Musings

General-purpose musings

There are 780 posts filed in Musings (this is page 38 of 78).

The power of Facebook

A little thing happened with Facebook today that made me appreciate one of the best things about it: the ability of my friends to make new friends through me.

Whenever I want my Facebook friends to know I’m still alive but I don’t have much to say, I’ll sometimes post a song lyric as my status. Here’s one I posted this morning:

Mark Turner is a detective down in Texas.

It’s a song lyric from the Steve Miller Band’s Take the Money and Run. It wasn’t long before my friend Jon Carnes chimed in:
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Shuttered

I spent part of yesterday afternoon at the former Army SIGINT base known as Vint Hill Farms Station, which is now a county park and office park development. Vint Hill reminds me of a similar base to which I was once assigned but is now also an office part development: Fort Devens in western Massachusetts.

As I surveyed the empty barracks and parade field, I realized that precious few of the places I’ve been stationed are still active military installations.

The only station from my military past that is still kicking is NTTC Corry Station in Pensacola. I was sent there after initial training in Fort Devens.

Makes me feel old.

Taxing online retailers

After fighting to keep North Carolina from becoming a broadband backwater, this particularly galls me. The North Carolina General Assembly is pushing a finance bill that would tax online retailers. Rather than pay a tax in a state where it has no presence, Amazon simply pulled the plug on its affiliate program for North Carolina residents. So rather than doing something positive for the state, the attempt to tax companies like Amazon has actually hurt North Carolina small businesses that depend on those referrals by cutting off access to that income.

This outcome is not surprising. Tax a company with no presence or investment in the state and that company has little to keep it from pulling the plug on serving that state. That hurts our citizens more than it does the companies targeted, and that’s just plain dumb.

I sure would like to see a smarter approach by the legislature towards technology and the Internet. Those who regulate technology should at least make an attempt to understand it.

Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett

Two 70s icons checked out today. Farrah Fawcett, sex symbol and actress, succumbed to cancer this morning at the age of 62. Before anyone could properly mourn her, news came that Michael Jackson had also died – heart attack at the age of 52.

Around 1979, these two among the most famous celebrities ever. Farrah as a pinup and Charlie’s Angels actress, and Michael for his never-ending string of hit singles. When I was ten it seemed that every boy on the block had a Farrah poster and a Michael Jackson album.

It seems that when your childhood icons pass away a little part of you goes with them.

Neda

I watched the disturbing video today of the young Iranian student named Neda Agha Soltan being shot dead and it made me very angry. I know that many Iranians must feel the same way.

With Ayatollah Khamenei determined to stand by this election the stakes in Iran have now risen considerably. I don’t see the forces that have swept Iran this week being easily put back in the bottle. Every student in the streets of Tehran can identify with Neda, and it must now be perfectly clear to them the price they might pay if they wish to succeed.

Freedom can be theirs. The question is: how badly do they want it?

Iran

I’m fascinated with what I’m seeing happening in Iran right now. It’s beautiful to see people standing up for democracy and doing it in a peaceful manner. I also find it notable that many of the people demonstrating in the streets were not alive during the Islamic Revolution of 1979. They do not remember the oppressive Shah or the Ayatollah Khomeini. More importantly, in spite of what their government tells them they’ve never had any real reason to hate America. Indeed, many just want their freedom and friendship like their neighbors in Europe.

Even so, I’m still wary because of what happened in China twenty years ago this month. Could it happen to Tehran?

And there’s the fact that Iran is a republic in name only, as a small, unelected, powerful few actually rule.

Did Air France 447’s tail separate from the plane?

The L.A. Times reports that the recovered tail of Air France Flight 447 indicates the plane broke up in midflight, eerily similar to the 2001 crash of an American Airlines Airbus leaving New York. In the earlier accident American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus 300, had taken off into turbulence from a preceding 747 and the pilots apparently overcompensated with the rudder, causing the entire tail section to break off from the plane.

I’ve been thinking for a while now that these two crashes seem to be related. We’ll see for sure if/when the rest of the plane is found.

Dave Matthews the actor

We just finished watching the 2005 movie Because of Winn-Dixie, based on the children’s book by the same name. It had its high points and low points but was a decent flick overall. The girl in the lead role could’ve been a better actor but did a passable job.

One character works in a pet shop and plays guitar. We’re watching him onscreen for the first time and I think, “wow, that guy looks like Dave Matthews.”

Well, duh, it was Dave Matthews, and the truth is he’s a pretty good actor. He actually acted better than most anyone else in the movie. Who knew?

The Carolina Mudcats and the messages in music

Last Sunday the family and I enjoyed a day at the ballpark, watching the Carolina Mudcats demolish the Tennessee Smokies 10-2. It seemed like a very family-friendly place, right down to the Mudcats letting all the kids round the bases after the game.

It was almost perfect except for one tiny detail. You see, there are a lot of short breaks in baseball that are routinely filled by music played played by folks in the stadium sound booth. Most of these songs were familiar 80s hits that put a smile on my face but there was one particular rap song that played over and over, making me more annoyed every time I heard it.
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Apple and its new datacenter

So it seems the state government has successfully lured Apple into building a new $1B datacenter here in North Carolina.

I was thinking about where that datacenter might wind up and the impact those many thousands of servers would have on the local utility grid. Then I thought of the perfect place: Badin, NC. If Apple moved to Badin, it can plug into the Yadkin River hydroelectric plant that ALCOA may be losing. The state wouldn’t have to give Apple a dime in tax breaks if it would’ve let them tap into cheap electricity from the dam. Electricity, you see, is by far the biggest cost to such a massive datacenter.

The problem with this scenario is that the reason the state is opposing ALCOA’s permit renewal is that the thousands of jobs once provided by the aluminum smelting plant are long gone. Turning dam operations over to an admittedly flashy and high-tech Apple would seem to be a savvy move on the face of it but the meager 50 full-time jobs Apple brings makes it a bit hypocritical in the face of the state’s complaint against ALCOA.

On the other hand, in tiny Badin (population 1,154) 50 jobs is 4% of its population and 8% of its workforce. And it is a economically-depressed area, which is an area the state’s incentives were designed to boost. Add in the contractor jobs and the associated vendor businesses that an Apple facility may bring and a modest little high-tech oasis could be created.