Marc's Musings

Dear Bloggers...

2009-04-22T14:39:29Z

I wish to register a complaint.

I know it hasn't been all that long since blogs became popular (what, 4+ years?), but can I ask you to do me a favor?

First let me give you some background information. I can probably count using fewer fingers than both hands contain the number of people that I know that read blogs by going directly to a blog's website. Most people today have some sort of newsreader (if you're reading this and you don't, I highly recommend trying Google Reader, it used to suck, but now it sucks less, and 2 years ago or so I found that it sucked less than Bloglines, but I digress) that can organize, aggregate, and sort the various blog "feeds" that they are interested in. They can either read each news feed individually, or perhaps groups together, or all at once, if desired.

Personally, I organize by subject matter (flying, technology, drivel, etc), and sort by oldest first so that I can read your entries in chronological order, and read one subject at a time. This brings me to my complaint.

When remarking about something that was previously posted on your blog, please reference is temporally instead of spatially. This is no longer a print world. Just because your blog website displays posts newest first, doesn't mean that when I read your article, I will be able to reference something "below." In my little world, "below" means you're referencing something you haven't written yet (at least at the time of writing the original post). Try the word "earlier" or "previously." Using one of these words (or some other time based reference word) will allow your post to remain in the content world instead of mucking with the presentation layer.

There. I feel better now.

A lot of money, wasted

2008-12-05T16:50:22Z

I found an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune today. According to the article, Obama raised (and presumably spent) nearly one billion dollars for his campaign (including related efforts).

$1,000,000,000.00

That's a lot of zeros. If you look at the breakdown (so you don't have to read the article), it's about $770 million for the campaign, $100 million to the DNC (not counting monies that went to his campaign), $61 million for the convention in Denver, and an estimated $50 million for the inauguration events.

That's truly incredible fund raising, especially when you consider that his campaign was less than 2 years long. Where does all that money go? There's a lot of profit to all the vendors--signage, brochures, vehicle (air and land) charter, broadcast, food, reception halls, etc--and of course salaries of the staffers.

Could you imagine the good that would occur if even half of that money went to charitable organizations? If you look at some of the larger ones (with higher operating costs), you can feed a starving child for less than $1/day. Do the math, I'll wait. Did you come up with more than 2.7 million children getting fed for 10 years? I did. Money is desperately needed in this country as well. That billion may not go as far here, but it still could put a lot of food into food pantries, help homeless shelters, etc. I'll stop here; I think you get my point.

I think the time has come for some sort of reform on campaign spending. Here are some ideas I have.

What if we forced candidates to give even 30% of what they raise to a charity (of their choosing, but must be a 501(c)(3))?
What if vendors to a campaign must take everything over their cost and donate it to a charitable organization? This one is harder to police--vendors could cook the books, and probably wouldn't be too keen on opening up their books for public scrutiny.
This is similar to the first thought, but slightly different. What if candidates setup their fundraising so that it would be easy for donors to give to both their campaign and one of a few charities that fit well with the views of the campaign?

I'm sure there are other things we could do--this is just a start. Hopefully something will change before the next election cycle starts in 12 months. We all know that these numbers aren't going down...

(Photo by MrR Photography)

License Plate Covers

2008-12-04T17:28:13Z

Well that was easier than I thought it would be. Let me back up and explain the story.

You may remember a month or so ago when I got pulled over for having a "(TINTED) LICENSE PLATE COVER" that was really clear. I decided to not pay the fine ($75--$105 with traffic school/supervision since it was a moving violation. Are you kidding me?) and spend a morning in court.

Today was my morning in court. I arrived a few minutes early--surprisingly the lines for the metal detectors were empty--and was greeted by a flurry of lawyers/public defenders finding their clients, but only 2 officers, neither of which were mine. At exactly 9am, in stroll 6 officers together. One looks like he could have been my officer, but not quite a fit, so I'm pretty sure my officer didn't even bother to show.

Out of the 10 or so cases before me, most were DUIs, and most were continued for one reason or another. 2 cases before mine, the guy had the same officer (by badge number). The court asked for the officer, someone mentioned that he also had court in Addison this morning and was on his way up. Petty offense, case dismissed, officer not present. My hunch was correct. During the next case, the officer strolls in. Oh well, can't get off on a technicality.

I'm called up. The judge looks at the citation and I could almost see her rolling her eyes.

