it's final resting place.
One last thing, there is a docking port at the bottom of the ship that happens to be large enough to fit a rebel ship in. If you want you can replay the beginning of the first Star Wars. :-) Power outagesWe just had a power blip at work and all my computers restarted. D'oh! I now have to restart a build, and find and open the 15 or so websites and documents I was using. Fortunately, most of the others things I'm using have some sort of auto-save so I didn't lose that much work. Stupid Spam Trackbacks!The past few weeks I have been getting spam trackbacks on this blog, so have partially disabled trackbacks. Normally, people would get annoyed at this, but since I have only one real trackback, it probably doesn't matter. :-) China signals it will allow stronger yuanThe Wall Street Journal reports that Beijing will allow its currency to appreciate faster against the dollar. With the dollar sinking recently, the yuan, being closely tied to the dollar, has depreciated quite a bit. This has caused a problem with the influx of cash leading to excessive lending and runaway growth in China.
While this means that our cheap Chinese imports will get more expensive, I'm not sure what the downstream implications are. Central banking with fiat money is a very complex system. But in a global economy, with everyone having fiat currencies, the gold standard in one country may not be a tenable solution.
I read somewhere that since now the dollar is essentially backed by oil (all oil trading is done in dollars), we should just formalize it and switch the economy over to oil. This way you get paid in oil (barrels and gallons) and you can buy groceries with the same. Of course it wouldn't be actual oil. Just like using credit/debit cards, it would all be virtual or abstracted. The Eye of the World and The Great Hunt
I thought both books were quite enjoyable. I've heard (and the amazon.com read comments seem to agree) that this series starts strong and then starts to fizzle. One reader commented that the author realized he had a cash cow in this series and is trying to milk it. If so, he wouldn't be the first fantasy author to do. In any event, so far the books have been good. I'll keep reading until the series slows down (around Book 5?) and then decide if I should keep going. I do have Book 3 right now, but I'll probably try to finish some of the business/leadership books first. Both Winning and The Feiner Points came highly recommended, so I want to get through them. Stupid Live television events...Live TV events (sports, award shows) can cause havoc on the scheduling mechanism on my Media Center PC. The other day I tried to record some hockey or something, but only got Extreme House Makeover. I understand that the nice family needed a brand new house (and probably a lot of money to cover the tax hit), but I wanted to see hockey. Since there was some live event (college basketball?) that went over, everything got pushed out and I missed out.
Tomorrow President Bush is giving a speech; after this Fox is promising to show Prison Break and 24 in their entirety. In case the speech goes long, the Media Center doesn't know and stops recording at the time it thinks my show should end. This means I will miss seeing the end of my show. To compensate, I need to record the Q13 news in case some of 24 is aired during that time. Pretty annoying. I hope Vista has a better solution.
That and at times, my Media Center clock gets out of sync with the real time so I miss the beginning or end of shows. I think it's a driver issue, but I haven't had any time to investigate further. One thing I love about May...... just about whenever you turn on the TV, there's playoff hockey on! :-) UnionsUnions seems to be more in the news nowadays. Like a lot of things, I don't really know what to make of unions. With the sorry state of the US politics, you can't really apply simple political analysis to it. You would think that since conservatives like the free market, they would like the idea that a strong worker's union is a check to the power of a corporation over a solitary worker. Also, liberals would be against it, because it is a non-central (i.e. non-statist) solution to a problem.
But since unions donate to the Democrats, D's love them and R's hate them. Money trumps principles?
As much as you can criticize the corruption that plagues some of the unions, corruption exists in all sorts of entities like government and religion. Plus, lots of things we take for granted today came from the worker rights movement: weekends, health benefits, OSHA, right to quit, etc.
I guess this is a good time to apply the rule, "Everything in moderation". The Last QuestionI recently stumbled on "The Last Question", a short story by Issac Asimov. According to Wikipedia, Asimov rates it to the best short story he has written.
I read it and really liked it. It takes the concept of heat death (a potential final state of the universe with maximum entrophy) and combines it with the philsophical question of the lifetime of the universe.
I don't want to spoil the very clever ending, so I would discuss much more of it. As I read it, I vaguely remembered reading something similar. So it's possible that I had read it a long time ago or read a similar (or plagarized) version before. Building an Imperial Star Destroyer (Part III)This weekend, I finished one of the four panels that go on the internal structure. I also posted photos from the work in progress in the Photos section of the blog.
I did attach the panel to the structure, but then I removed it. It's only held on by 4 small magnets and 3 little clips, so it doesn't feel very sturdy. I'm going to double-check my handy work and perhaps add some more support before continuing. Is it the Doughboy or an Astronaut?
The US army has begun field testing a new water cooled armor suit to Humvee turret gunners in Iraq. The fact that it is water cooled and protects against shrapnel from roadside bombs is cool, but the engineering firm should have consulted a design specialist. The suit is fairly silly looking and probably not intimidating.
Though, if a guy was standing at the turret gun of a Humvee, he could be wearing a Tinker Bell costume and still be intimidating. :-) |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I recently finished reading 
I recently finished Robert Jordan's |
|
