The Red Brick Times

Yet more deceptive marketing. The way things are going perhaps this is where the industry is headed.
Posted 8:32 AM by whatley 0 comments

I visited the Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson AFB outside of Dayton last Monday. I was scheduled to work in Cincinnati the following Tuesday anyway so I decided to take Monday as a vacation day, hit the museum, then go on to Cincy for a motel room that night. This left me bright and bushytailed for work there Tuesday morning and the company payed for the whole thing. Nice.

My first impression of the museum was how popular it is. The parking lot is huge and was damn near full up with cars from everywhere, tour busses, school busses, RV's, you name it. I had to park what seemed like a half mile away from the enterance on a beastly hot day making the walk not much fun. The buildings themselves are two, soon to be three, extended blimp hangers, so lots more (air conditioned) walking inside. The exibits are nicely arranged so that you start out with the beginnings of aviation (at least as it applies to the USAF) and move along through WWI, II, Korea, etc. Yeah, I know, a little too warlike for my tastes to but hey, it is on a military base. I'd allowed up to five hours to see the whole thing but finished in less than three. This was because I didn't read every item in every exibit (you'ld be there two days if you did) and to be honest there were so many young kids in tour groups running around that I felt swarmed, so I moved it along more quickly than I might have otherwise. All in all a nice experience though.
Posted 1:17 PM by whatley 0 comments

Lots of dryness. Things turning brown. I am deep-watering my trees and bushes to keep them alive for next year. I set the hose to release a bare trickle of water and set it down at the base of the tree. Then I move it 24 to 48 hours later. Longer for the big oak, lesser for the evergreen bushes. But the lawn seems to be a lost cause. Last year's summer dry spell killed patches, and this year's is enlarging them. I see a large roto-tiller and truckloads of topsoil in my future.

Fortunately, I found the site about Organic Lawn Care For the Cheap and Lazy. Good advice about watering and what it should be doing for the plants, and about fertilizing to give nutrients to the lawn to make it strong instead of to kill competing species by toxic means.
Posted 2:09 PM by Andy Allan 0 comments

I have been following in Russ' footsteps. Although my 10-year-aged Taurus is behaving very well, for some unkown reason I feel that it is time to change cars. Perhaps it is because I have been trying to purchase a co-worker's 1999 Sable for a year, and he keeps saying "I will let you know next Wednesday" and then being on vacation for the following week, or "I am negotiating with the dealer for a new car now" and then puts the Sable in the body shop to have the mirror and a couple of scratches repaired. But after a year of pursuing by non-pursuit, I am fed up with the delaying and havering. He has lately been blaming the "Missus" for making us wait for his decision. I don't care. So when the recent spate of 0.0 percent terms were announced, I thought, "Why not. Free money for 5 years." and started my pursuit via the internet for current dealer inventories. Simply put, in a world of trained and self-styled "experts" who market and sell cars, nobody seems to think of "car" as a functional package first and a suit of ego second. Put on a car, put on your persona. Change your self to be the car. Be all that you can be as long as it fits the ad agencies' image of you in your steel, aluminum and plastic chariot of becoming something else.

We must be a people addicted to perching on the backs of lesser creatures, if the frequency of leather upholstery is indicative. Hot and sweaty in summer, cold and stiff in winter, prone to drying and cracking without regular care, hideously expensive and unlikely to hold you in place on a hard turn, leather seats are largely decorative. Have you ever watched people when they encounter a car with leather upholstery? Their first glance includes eyebrows raised slightly in recognition. The second glance is a close look at the surface, accompanied by a seemingly innocent touch with the hand on the seat back, as if for support before getting into the car. Then there comes the slight "sniff" for the scent of leather. If indeed it is recognized as leather, and not common vinyl, there appears a slight smile about the mouth, a subtle pursed-lips expression of appreciation to go with the raised eyebrows, or better yet, a quick glance at the owner/driver to acknowledge luxury status. I must be odd, since I tend to react more to durable cloth seating than to leather. Maybe it is because I know that most manufacturers have been reducing the leather content in the seats, making the backs, skirts and bolsters out of vinyl with leather reserved for "select seating surfaces." The vinyl can be made to look better and resist stretching, wrinkling and sagging. Leather does not do so well, especially in the staining and cleaning department.

So after driving Explorers (too expensive and I am tall enough to look through the sun visor even when the power seat is all the way down), Tauruses ( high-end 24-valve engines with leather and moonroof and 6-Disc CD changer and automatic temp control) and Tauruses (low-end 12-valve engines with cloth and AM/FM no-cassette) and Windstars (a very expensive station wagon on growth hormones) I have decided to do nothing for now.