Judge: Did you remove the tinted license plate cover
Me: Yes Ma'am, I have photographs as well.
States Attorney: (looks at photos; reads license plate to judge for verification)
Judge: Case dismissed.
Me: Thank you.

That was it. I have my license back, and it only cost me an hour of my time to keep a silly thing off my record. I'm glad it was treated as a simple fix-it ticket and not a moving violation. If it had been written as a fix-it, I believe I could have just gone to the station to clear it up and not had to waste anyone's time other than my own.

In general, the judge seemed like she was having a good day and was pretty laid back. The officer had at least 2 (didn't stick around to find out if he had any more) cases dismissed today. Does that count against them? These things I do not know...

PSA: 625 ILCS 5/12-610.5

2008-10-22T15:08:33Z

(625 ILCS 5/12‑610.5)
Sec. 12‑610.5. Registration plate covers.
(a) In this Section, "registration plate cover" means any tinted,
    colored, painted, marked, clear, or illuminated object that is
    designed to:
    (1) cover any of the characters of a motor vehicle's
        registration plate; or
    (2) distort a recorded image of any of the characters of a
        motor vehicle's registration plate recorded by an automated
        red light enforcement system as defined in Section 1‑105.5
        of this Code or recorded by an automated traffic control system
        as defined in Section 15 of the Automated Traffic Control
        Systems in Highway Construction or Maintenance Zones Act.
    (b) It shall be unlawful to operate any motor vehicle that is
        equipped with registration plate covers.
    (c) A person may not sell or offer for sale a registration plate cover.
    (d) A person may not advertise for the purpose of promoting the sale
        of registration plate covers.
(e) A violation of this Section or a similar provision of a local
    ordinance shall be an offense against laws and ordinances
    regulating the movement of traffic.
(Source: P.A. 94‑304, eff. 1‑1‑06.)

Why do I bring this up today? Well, gentle readers, I am the proud owner of a $105 ticket because of that law ($75 if I want it to appear on my record as a moving violation).

Apparently they can pull you over for this and only this. My 8 year old clear license plate cover is a little dirty and he called it "tinted." Granted, the law was changed in 2006 to include clear covers--glad that was publicized--and ignorance of the law does not mean I am innocent, but still. Was the cop having a bad day to pull me over for this? Was he ticked off because I was doing the speed limit on the highway--I made sure that when traffic cleared I set the cruise at 55 so that I wouldn't go above it, especially when I saw him tailgating me in traffic--and couldn't get around me? Is it the end of the month and he was running behind on his quota? Oh wait... They "don't have quotas."

Whatever the reason, the guy was a pretty big jerk throughout the whole encounter, and started rattling off a whole bunch of things wrong. He "let me off" with a warning for not having my registration sticker applied (the state got their money, I just didn't put the sticker on--he could see all that in his SCMODS, and on my registration that I handed him). He was "nice enough" to not give me a ticket because I had an insurance card with an expired date on it (mental note: find the current one). He commented that my front plate was missing, but didn't say anything else about that.

I think the biggest thing that ticks me off is the 30 minute waste of time this morning, and the half a day I'm going to have to waste in court or the half a day I'm going to have to waste in traffic school. I should have asked him for a screwdriver to take the stupid piece of plastic off. Meanwhile, people were flying past us at the normal 70mph. Didn't he have anyone better to pull over?

Political preference

2008-10-15T17:04:12Z

I try to stay away from politics here--those kinds of conversations are best held in person--but I think this is important, so please bear with me. I promise that this post will not impose my beliefs on you, but it may change who you vote for in a couple of weeks.

I strongly urge all of you that read this to go visit Glassbooth and take the quiz. It's pretty easy--first you rate the topics that are most important to you, and then you are presented with a quiz on all topics, with more questions about the topics that are important to you, rating them on a scale of 1-5. When you're finished, it will compare your answers to those of the 5 "major" candidates (Barr, McCain, McKinney, Nader, and Obama).

The answer may surprise you. I strongly urge you to vote for who your beliefs most line up with, and not who the media crams down your throat, even if it's not one of the major two parties. If you live in Illinois, your vote is going to Obama, so if it's different, why not mark a vote in protest of our system?

If enough people start voting against the two major parties, we may see more of a push to switch the way our country votes. With modern technology (note, I'm not necessarily advocating e-voting--especially not as it stands today), we have the ability to easily support ranked choice voting, which helps make those alternate party votes count. There are many cities in the US that are already using this process for local elections (mayor, city council, etc.). The state of North Carolina is using it for it's general assembly. If enough places do this successfully, there could be a significant push to do it for national elections, perhaps Congress at first.

