Geezer

There are 386 posts filed in Geezer (this is page 32 of 39).

Highlights of 2010: weather wrap-up

Even though I’ve only had my weather station graphing on the Internet since December, it has actually been gathering weather data all year long. Let’s look at the highs and lows, weather-wise, for 2010.

The year 2010 was an exceptionally hot year, with more 90°F + days than any other (the official total was 91 [PDF]). The MT.Net weather station marked its hottest temperature of 106.2°F on 7 July at 1:03 PM. This roughly coincided with the driest recorded humidity of the year: an astoundingly dry 14% (at 1:15 PM that day).
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Highlights of 2010: break-in

This year brought an unwanted visitor when our home was broken into while we were away for Thanksgiving. Miraculously, we knew about it the instant it happened. It had only been hours since I completed my alarm script, which meant our alarm panel called our cellphones the second the burglar opened the window.

While we in the dark about what was really going on at home, we soon learned that the damage and impact was actually very, very minimal. We didn’t even cut our vacation short. What we did do was add a few more components to our alarm system and a few more security enhancements to our windows.

Later we even got video of the suspect leaving the scene, which was distributed to all the downtown police officers.

I look at the incident this way: the break-in was in reality a free evaluation from a seasoned security professional. A man who makes a living breaking into homes showed us just how he would approach our home. He showed us where the weak spots are. This guy gave it his best shot, and ultimately he failed. He failed!

So now that I know how a pro would approach our home, I have made our home even stronger. We’re now better off as a result.

Highlights of 2010: Social media

This year I will once again celebrate my blog highlights, but also will give a nod to the other social media sites.

On the blog front, MT.Net collected 1.73 million hits over this year, translating to 260,000 unique visits. That’s an average of 711 visits per day and about 30% traffic growth from the year before. It’s been a good year, traffic-wise. On the posting side, I estimate I’ve written about 450 new posts this year.

I’m always amused at what brings people to my site, too. I’m still one of the top search results for the Sugarhill Gang’s epic rap song, Rapper’s Delight. I’m also still collecting plenty of web hits for Jefferson’s Bank Quote. I also draw web searchers looking for Bradley Manning, 1Gb Internet, 99% of people can’t watch this video more than 25 seconds, free iPad scam, and TSA cavity search.
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Tour of the USS Elliot (DD-967)

A few weeks ago I unearthed a videotape I made while I was a sailor aboard the USS Elliot (DD-967). Taken one night in 1991 while the ship was in port in San Diego, the tape was meant to give my parents a virtual tour of the ship.

The quality isn’t the best as I had owned a videocamera for all of 6 hours, but I still found the video to be a fun look into the past. Careful viewers will see what I looked like when I had a full head of hair and big, dorky glasses. I’m also not sure what’s up with the Kermit the Frog-style narration, but it is what it is.
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Elizabeth Edwards

The Edwards family reunites at RDU Airport

Elizabeth Edwards lost her battle with cancer Tuesday. She was 61. As one of her friends remarked, it was fitting she died on Pearl Harbor Day, having grown up a Navy brat.

I got a chance to meet her during the 2004 Kerry/Edwards presidential campaign and she made quite an impression on me. Here’s what I wrote in my blog post from that day:

Last, but certainly not least was Elizabeth Edwards. This woman radiated warmth like you wouldn’t believe! She seemed genuinely pleased to meet me and bragged about her father’s 30 years of Navy service. Her sincere, upbeat personality just blew me away. I thought Edwards was electric, but he doesn’t hold a candle to his wife.

After they had made their way down the line of veterans, the campaign photographer had us all bunch up and get a picture. John and Elizabeth Edwards ran up to the group for the picture. Elizabeth stood just in front of me, so I thoughtfully put my hand on her shoulder. Hopefully, that shot will serve as proof I was actually there.

I tried tracking down that picture but have yet to find it. Maybe someday it will turn up.

Elizabeth was one of a kind. I’m glad I got a chance to meet her.

Recruiter’s office

I took our dog to the emergency vet in Leesburg yesterday (the topic of another post). The vet’s office just happened to be near the building where I once signed up for the Navy. In the fall of 1987, I walked into the Navy Recruiting office that was upstairs in this building at 26 Plaza Street. It looks like the Marine Corps still has an office there, but no sign of the Navy anymore. Now it’s the home of a tattoo parlor called Insane Ink.

It made me smile to see the building again.

Flipper TV show

Tonight the kids and I watched an Imax movie called Dolphins, which follows scientists studying dolphin behavior. It was quite an entertaining movie, but it was not as entertaining as my story to the kids of the dolphin show I used to watch as a kid called Flipper.

The kids got a kick out of my description of the show’s typical plot, where these two boys could magically communicate with Flipper. The dolphin would pop up from the water, make dolphin gibberish sounds, and convey the most sophisticated messages.
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Veteran’s Day reflections

I’ve had plenty of reflections on Veteran’s Day but yet another revelation came to me on yesterday’s Veteran’s Day.

I work in a sales job, as a sales engineer. Success in that job (and other sales jobs) requires one to be very good at making friends and relating to all types of people. As I went about my work with a potential customer yesterday, I realized that a lot of my skill at relating to different people can be traced back to those four years I spent in the Navy.

When your home for three years is a ship only 563 feet long, you have to learn how to get along with folks. Thank you, Navy, for enriching my life in yet another, previously-unseen way.

Small head injuries damage brain too

Sports Illustrated’s latest issue brings news that head injuries don’t have to rise to the concussive level to cause brain damage. Purdue researchers have shown that the smaller, more frequent hits can actually do more damage than a concussion.

The mounting evidence suggests that some people—perhaps a lot—simply cannot play these games without being damaged, concussion or no concussion. “You can break something by hitting it hard once,” says Katie Morigaki, a Purdue graduate assistant athletic trainer who worked on the study, “or you can break it by hitting it softer many times.”

If the test scores were accurate, the researchers had inadvertently documented, in real time, a new classification of high school athlete: a player who was never concussed, was not verbally impaired and was asymptomatic even as far as his parents could tell, but whose visual memory was more impaired than his amnesic, headachy, light-sensitive, concussed teammates.

After reading this last night I woke up worried about how doomed I am with all the hits my head has taken, not from football but from falling out of bed as a kid, banging my head against the wall (also as a kid), and other misadventures. I’m not letting my kids play football, that’s for sure. The fewer brain-damaged members of the family, the better!