A Squirrelly Situation

The situation with the ground squirrels in Finch Arboretum is rising to the level of national attention. The Spokane Parks and Recreation Department has been using a product know as the Rodenator Pro to cause small underground explosions to kill ground squirrels which are detrimental to the trees in the arboretum. I don't know if blowing up squirrels falls under the "Parks" side of the Parks and Recreation Department or the "Recreation" side of the house. It looks like the people that were blowing up squirrels in the video I found on YouTube the other day were having a pretty good time.

There is an article in the Spokesman Review that gives a little more background. The Parks and Recreation Department had already started using the Verminator Pro without making any announcements. After they had been using it for a little while, people began to call in. I guess the Parks and Recreation Department hadn't considered that people in the neighborhood would be concerned about hearing explosions in the park. Anyway, people called in to ask what was going on in the park, because it sounded like things were blowing up. The Parks and Recreation Department decided it would calm everybody down by informing the public that they were only blowing up squirrels.

Whoops!!!

Turns out that some people thing blowing up little varmints is kind of mean. How could anyone have seen that one coming?

Here are a few key points that I gleaned from the article:

Rush Limbaugh mentioned it on his show in an effort to tweak the animal rights crowd:

Radio host Rush Limbaugh mentioned the detonation plan on his show Tuesday, saying he wanted animal rights activists “to try this one on for size.”

But Limbaugh focused more on the name of the Finch Arboretum and said it was the first time he’d seen the word arboretum.

“The name for a park, is that what it is?” he asked.

The Humane Society has condemned the practice:

Spokane Humane Society Executive Director Dave Richardson called the “killing of native wildlife” a temporary, unethical and reactionary response to a problem that could be solved by limiting the animals’ food supply.

I am not going to say that one side is right or wrong. But regardless of whether you are in the "Blow 'Em Up" camp or the "Don't Feed 'Em" camp, I think everyone can agree that the people in the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department should reconsider what they are doing:

The Spokane Parks Department once lined burrows with sticks of Wrigley’s juicy fruit gum after hearing rumors that eating the gum would destroy the animals’ stomachs and kill them, Goodspeed said.

Are people that tried to kill squirrels with chewing gum really the same people that we want running around with propane and oxygen explosion generators? Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Blowing Stuff Up...A Northwest Tradition

I haven't had much time to browse the news and see what has been going on. The news has been dominated today by the story of the American ship's captain that was rescued from the pirates. I am happy that he is coming home safely.

As I was browsing the Seattle Times online tonight, I ran across an article entitled "Spokane Parks to Detonate Squirrels." I thought maybe it was just a headline meant to grab peoples attention, but it turns out to be pretty descriptive of the plan.

The Rodenator Pro pumps propane and oxygen into the tunnels of squirrels, then sends an electric spark that causes an explosion. The shock waves kill the squirrels and collapse their tunnels — but in a humane way, the agency said.

Propane, electric sparks, explosions, shock waves, and collapsing tunnels ...well, at least it's humane.

I went and searched YouTube for Rodenator, and there were quite a few videos showing this machine in action.



As the blog title says, we do have something of a tradition for blowing things up here in the Northwest.



Hopefully, the Spokane Parks Department will watch the exploding whale video before they get started and take away a few "lessons learned" from that brilliant idea.

The High Price of Gasoline

Poor Juan Zamora filled up the tank on his Camaro. How much would you think it would cost? Did you guess $81,400,836,908? That is what was charged to his PayPal debit card. Eighty-one billion dollars. Guess there were a few misplaced ones and zeros on this electronic transaction.

Read the story here

The part of the story that really made me laugh was that he had difficulty trying to establish that it was not a legitimate charge. Technology is wonderful.

Living Without T.V.

Well, kind of like living without television. I will be moving in about four months and I am giving some pretty serious thought to not subscribing to any television provider after I move. Right now, I have Time Warner Cable. Most of the time, when I have time to watch television, I find myself aimlessly flipping through channels and finding nothing that I really want to watch. I find it difficult to believe how there can be so little stuff that is interesting to watch when there are so many channels available.