The vehicle I really want is a station wagon on growth hormones AND steroids, an Andre the Giant of station wagons, with few pretensions of civility or ego-mania. The E-350 8-passenger full-sized van. It moves anything. It tows anything. It can go 500-600 miles between (35-gallon) fillups. It doesn't go fast. It doesn't corner or handle particularly well. It doesn't get good gas mileage. It will last for at least 10 years before it is reduced to a mixed pile of oxide and oil smoke. There are fleet users who have 200,000 to 300,000 miles on their commercial-use E-Series chasses before they get new ones. My father's 1977 Econoline that he bought new and used for work was rusty but still doing fine when I sold it in 1995. And they are large. If I am going to go head-to-head with a cell-phone yakking, coffee-swilling, newspaper-reading, half-asleep brain-dead high-school-trained sleep-deprived and distracted GMC Yukon driver, I feel that the inertia dissipating crush zones of this vehicle may provide some margin for survival. A couple of years ago, a test-drive Econoline was stopped at a traffic light near Sandusky. A new Oldsmobile was stopped behind it. An older Econoline, the driver distracted by his fractious offspring, rushed up and smashed the Oldsmobile from behind. Nobody was seriously hurt, but the Olds was folded, totalled, gone. The older E-Van needed a grill, headlights, bumper, hood and some metal straightening. The test-drive E-Van needed a rear bumper, rear doors and new spare tire bracket. They both drove away. I saw another one that had been rear-ended by a slow-to-stop Semi tractor-trailer rig at a red light. Same deal - rear trim, doors, minor sheet metal and cosmetics. Can't beat that. I have travelled to Prudhoe Bay and back in these vehicles, Ohio to Montana towing a trailer, Cleveland to Key West. I know the critter and can accept the compromises. Even if it cannot outrun a Peterbuilt pulling a flatbed hauling a Ferrari North on the West Virgina Turnpike. That was embarrasing, but true. I think the Ferrari as cargo had something to do with it.

So within the next month or two, I will see how things work out. Since there are no 2002 E-Series passenger wagons left in the market (there are plenty of commercial vans with racks and bins and no passenger seats), I will wait for the 2003 models and see how the numbers fall out. For the 2002, the prices for a well-equipped E-350 were comparable to the high-end Taurus and much less than the Explorers and Windstars. And the Explorer fuel economy is the same as for the E-350. Go figure.
Posted 2:49 PM by Andy Allan 0 comments

During all of the electricity flow last night, I couldn't remember what it was that we counted at night in bed with the covers pulled up to tell how far away the lightning struck. I found it again at Kids' Lightning Information and Safety on the "Flash to Bang Page":

"By counting the seconds between the lightning "flash" and the "bang" of thunder, you can tell how far away the lightning was. Each five seconds equals one mile. If you count 15 seconds, the flash was 3 miles away and you know that you are in a high danger zone. Six miles (30 second count) is still in the high danger zone. "
Posted 8:56 AM by Andy Allan 0 comments

When I bought my house almost five years ago the sellers were, as my buyers agent referred to them, "motivated", meaning I got a really good deal. It was so good that one neighbor got pissed off feeling that they now wouldn't be able to get the price they wanted for their house (they eventually did). My neighbors on the other side were a black family so the joke at the time ended up being that by moving in I lowered the property values of the black family next door.

Over the years that family is the only one in the neighborhood I became friends with. When Fred (the guy next door) and I had to put up fencing recently in response to the construction going on at St. Judes we coordinated it with each other and, get this, put it up everywhere except between our two houses. "No need to" said Fred. That was a nice compliment. Fred was one of the best things about living where I do. He died yesterday, 59, cancer. I miss him already.
Posted 3:03 PM by whatley 0 comments

Another year, another Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
Posted 3:28 PM by whatley 0 comments

I haven't posted a game in a while. Hmmmm.......
Wanna play Battleships?

On a slightly more techy note I found this article very interesting. National Information Security: Is Clarke the Right Man?
Posted 9:55 AM by whatley 0 comments

Should drug companies be pushing their wares (the most profitable ones of course) through all those TV ads? I find it distasteful, and this even more so.