All of this to say, regardless of who's name is on your presidential ballot, please make sure you do vote--it keeps this country running. If you don't vote, don't complain about the outcome.

Dots on a screen

2008-10-08T16:09:37Z

Yesterday I got to visit a bunch of employees that have a job that is as stressful (more so?) as a stock trader, as repetitive as a construction worker, and as straining on the eyes as an office worker that has to stare at a computer screen all day. I guess the bright spot is that they are unionized government employees, right?

If you haven't guessed it by now, I visited a bunch of air traffic controllers during my tour of the Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC). A map of the division of ARTCCs across the country is at the right--click to enlarge; they are code ZAU. You can see that they control airspace from central Iowa to the Indiana/Ohio border and from Green Bay, WI down to Champaign, IL. They aren't the biggest sector--Minneapolis takes that cake--but they are one of (if not the) busiest in the country, given that O'Hare airport (ORD) sits right in the middle.

The best part about going yesterday was that although the ceilings (cloud cover) and visibility weren't terrible--good enough to support transitioning to visual approaches (they need 1000ft ceilings and 3 mile visibility)--the wind direction coupled with the wet, rainy conditions forced them to only have 2 runways available for landings and 2 for takeoffs. With the runways being wet, they cannot use intersecting runways under a "land and hold short" program (LAHSO), but the wind direction favored using intersecting runways. This dropped their inbound arrival capacity from a normal of 94/hour to 72/hour (and it fell to 64/hour as the weather dropped while we were there).

I wish I would have been able to take pictures--it was nothing like I expected, yet everything like I expected. The "floor" is broken up into 9 main areas, each having 6-10 controllers stationed, each controlling a sector of the airspace. Each arrival into ORD comes in from the Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, or Southwest, and each has their own area. Departures out of ORD go North, South, East or West. Traffic from other airports just fits in where it can. The 9th area controls the high altitude traffic that does not terminate within the airspace--transcon flights, military, etc.. Each controller has a 3-4' square main display that shows their sector, and all the traffic in it. The traffic all has a data block showing flight number (or tail number for GA), altitude, ground speed, etc. They also have an aux touchscreen display where they can pull up airport and airspace fix information, weather information, etc.

Other random things that I learned while I was there:

They keep track of any operational error, regardless of how minor, and display it on a big screen. For example, if, at a particular altitude, their separation requirements are 5 nautical miles horizontally and 1000 feet vertically, and two aircraft get 4.99 NM apart, that's an operational error

They have a meteorologist on staff that is familiar with the weather patterns in the area

They have 4-6 controllers (depending on weather and load) that are dedicated to talking to other centers, and approach to help control flow--these guys don't talk directly to aircraft

They have a piece of software that is supposed to correlate inbound aircraft with the number of available slots, based on inbound flow controls. It is also supposed to give the controller a delay time (i.e. slow this aircraft down or curve him around for spacing). It doesn't work when the weather goes to heck, and they often shut it off (as it was last night). They have a few nicknames for it such as pig's lipstick and Cedric (as in Cedric Benson--overhyped, cost a lot of money, doesn't perform).

Most of the controllers are not pilots, and many don't like pilots--especially Mooney drivers as they tend to be the ones that fly because they can, not because they want to, and therefore don't pay attention. Mental note: don't fly a Mooney

The computer equipment seems to be a hodge podge of whatever was on sale that week at Fry's. Granted, it's standardized, but each station is a self contained rack of equipment with both Sun and Dell hardware.

The entire area is all on a raised floor, I'm guessing to make rearranging, etc. easier, if necessary. I would also guess that all that equipment generates a ton of heat.

There is a secure cube off to the side. Apparently there's some coded gear in there, etc. The most interesting thing about it is that the raised floor immediately around it is made of Plexiglas. Apparently they don't want people crawling under the floor into there.

I'm really glad that I went, and I would urge any pilots (even if you're not a pilot) to find an opportunity and go. It's a great experience to understand the other side of the radio.