Don't get me wrong. There are several shows that I enjoy watching. They are just on at times that are sometimes inconvenient to watch. If I have to miss an episode, it can be difficult to get caught up with what is going on. My favorite shows include the following:

Heroes, 24, Lost, Scrubs, Monk, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Burn Notice, Law & Order

Other than the shows listed above, the only things that I watch are news and sports. I enjoy watching the local Northwest Cable News.

CNN, MSNBC, FOX news...these channels are all a bunch of crap. All of these channels are so wrapped up in their own agendas, they fail to report news that I find interesting. They are just 24 hours of Conservative Talk (FOX), 24 hours of Liberal Talk (MSNBC), or 24 hours of watching them patting themselves on the back (CNN). Still, I do enjoy watching Northwest Cable News. They have a lot of local interest stories on and they do cover major national and international news.

I also enjoy pro baseball, pro and college football, and college basketball. Still, every year that goes by, I enjoy them less. I find it much more difficult to stay solidly behind a team when there are so few players that stay with a franchise for their careers. It seems that after watching a player develop for a few years or several years, they get traded and you watch someone else come in to play.

Another thing that ticks me off is the negotiations between networks and providers. I missed every NFC regular season and playoff games for an entire season here because of a dispute between FOX and Time Warner Cable. FOX wanted more money and Time Warner refused. Both of them appealed to customers. Two years later, I am still pissed at both of them. My parents just lost ABC (I think) on Dish Network because of the same crap. Anyway, it pisses me off.

I don't think that the sports and news are of high enough quality to keep me hooked up. I have been looking at various websites for each network, and, with the exception of Law & Order, I can keep up with the current season of every show that I enjoy by watching them online. In fact, watching shows over the internet tends to be more enjoyable because there are so few commercials to deal with. There are also a fair number of current and old television shows available at hulu.com. It is not a huge selection, but I can generally find something to watch there as opposed to the aimless channel surfing that I find myself doing with my cable service.

Using the internet to watch my favorite shows also means that I won't accidentally find myself listening to some dude talking about how his book is going to explain how to clean out years of gross, sticky, slimy crap out of my colon while I am eating breakfast. No more erectile dysfunction, KY Jelly, or male enhancement commercials either.

Northwest Cable News also runs most of their video online. That takes care of the news as far as I am concerned. I get most of my news by reading news stories on the internet anyway.

Sports will be the most difficult thing to keep up on. Of course, as I said before, I am not as big a fan of sports as I used to be. I think I can get my fill of sports by listening to the broadcast on the radio and maybe going to a friend's house or a bar if I really have to watch a game.

I figure that between what I can watch online and renting movies from Netflix, I should be pretty well off without enriching one of our cable or satellite television providers. Luckily, I live alone and don't have to worry about an entire family huddling around a computer screen to watch a television show.

Circuit City Closing

Looks like Circuit City is closing its doors for good.

Circuit City, once a bellwether American retailer, is going out of business for good, stripping the nation of its second-largest consumer electronics chain.

Read more from the New York Times

I have to say that I am not surprised, but it is sad to see so many people losing their jobs. Circuit City has more than 30,000 employees. Some of them will probably find new jobs, but most of them will likely end up as another statistic in the next round of unemployment figures.

I have never liked the way that Circuit City ran their business. Read my previous post on the subject. I thought they put way too much emphasis on selling extended warranties and not enough on customer service. I also thought that their upper-level management treated their employees poorly.

I hope the cretins that ran this company into the ground find themselves unemployed for a long time to come, but I fear that won't happen. They will be hired on someplace else because of the "valuable executive experience" that they have. The majority of the deckplate level workers will probably have difficulty finding a good job because their experience is in retail sales, a sector that is being destroyed by the current economic conditions in the United States.