Bonus link, also on Salon: Corporate Crime, a drama in 8 panels.
Posted 8:36 AM by whatley 0 comments

"Twas the night before riding, and all through the house, one big creature was stirring, good thing there's no spouse. The fuel tank was filled to the tip-top with care in hopes of more miles, more sunshine, more air. The luggage was wrestled and tugged and packed tight, and nagging late details trailed far into night. Need to clean off the helmet, old bugs are like glue, and polish the boots 'though they'll never look new. Go grab some quick zzz's so all will be right when 'tis time to roll out before dawn's early light. If you want, please follow, and pardon my dust. Crank it up to warp six. Ontario or bust!
Posted 11:00 PM by Andy Allan 0 comments

Remember the Woody Allen movie Sleeper where he's accidently cryogenically frozen and wakes up in the future? In one of the first scenes after waking he notices that all the doctors in the room are smoking. When he asks them why smoking hasn't been eliminated by now they laugh at him and say that since his time science has discovered that smoking is extremely healthy, the joke being of course that scientists don't know as much as they think they do. Smart guy that Woody. (NY Times link - requires registration)
Posted 11:22 AM by whatley 0 comments

The West Nile Virus is spreading with the mosquito and bird population. Crows and Blue Jays are the usual victims, although most infected birds survive. Mosquitos can give humans the virus, although most humans never know they have it, and the incidence of fatal encephalitis is about 1 in 1000 cases. It has been known since 1937 in Uganda, and can also affect horses. Hey, a Virus is just life trying to survive. It is probably good for the animal and plant population as a whole to have these stresses and dynamic interactions, but that is little comfort to sentient individuals who face their own mortalities.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has a web page with maps of the Virus for human, mosquito and bird populations for the West Nile Virus. And don't forget the Deet when you go outdoors. Also, look around your house and home and dump, fill, overturn or cover those places that have teeny little puddles of water standing in them. They are perfect little hatcheries for new hordes of mosquitos.
Posted 12:03 PM by Andy Allan 0 comments

An American
The following was said to have been written by a dentist in Australia.

"You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American. So I just thought I would write to let them know what an American is, so they would know when they found one.
An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani, or Afghan. An American may also be a Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.
An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim.
In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses. An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.
An American is from the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each man and woman to the pursuit of happiness.
An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need. When Afghanistan was overrun by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country. As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in
Afghanistan.
Americans welcome the best, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best athletes. But they also welcome the least. The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America. Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, earning a better life for their families. [I've been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 other countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.
So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and every bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.


Posted 11:39 AM by Andy Allan 0 comments

Makes sense when you think about it.
Dear fellow fisherpersons, Don't throw the small ones back thinking they'll grow up to be big ones. Keep 'em and eat 'em instead.
Posted 11:17 AM by whatley 0 comments

Warning Time Becomes Issue in Air Collision
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS


ÜBERLINGEN, Germany, July 2 — With bodies and smoldering wreckage scattered across 20 square miles of fields and woodland here, Russian, German and Swiss authorities argued today about the causes of a midair collision that killed 71 people, 52 of them children headed to Spain for an end-of-school vacation.

The search for the cause of the crash, which involved a DHL overnight-delivery plane flying to Brussels and a Bashkirian Airlines jet en route to Barcelona from Moscow, was complicated by several factors, one of them Europe's balkanized air traffic control system, which involves 49 separate traffic control authorities.

Stricken parents in the Russian region of Bashkortostan in the western foothills of the Urals struggled to come to terms with the loss of their children as they made plans to travel to the crash site.

Many were tortured by the fact that the group would not have been on the ill-fated plane if a tour operator had not taken them to the wrong airport, causing them to miss their originally scheduled flight.

At 11:30 p.m. Monday night, just five minutes before the crash, German air traffic controllers "handed over" the Russian plane to their Swiss counterparts, who were already tracking the cargo jet.

Swiss and Russian officials traded accusations today, with Swiss controllers saying at first that the Russian plane had not reacted to their warnings until it was too late.

Officials at Sky Guide, the Swiss air traffic control authority, said that they began warning the Russian plane two minutes before the crash and that they twice ordered it to descend, but that the pilots did not react until 50 seconds before the crash. But the officials later said their warning came closer to one minute before the crash.

It "was not irresponsible," but it was "fairly tight," conceded Anton Maag, chief of tower at the Zurich airport.

Even then, the Russian plane's descent might have avoided a crash had it not been for the automated collision avoidance system on board DHL's Boeing aircraft. It detected the collision course about the same time the Russian plane started to descend, and sent the Boeing downward as well.

The outlines of what happened in the Monday night collision of the Boeing 757 cargo plane and the Russian Tupolev airliner left most officials convinced that the crash had resulted from human error rather than technical problems or terrorism.

The midair collision created a fireball that lit up the sky and terrified residents of this bucolic vacation region. But nobody on the ground was hurt by the tons of flaming metal that rained down, some of it landing within a few hundred yards of houses and farms.

Russian officials angrily insisted that the fault did not lie with either their pilots or their aircraft.

