Highlights of 2010: changing jobs

The year 2010 was special in one very important way: I landed my dream job. It rescued me just in time from the slowly maddening existence I had at my last job.

First off, let me say that the company I used to work at wasn’t all bad. In fact, it’s one of the top-ranked places to work in the country. There were bagels and fruit on weekday mornings and beer Friday afternoons. The benefits were good, too. All of that would’ve been great had I not been in the department I was in, where sweatshop-like schedules were the norm.
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Inaugural address of John F. Kennedy

Fifty years ago today, almost to the minute, John F. Kennedy was wrapping up his famous inaugural speech. I listened to it again today and it still inspires.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy delivered his only inaugural address at 12:51 (ET) Friday, January 20, 1961, immediately after taking the presidential oath of office administered by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Kennedy began his speech at 12:51 (ET) Friday, 20 January 1961, immediately after taking the presidential oath of office.

The address is 1364 words and took 13 minutes and 59 seconds to deliver, from the first word to the last word, not including applause at the end, making it the fourth-shortest inaugural address ever delivered. It is widely considered to be among the best presidential inauguration speeches in American history.

via Inaugural address of John F. Kennedy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Highlights of 2010: fun with the family

Meeting the Canyon

One of the biggest highlights of 2010 was all the fun I had with my family. There were many events which made it special and I wouldn’t trade my family time for anything.

The biggest highlight was our March vacation to Sedona, Arizona. We joined Kelly’s family for a week of sightseeing and hiking around this beautiful desert community. We did a ton of hiking around the local mountains. We also took a trip to see Montezuma’s Castle and took a train to the Grand Canyon. Later we took a trip up to Flagstaff to see the Lowell Observatory. When we weren’t running around, we were relaxing at our rental house, including making use of the hot tub. It was a wonderful visit to a place far more beautiful than I had expected.
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Fetzer on idiot bloggers and mean politics

Happy to be doing my part!

When former state GOP chairman Tom Fetzer gave his farewell speech over the weekend, he did more than just talk about all the Republican victories last year.

“If I could give you one piece of advice, please ignore the idiot bloggers,” Fetzer said. “I don’t know those these people are and why they have time to do this stuff. But they need to get a life.”

via Fetzer on idiot bloggers and mean politics | newsobserver.com projects.

Tisdale family gets legal representation

News comes today that the family of Delvonte Tisdale, the teen who stowed away in an airplane wheel well, has retained legal representation in an apparent effort to sue the airport.

As I said before, it’s tragic that Delvonte Tisdale died. However, this young man chose to climb an airport fence and then attempted to steal free travel to Massachusetts. I think it’s pretty clear who is at fault here.

These kinds of lawsuits drive me crazy.

Stuxnet – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fascinating. This reminds me a of a hacker attack the CIA allegedly pulled on a Soviet gas pipeline way back in 1982.

Stuxnet is a computer worm targeted at industrial equipment that was first discovered in July 2010 by VirusBlokAda, a security firm based in Belarus. While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems, it is the first discovered worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems, and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.It was specifically written to attack Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems used to control and monitor industrial processes. Stuxnet includes the capability to reprogram the PLCs and hide its changes.

The worm’s probable target is said to have been high value infrastructures in Iran using Siemens control systems. According to news reports the infestation by this worm might have damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities in Natanz and eventually delayed the start up of Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. Although Siemens initially had stated that the worm had not caused any damage, on November 29, Iran confirmed that its nuclear program had indeed been damaged by Stuxnet.

via Stuxnet – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Hu Jintao arriving for state visit

I guess I’m fascinated with China, like it or not. I was reading this WaPo article about Chinese President Hu Jintao’s upcoming state visit to America when I noticed this interesting tidbit:

After U.S. officials, including Clinton and Jeffrey Bader, senior Asia director at the National Security Council, tussled with Chinese security guards at the Copenhagen Climate Conference at the end of 2009, and China reacted strongly to a U.S. decision to sell $6.4 billion of weapons to Taiwan, the Obama administration’s tone changed.

I was unaware that there has been a “tussle” with Chinese security guards at this conference. My Google-Fu fails me here, too, as I can’t seem to find any mention of a physical confrontation at the Climate Conference. Was this somehow hushed up? And if so, how could it have been hushed up at such a public conference?

Could this lack of search results on this event be somehow related to China’s alleged hacking attacks against Google?

via Hu Jintao arriving for state visit focused on economics, security, human rights.

Telemedicine at the dentist

A crown I had put in 11 years ago began to ache over the last few days so I made the first appointment I could to see my dentist. An x-ray was called for, so the dentist positioned the x-ray emitter at my mouth. This time, though, instead of the usual bite wing he placed a bite wing with a cable on it in my mouth.

After snapping the x-ray, I turned to face the dentist and was surprised to see my x-ray was already displayed on the screen. Cool! No more waiting around for the x-ray to be developed. The dentist could view the problem immediately, too, which means he can put more patients in the chair each day.
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Desert Storm 20 years later

USS Elliot (DD-967) in North Arabian Gulf, circa 1998


Sunday was the 20th anniversary of the start of Operation Desert Storm. Hard to believe it’s been that long.

When Desert Storm started, I was in the Navy and spending a week in training at NSGA Imperial Beach, which was far closer to vacation than war. My ship, the USS Elliot (DD-967), had just come out of the yards for long-needed maintenance so the ship was pierside at the time and the crew was taking advantage of the time ashore to do some training. Like a lot of Americans, my experience of the fighting came from CNN, though I had the advantage of being able to read classified intelligence reports as the war raged.
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Yates Mill and smoking

Smoking is prohibited in this park

We did get around to visiting Yates Mill today and had a great time. About the time we were wrapping up our visit, I asked a staff person inside about the park’s smoking policy.

He told me that the park generally does not have an issue with smokers ignoring the rule. Most are understanding when he’s had to explain it to them but occasionally some get angry. He said he doesn’t want to appear to be the bad guy and usually explains that rules are rules.

He said that the park staff usually don’t bother people who smoke in their cars. He admitted that the rule against is hard to enforce but most people seem to understand. He thought people bringing dogs was a bigger problem, as dogs are also not allowed in the park.

It was my impression that most people do seem to understand, as the park was positively spotless! I didn’t see any trash anywhere during our multiple-hour visit. Even on the mile-long Creekside Trail there was no trash (cigarette butts or otherwise) anywhere to be seen.
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