For people that are wondering about their extended warranties, this is what was posted on the Circuit City website.

I purchased an extended warranty (Circuit City Advantage Plan). Will that still be honored?
Yes, absolutely. Our Advantage Plan service is handled through dedicated service companies not affiliated with Circuit City, ensuring that there will be no disruption in your ability to get service for your covered products.

Link to Circuit City Help: General Information

The CEO also addressed this issue in a letter written last month:

Circuit City Advantage Protection Plans^® are offered by a third-party company and are not impacted by transitions in Circuit City's business.

Link to CEO's Letter

Trip Report: Hanford

I just got back from my field trip a little while ago. Surprisingly, we had all except for one student show up on time to leave and the one that was late was less than 5 minutes late, so we got on the road just about the time that we planned to. The van that I was riding in had some pretty bad climate control. On the side of the van I was on, it was like sitting next to a furnace, but the people sitting on the other side were freezing. Other than that, it wasn't such a bad trip down there.

This was my second trip to the reservation. My first trip happened a few years ago when I was driving through the tri-cities and took a wrong turn. That time, I didn't get any further than the sign that said "Hanford" before I figured it out and turned around.

We actually ended up with three foreign national students on the tour. Apparently, it is not that unusual. One of the guys working there said some of the work had once been contracted out to a British company which later sold out to an American company, but apparently several British workers remained employed there.

The foreign students were separated from the main group for a special security briefing where they had their credentials checked a little more thoroughly than the rest of us. I asked one of the girls that had the special briefing what she thought of it. She said, "By the time they were done, I was scared of myself !!"

Most of the trip was spent discussing our particular projects, but they did take us to look at a few other facilities there. It was a fairly interesting trip. My impression is that you have to do a lot of driving if you work there. Very few of their facilities are even close to other facilities. Of course, I guess that is the sort of things that happen when you build a nuclear facility in the middle of the desert instead of in a big city.

All in all, not a bad day. It was kind of long because of the riding around in the van.

Hanford

Figured that I would get in a quick post before I hit the rack. I have to get up early tomorrow to be outside Sloan Hall (where I have most of my classes) at 6:00 a.m. This almost reminds me of meeting outside the NEX mini-mart at oh-dark-thirty in Pearl Harbor to go for a bus ride to the shooting range for weapons qualifications. Instead, I am going on a field trip tomorrow to Hanford. For my senior design project, we are trying to come up with a way to optimize a particular method in the processing of radioactive liquid.

One thing that I thought was kind of odd is that we are not required to be U.S. citizens to go there, or at least to see the nuclear-type of areas. Two of my classmates are foreign nationals. One is Japanese and the other is Mexican. Of course, I am sure that neither one of them has any sinister designs. In fact, one of them is giving me a ride to school tomorrow since we have to leave before the bus starts running in the morning. All in all, I am happy that they get to go with us.

I spent 20 years in the navy working as a nuke. Then I went to college to broaden my horizons. Now in the span of just a few weeks, I got to tour a naval shipyard and tomorrow I get to visit a nuclear reservation. I can feel my horizons broadening as I sit here typing this post.

Well, I guess the navy and/or the nuclear world is my calling. Things could be worse. At least there are some good job prospects out there for me.

Voting Machines

I came across an article on CNN that discusses the glitches that can and have occurred with voting machines in the past and are likely to occur again this election. Some of the problems that I have heard about are:

Paper ballots: Choice is not properly annotated, for example, circling the desired candidates name instead of checking a box.

Optical scanners: The circle on the ballot is not filled out completely or dark enough to register.

Touch screen: Sometimes register the vote for the incorrect candidate, due to voter error or machine calibration. Also susceptible to hacking.

"With early voting under way in 31 states, these problems have already surfaced. In recent weeks, voters in West Virginia, Colorado, Tennessee and Texas have reported that touch-screen machines registered their votes, at least initially, for the wrong candidate or party."

