Hand modeling

Over the past few weeks I’ve gotten a taste of what life must be like for a hand model. Well, except for the fame and money part, of course.

I bought a lifecasting starter kit for my birthday. The problem of having a January birthday is that one’s skin is rarely in good shape from the bone-dry winter air. I’d been waiting a while for the cracks in my knuckles to heal. When they finally did, I managed to slice my right index finger when I was repairing the dishwasher last weekend. Fingertip injuries take a surprisingly long time to heal!

Ever since the dishwasher injury I’ve been overly careful with my hands, paranoid that I’ll cut myself again and have to delay casting my hand another week or more. On the other … hand (sorry, couldn’t resist), it’s been a good realization that the perfect body is a myth. We all have flaws that we conveniently overlook.
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Google View

Sitting in the dentist’s chair, enduring the agony of another teeth cleaning yesterday, I thought of the perfect use for the Google Fiber system coming to Raleigh.

I was being forced to watch Time Warner Cable’s News14 channel in front of me and thinking about how TWC’s local news model works. It didn’t take many minutes of watching the video (thankfully without audio, as the suction hose was often going) to realize how boilerplate it is. The TWC guys have an establishing shot, then zoom in on something dumb like police lights reflecting off the stolen car, then move on to another thing. It was obvious that the video doesn’t really tell the story – in fact, it is repetitive and dull. I could choose not to look up between rinses and feel like I didn’t really miss anything.
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Google Fiber: Kansas City offers Charlotte ‘Digital Divide’ lessons | The Charlotte Observer The Charlotte Observer

CharO talks about Google Fiber and the Digital Divide

In a past job in Kansas City, Julie Porter was part of an intense, door-to-door campaign to get residents in economically challenged, mostly minority neighborhoods to sign up for Google’s high-speed Internet service.

Community organizers didn’t want residents in these areas to face an even wider Digital Divide.

Now the head of a Charlotte housing agency, Porter has urged local leaders here to get an early start encouraging residents to embrace broadband service, long before Google Fiber makes its planned Charlotte debut.

“It was just very, very challenging,” said Porter, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing Partnership, of the Kansas City situation. “I wanted to make sure that Charlotte didn’t have the same experience.”

via Google Fiber: Kansas City offers Charlotte ‘Digital Divide’ lessons | The Charlotte Observer The Charlotte Observer.

The magically-filling fuel tank

Earlier this week I got to experience a phenomenon very unique to electric vehicles.

I was driving out of the parking deck at work on a warm day that had started much cooler. Batteries are sensitive to temperature and don’t provide less power when it’s cooler. My electric car had dialed back its expected range on my cooler morning commute and kept it there as my car waited in the cool parking deck for me to get off of work.

As I drove out at the end of the day, the car’s thermometer rose briskly as it went from the cool parking deck to the warm afternoon air. I watched in amusement as my car’s range began increasing as I drove! It was like someone was adding fuel to my tank! I gained 20 miles of range on a six-mile drive.

Only in an electric car can one drive somewhere and actually get an increase in range!

Book idea: Malcom McLean

I became fascinated yesterday of a relatively-unsung North Carolina hero, Malcom McLean. It’s not much of a stretch to say McLean more or less revolutionized world trade with his invention of the standardized shipping container. Not bad for a truck driver from Maxton, NC who only had a high school education.

Someone ought to tell his story.

LTE on Skip Stam

I sent this to the N&O regarding Rep. Paul “Skip” Stam’s apparent reversal of support for redistricting reform.

It is disappointing to see Rep. Paul “Skip” Stam, once a champion of redistricting reform, backing a bill that quite plainly gerrymanders the Wake County Commission. We the voters lose again.

My original version called Stam “long a champion,” but it appears his days of championing redistricting reform are over. I hope one version or another makes it to print.

Media helped feds arrest suspected ‘child predator’ in Raleigh | News & Observer News & Observer

I’m thrilled authorities caught this sick bastard who allegedly committed this heinous crime. I only hope, though, that the innocent man they first arrested can put his life back together. He spent 105 days in jail and lost his house and job. How can this be fixed?

A wildfire of social media helped federal authorities find and arrest a Raleigh man accused of sexually abusing an eight-year-old girl as part of a suspected child pornography ring in Harnett County.

On Wednesday, federal agents asked for the public’s help in locating “John Doe,” a man they described as a “child predator.” They provided a photo of the man and said he might be using the name Peter Gilbert.

via Media helped feds arrest suspected ‘child predator’ in Raleigh | News & Observer News & Observer.

Fifteen years of public service

Found in the attic a few weeks ago is this letter from the late Garner mayor F. Don Rohrbaugh, thanking me for my service on Garner’s Land Use Ordinance rewrite committee. It was my very first public service (outside of the military).

Thanks, Don (wherever you are), for getting me started!

Garner_Land_Use_Ordinance-letter

Who Really Benefits from Daylight Saving Time? – The Takeaway

Most Americans will "spring forward" this weekend and lose an hour to daylight saving time. But daylight savings is hardly standardized in the United States, much less the world: Both Hawaii and Arizona will stick with standard time on Sunday, and Europe won’t spring forward until March 30th. Few other countries practice daylight savings at all.

Michael Downing, a lecturer at Tufts University and author of the book "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time," started wondering about the history and purpose of daylight savings a few years ago. He began to research the phenomenon and realized that most of the justifications for the practice that he remembered had very little to do with its existence.

via Who Really Benefits from Daylight Saving Time? – The Takeaway.