The Red Brick Times

Leaving tommorrow for Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love (not that there's anything wrong with that, or gold lame curtains either). Work stuff - listening to customers cast kudos and aspersions on the product. Hurricane remains led to extensive flooding there yesterday, with one casualty as someone was swept off the sidewalk and under a car. We will be working in a hotel parking lot. Gonna take some rope, I think.

Posted 10:36 AM by Andy Allan 0 comments

Mary Anne and I will be coming in to town for Thanksgiving weekend. Any chance of seeing people Friday night?

Posted 9:54 AM by Michael Hagedorn 0 comments

Here is an interesting display that lets you set the ball speed, bat speed and the angle the ball leaves the bat. A little physics, a little national pastime. Play around with it and see why some hits leave the park and some get caught for an easy out. Go to the Scientific Slugger exhibit at the Exploritorium online.

The Exploritorium, in San Francisco, is housed in the Palace of Fine Arts, which was originally built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Built originally of plaster and burlap, it became an historic landmark and a vandalized ruin, so was rebuilt in 1965 in concrete and steel. When I worked in Palo Alto, I visited the museum several times, enjoying the interactive exhibits and changing displays designed to get people to play with the equipment and the ideas behind them. The Exploritorium does not have Docents, it has "Explainers", usually high school students.

A closer similar facility is the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, which also has many hands-on exhibits. But the Exploritorium, the creation of physicist and teacher Dr. Frank Oppenheimer in 1969, leads the pack in my opinion.

I have not yet visited The Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland. Has anyone else?

Posted 11:26 AM by Andy Allan 0 comments

The 2004 Summer Porch Project continues. Delay on getting the siding completed. The company stopped making the siding used on the rest of the house, so had to special order a match from elsewhere. Then the crew got tied up on another project. Then they found that they had the wrong stuff. Supposed to be here today to wrap up the outside. Moral - plan around the delays. Fortunately, the sheathing materials are made to take weather for a "reasonable" time (define reasonable?) and I caulked the snot out of the seams to prevent drafts and breezes later. Next: electrical. Already dug 50 feet of trench for downspout piping. Need another 40 feet for the electrical cable. At least the electrical won't need a controlled slope, since electricity flows uphill. Still to come: Insulation and interior walls and finish trim. Thinking about a tongue and groove milled plank that will expand/contract along the joints with the seasons and not show cracks as would drywall. It will all be worth it when I sit snugly, gazing out at winter's icy blast.

Posted 6:39 AM by Andy Allan 0 comments

This month I'll be billed (yet again) well over 100 buckeroos to keep 7393 up and running for another year. Should anyone feel like helping out with this expense please feel free. Though 7393 is only used for the RBT it is a fully functioning site so extra goodies are available to donors. A 7393 email address, on-the-fly temporary file storage, even some 'puter help if you need it. Best of all will be the warm feeling you'll get knowing you donated to the RBT instead of the Bush campaign.
Posted 2:16 PM by whatley 0 comments

Speaking to you from the Canaan Valley Resort in beautiful downtown West Virginia. South of Davis, W. Va fyi. Deer come up to you expecting free food! Rain expected shortly. More later.
Posted 5:45 PM by Andy Allan 0 comments

Hey! Alex! You dipped in at the end of July, but silent since. How about a first person, singularly abnormal report on the seasonal vagaries at your end of the continent? Or gimme a call or an e-snail. I am at the same old place, or the old Same place, whichever you prefer.

Posted 9:11 AM by Andy Allan 0 comments