Read the story at CNN by clicking here

Now, I may be guilty of thinking like an engineer, but none of these seem like insurmountable obstacles. So how in the world can our democracy allow an election system that does not absolutely ensure that voters are confident that their vote is not only counted, but counted correctly?

My suggestion would be to design a voting machine that incorporates all of these technologies. Design a voting machine that has one input, a touchscreen, and one output, a printer. There is no need to have any other interfaces or connections to the internet that would allow a possibility of hacking. The voter can input his or her choices using a touch screen, which can tell them immediately which candidate they just selected before moving on to the next choice.

After all of the selections have been made, the machine can then print out a paper ballot similar to those used in optical scanners, with all the selections already filled in. Use of a standard system and printer ensure that all ballots are filled out correctly and that the ballot can be read by an optical scanner. It could even have a positive statement to reassure the voter that the vote was properly cast, for example:

For President of the United States, you have selected:
(insert candidates name).

After the voter has reviewed the printed ballot, they can sign it and put it in a box for later counting with an optical scanner. If, for some reason, the optical scanner can not read a ballot, it can be counted by hand. The positive statement as to which candidate was selected by the voter will ensure that there is no confusion about which candidate was selected if a hand count becomes necessary.

I don't know why we have to tolerate this crazy patchwork quilt that is made up of the various types of machines and methods that create the possibility that votes will not be counted or not correctly counted. Our nation has definitely reached a sufficient level of technology where we can correct these errors.

The New iArmy?

I remember from my first decade of service how slow and cautious the Navy is when it comes to incorporating new technology into it's ships. The differences between my first boat, the USS Shark, and the later submarines that I served on, culminating with duty aboard the USS Tucson, are like night and day. The Navy eventually embraced the idea of bringing it's ships into the 21st century and the results have made the Navy a more capable fighting force. Incorporation of modern computers into many ship's systems has enabled sailors to more efficiently perform the duties that are necessary to make a ship a deadly instrument of war.

The Army is looking at ways to utilize the latest civilian technology to help complete it's missions. The iPhone is receiving some pretty serious attention based on it's ability to incorporate so many useful functions in one small package. The idea of a hand-held communication device, GPS system, camera, photo storage, and a host of other applications has piqued the interest of the Army's technology geeks. One innovative idea is the use of an application that allows the iPhone to control a tactical mobile robot for EOD purposes and for missions on the battlefield.

“The iPhone has tremendous potential as a mobile device for the Army because it really is a computer platform that happens to have a phone in it,” Wallington said.

One Army vendor, iRobot, has seen an application developed for the iPhone to control its PackBot, a lightweight tactical mobile robot capable of performing such dangerous battlefield missions as explosive ordnance reconnaissance, identification and disposal.

Wallington said the same iPhone capability that serves as a control device for digital games can be used to steer and drive the robot."

More from the Army Times

Obviously, the Army will have to do a lot of work to ensure the security of the iPhone is sufficient to allow it to be used for sensitive information. Technology is becoming so sophisticated and they would have to be very certain that there are no "backdoors" that would compromise mission security. I am sure that the Army is well aware of the threat posed by a potential cyber warfare campaign. Widespread use of iPhones in mission planning and execution would provide one more potential opening to that threat.

There are also a few more practical considerations. For example, what if a soldier drops their iPhone in the toilet just moments before a big battle is to take place? He could potentially compromise the mission by dropping out of the communications loop. Even worse, he could become trapped in his zeal to retrieve this vital piece of equipment, similar to the poor fellow in this article.

It gets even worse. The soldiers may find themselves using pit latrines. Dropping an cell phone in a place like that can create a potentially deadly situation!!!

Think I'm exaggerating? Read this article to learn just how deadly this situation can be.

I am sure that the iPhone or an iPhone-like device will be incorporated at some point. They are a virtual gold-mine of applications wrapped up into one tiny little package and that is too valuable to pass up.