Circular Reference

2008-10-04T15:25:00Z

This morning, Beth and I were talking and she used a word that I had never heard before: sonorous. I decided to look up the meaning of it, so I grabbed Old Trusty (Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition) and here's what I found:

so·no·rous [pronunciation here] 1: production sound (as when struck) 2: full or loud in sound 3: imposing or impressive in effect or style 4: having a high or an indicated degree of sonority

Hmmm... Let's look up sonority:

so·nor·i·ty [pronunciation here] 1: the quality or state of bein sonorous: resonance 2: a sonorous tone or speech

[emphasis mine]

I was always taught never to define a word using a word whose definition is the original word. I would have expected better from Webster.

Mildly annoying

2008-09-24T20:21:56Z

For those of you that don't know, I run multiple operating systems (I know, shocker). My main development machine at work is a laptop running Linux (Kenny does not approve), and at home I generally use Winders.

There are times when I have to kill Firefox--a machine reboot (Windows), hanging flash plugin (Linux), etc.--and restart it. Firefox (versions >= 2) is wonderful in that it saves what tabs and pages were open in the event of an unexpected shutdown. There is even a dialog that shows up when you start back up, asking if you'd like to restore your session or, in the event a page you were viewing caused a crash, to start a new session. My mild annoyance can be seen in these screen grabs:

Windows:

Linux

I cannot count, using available appendages, the number of times I've started a new session because the buttons were backwards from what I had been expecting. It would be really nice if they were in the same order.

Bonus points if you can explain to me why they aren't. Sorry Kenny, you already know the answer and thus are ineligible for bonus points.

Avast ye!

2008-09-19T05:00:00Z

[read more]

DirecTV HD TiVo?

2008-09-03T14:11:50Z

Thanks MC for pointing this out. Looks like DirecTV and TiVo set aside their differences (probably with enough complaining from DTV customers about their crappy dvr) and are coming out with a new HD Tivo.

Now the question is, can I wait a year for it?

2008 NCAA Football

2008-07-23T21:46:45Z

Apparently the good folks in Indianapolis (NCAA) have decided that the rules for football needed even more tweaking this year. Most of them tweak the clock to make the games shorter to "benefit the fans." I don't know about you, but except during the Turner years, and some pre-season games against TerribleU, I haven't really wanted a game to end sooner.

I take that back. The 2008 IL @ OSU game couldn't have ended soon enough, but I digress.

Here is a summary of the changes. Change #1 (in that list) really shouldn't make a whole bit of difference in the game, but change #2 is a pretty big deal. At least they stop the nonsense after the two minute warning--oh wait, college doesn't have that--but it's still a big pile of hooey. Change #3 could have the effect of either fewer or more facemask calls being made--we'll have to see how that plays out.

Bike to work week

2008-06-18T15:43:53Z

I guess that I'm a week late. Granted, I didn't even know that bike to work week was last week until after I got in via manual powered, two wheeled transportation this morning, but it's the thought that counts, right?

I'm going to try to make this a weekly occurrence, especially since it coincides nicely with my Wednesday training schedule--I normally have a 25-30 mile ride on Wednesdays, but nothing else. The distance from home to the office is about 17.5 miles. I know the round trip distance is a bit longer, but I do have a few hour (like 8) break in the middle there.

My goal is to do this for as long as the weather is nice--even after the training is done for the season.

An interesting social experiment

2008-06-11T17:24:44Z

We currently have an expensive radio in our office--expensive when it was purchased anyway. We have tasked an eMac that we used to use for development work. Often times we're listening to the music that the oldest guy in the office has on his ipod. Sometimes we'll listen to internet radio, but that gets tired pretty quickly.

Pandora has been the radio of choice for the last week or so. If you don't know what Pandora is, run--don't walk--to go check it out. You seed a "station" with an artist or song, and it will find songs that relate. They've gone through most non-classical music and categorized it pretty excessively. You have the ability to add seeds, and thumbs up (you like it) or thumbs down (you despise it) songs that it plays. Over time it generates a pretty good algorithm for tunes.

Today we got into a discussion about what a "lowest common denominator" radio station would play that would cater to all of our tastes. I suggested that we should create an office station, with the following rule: anyone can thumbs down a song, but we all have to agree to thumbs up a song. It will be interesting to see what the station ends up with.

I'll report back in a few weeks.

Last day as a dink

2008-05-11T19:17:08Z

I'll be posting less (is that possible?) here, but I will be posting over the next few days on our family blog. Apparently this kid didn't want to be induced at 6am tomorrow morning...

A sign of the times

2008-05-05T18:34:31Z

I signed into LinkedIn today to look for a long lost friend. In the "People you may know" box is my mom.