Offensive lineman John Urschel starting PhD at MIT – Business Insider

John Urschel

I am in absolute awe of this.

Continuing to show he is one of the more unusual (and impressive) players in the NFL, Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman John Urschel announced via Twitter his plan to start his Ph.D. in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this year, ESPN reported.

Put another way, the 24-year-old, 305-pound lineman got into the No. 1 ranked graduate school for mathematics, all while having a full-time job in a field other than math.

Source: Offensive lineman John Urschel starting PhD at MIT – Business Insider

Google Search Console fail

Google gets it wrong

I got a helpful email from Google today (and, yes, I checked the headers. It is indeed from Google), alerting me that my blog is apparently running a version of WordPress which is five years old. This is news to me since I regularly update WordPress (currently on version 4.4). I’m not sure how the all-knowing Goog got fooled into thinking I haven’t updated my blog platform for five years. It’s a rare miss for this ubiquitous search company.

What to do During an Electrical Outage

After an extended power outage during a winter storm, your heat pump refrigerant will be sluggish when the power finally returns. To avoid damage, you should run your unit on supplementary (or emergency) heat for the first few hours. Not doing so could damage your heat pump.

Also note that in older neighborhoods, the sudden demand for electric power might cause power quality issues that might also damage your heat pump.

If your home is equipped with an electric heat pump, special care is needed when turning the unit on after an extended outage. It takes a period of time for the lubricant in the refrigerant to warm-up. This is approximately one and one-half hours per ton of cooling capacity. This could vary from brand to brand and a call to your dealer could prevent problems. During this compressor warm up time you should use the supplemental or emergency resistance heating elements of the heat pump to heat the home.

Source: What to do During an Electrical Outage

When the Boss Says, ‘Don’t Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid’ – The Atlantic

If your boss tells you you cannot discuss your salary, your boss is breaking the law.

When you make minimum wage and have to fight for more than 30 hours per week, tips are pretty important, so I sat down with my managers to discuss the controversy. That’s when they told me not to talk about it with the other baristas. The owner “hates it when people talk about money,” my manager added, and “would fire people for it if he could.” I sulked back to the espresso machine, making my lattes at half speed and failing to do side work.

In both workplaces, my bosses were breaking the law.

Under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA), all workers have the right to engage “concerted activity for mutual aid or protection” and “organize a union to negotiate with [their] employer concerning [their] wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment.” In six states, including my home state of Illinois, the law even more explicitly protects the rights of workers to discuss their pay.

Source: When the Boss Says, ‘Don’t Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid’ – The Atlantic

Winter storm Jonah dumps ice on Raleigh

After watching this storm as it formed over the past week and hearing talk of potentially 13 inches of snow falling on Raleigh, all we get is ice. Sleet began falling between 6 to 9 AM before changing to freezing rain after lunch. I watched in wonder as the rain on the screen outside my window solidified into ice. I also watched he crape myrtle tree build up an impressive glaze of ice right before my eyes.

We’ve made it until 9:16 PM now without any power issues. The lights flickered a few brief times about 6:30 tonight but we’ve had no other issues. I was feeling confident this afternoon that we’d get through without any further problems but I am hearing that our neighbors down the street in Belvidere Park have just now lost power. We could be next.

I have an industrial-sized UPS that needed batteries. Anticipating power issues, I ordered a fresh set of batteries Wednesday night that got delivered less than 24 hours later. We now have two separate sources of inverter power that we can use to keep warm. The plan is to power the blower fan on our gas fireplace should we the ability to run our central heat.

It may be an interesting night. We’ll see where we stand this time tomorrow. I hope everyone else who’s dealing with the weather tonight gets through it safely and securely!

Both Hillary and Bernie Will Struggle to Push Their Agendas as President if Republicans Hold the House

And I don’t necessarily disagree with any of these arguments. It would be a long pull up a dirt road for Sanders to get anything done along the lines he proposes in his campaign. This is why, at every stop, he reminds people that he can’t do it alone. That is what his whole “political revolution” riff is about.

And here’s the thing he doesn’t mention: It is unlikely that President Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to get much of what she wants, either.