"My theory is that this is the fault of the air traffic controllers who brought the two airplanes together in midair," said Nikolai Odegov, general director of Bashkirian Airlines, at a news conference in Ufa, the hometown of many of the Russian victims, according to the Interfax news agency. "There are no grounds at the moment to suggest that the crew lost control of the aircraft."

The collision dispersed debris so widely that rescue workers recovered only 12 bodies by early this evening. Investigators said gathering the wreckage would be a lengthy process.

A big section of the fuselage of the Boeing 757 crashed in a patch of woods in the village of Taisersdorf. Two of its jet engines landed on separate hillsides nearly a mile away. The tail section and engines of the Tupolev landed in a wheat field, while part of the fuselage and some bodies landed several miles away.

Workers recovered the cockpit voice recorder and the "black box," or flight data recorder, from each of the planes, The Associated Press reported.

Residents and vacationers here recounted with varying degrees of shock and disbelief the thunderous explosions and nightmarish sight of burning aircraft wreckage falling to earth.

"I was up watching TV when I heard what sounded like this outrageous thunder, except that it continued for a long time," recalled Hermann Schmidt, who was vacationing with his family at a farm a few hundred yards from where a big part of the Boeing fuselage crashed.

"I ran outside," Mr. Schmidt said. "The sky was incredibly bright, and I saw four things that looked like comets fly over the roof of the house and land in the woods. I ran back in, woke my wife and children and yelled that a plane had crashed and they should get out of the house."

Shortly afterward, the fuselage crashed into the nearby trees and set off a small forest fire. The aircraft parts tore down tall pine trees. Flames leapt to treetops more than 40 feet high, witnesses said, describing heat so intense that people could not get close enough to look for possible survivors.

Firefighters and rescue workers showed up within a few minutes, but they were stretched thin because plane parts were falling in many other spots as well.

Firefighters extinguished most of the blazes by dawn. Today the woods containing the Boeing fusilage parts were blackened and smoldering as workers picked through debris and police dogs tried to sniff out the remains of victims.

As of early evening, the bodies of the two crew members aboard the DHL plane had not been located. The two were identified as Paul Phillips, 47, of Britain and Brant Campioni, 34, of Canada.

Oswald Schulz, an occupational therapist in the village of Deisendorf, said he had just gone to bed when he was jolted by explosions high overhead.

"I ran outside and I saw three bright pieces in flames that were slowly floating to the earth," he recalled today. "They were very big pieces, and I was struck by how slowly they seemed to drift down."

Diana Walk, who was at a swimming pool with her brother Sasha and a friend, said she had struggled at first just to make sense of what was happening.

"We heard this enormous crash, and we looked up and saw this huge fireball," she said. "Several huge pieces were falling to the ground. I ran into a kiosk, saying that a plane had just crashed, and people said that was just impossible."

The tail section of the Tupolev plane crashed and split apart in a field about a quarter-mile from a small cluster of houses that included a school for physically disabled children.

Posted 11:38 PM by Andy Allan 0 comments

Happy Guy Fawks day.

The Los Angeles Fire Department has a Virtual Fireworks Display that is guaranteed to leave you with the same number of fingers as you currently have. Click it and it runs. Suutable for use as a screen saver if you turn down the audio (lots of bangety-bangety), but it is fairly ho-hum.

Phantom Fireworks has a much better site. You download a show (about 1 Mb or so) and it lets you choose different city skylines over which the rockets red and blue and purple glare, including Cleve-town's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Push a button while the display is going on and add your own rocket. You can choose Willow, Peony and a couple of other display types. More interaction. FYI - Phantom Fireworks has several Ohio Locations. You have to sign the legal paper that you will remove the ordnance from within the State of Ohio boundaries within 72 hours of purchase for non-Ohio residents and within 48 hours for Ohio residents. Stores in Mansfield and on Route 2 in Curtice, Ohio (East of Oregon). See the locations part of their web site for details. They also offer a Fireworks Screensaver that you can download. Enjoy Guy Fawks day all year long!


Posted 8:50 PM by Andy Allan 0 comments

I just noticed that the "by line" is no longer reporting the poster's name. This is a Blogger glitch that they're working on.
Posted 10:10 AM by whatley 0 comments

Latest Google game thingee: search the exact string "yourname is" as in "whatley is"

Whatley is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon
Whatley is the first recipient of the award
Whatley is dean
Whatley is working with hundreds of Landscape Architects
Whatley is producing a series of high-impact post cards
Whatley is currently not scheduled
Whatley is a little anal retentive

(Note: That last one, as I'm sure you know, is completely untrue.)

Posted 10:08 AM by whatley 0 comments