Source: Both Hillary and Bernie Will Struggle to Push Their Agendas as President if Republicans Hold the House

Charles with the Obamacare Open Enrollment Center

Last week I got this scam call in on my mobile number. The Caller ID said 347-215-3027 which, as I know from my years of telemarketing scam sleuthing, is almost certainly faked. Calls also come from 813-365-3765 and possibly others.

Here’s the recorded message that was left, made to sound spontaneous. People all over the country have gotten the very same message:

Yeah, hi. This is Charles, and I’m calling from the Obamacare Open Enrollment Center in your … uh … local neighborhood here … um I have your number here on my desk to give you a call … uh … basically … uh … let me see here … uh, the number … let me see … E477 that’s your registration number for the, uh … Obamacare … uh … insurance, so … just go ahead and give me a call back I want to go over a few things with you to get you set up so you don’t have any tax implications. You can call me DIRECT at 888-575-1448, again my number is 888-575-1448. Thank you!

I’ll have an audio clip to post later today.

Iran’s return of American sailors

Riverine Command Boat (RCB)

Let me start off by saying that last week wasn’t my Navy’s finest hour. When news came in Thursday night that ten U.S. Navy sailors had “drifted into Iran territorial waters” and had been detained, there was a sense of deja-vu. I thought about the collision in 2001 between a reckless Chinese fighter pilot and a Navy EP-3 surveillance plane. Known as the Hainan Island Incident, 24 sailors were detained for eleven days, interrogated at all times of day and night. The incident was George W. Bush’s first international crisis and it wasn’t clear things would be resolved amicably.

The Navy tends to avoid entering unfriendly waters (well … most of the time!). The Persian Gulf (or Arabian Gulf as the USN refers to it) is tiny as far as bodies of water go. Our sailors are well aware of who occupies the eastern shore of the Gulf and know to steer clear of it. That doesn’t mean that encounters between Iranians and Americans don’t still take place. I vividly recall how surreal it was to lock eyes with curious Iranian ferry passengers as they motored slowly by my ship once in the Gulf. It was clear at that moment how ridiculous the bluster of our respective governments was.
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What does it take to drive an electric car in Canadian winters?

Good tips for wintertime EV driving.

So how on earth do you use an electric car in places that consistently get many feet of snow every winter?

Short answer: snow tires.
Long answer: plan ahead.

Being based in Vancouver — what passes for the Canadian tropics*, where snow had to be helicoptered onto local ski hills during the 2010 Olympics — your correspondent had no idea how well electric cars actually stack up until he started making inquiries.

But with winter approaching, a recent discussion on the Canada Nissan Leaf Owners Facebook group seemed apropos, all about driving plug-in electric vehicles in the northern winter.The overarching advice we got was to purchase snow tires, because low-rolling-resistance tires and ice don’t mix. Well-stocked winter survival kits were next.

Third place went to pre-heating the cabin while the car was still plugged in so the battery could maintain its maximum propulsion range and grid electricity could be used for the heat.

Source: What does it take to drive an electric car in Canadian winters? | VentureBeat | Enterprise | by J. O’Dell

What does spanking teach kids?

A friend posted this graphic on his Facebook feed recently:

It reads:

I have to laugh at people who are against spanking. My parents whipped my butt like there was no tomorrow. I didn’t hate them. I didn’t have trust issues with them because of it. I didn’t fear them… But I darn sure respected them! I learned what my boundaries were and knew what would happen if I broke them. I wasn’t abused, I was disciplined… Repost if you got your butt smacked and survived… This is why kids nowadays have no respect for anyone!

This kind of thinking makes me sad. I am reminded of what Sheriff Andy Taylor said on The Andy Griffith Show. Though Sheriff Taylor is fictional, the quote rings true:

When a man carries a gun all the time, the respect he thinks he’s gettin’ might really be fear. So I don’t carry a gun because I don’t want the people of Mayberry to fear a gun. I’d rather they would respect me.

Yeah, yeah. It’s true that we don’t live in Mayberry but respect is still worth more than the threat of violence.
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