Billionaires Only

When news broke about Warren Buffett donating billions to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I sent a tongue-in-cheek email to the Foundation:

Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 12:21:25 -0400
From: Mark Turner
To: info at gatesfoundation dot org
Subject: what about donating?

Savvy investors often follow Warren Buffett’s moves. How may *I* donate
to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?

Regards,
Mark

To my surprise, I actually got a response:

Subject: RE: what about donating?
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 13:43:24 -0700
From: “Info”
To: “Mark Turner”

Dear Mark,

Thank you for writing to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

I appreciate your generous offer of a financial contribution to support
the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. However, the foundation
is not set up to receive financial contributions from the general
public. There are many strong non-profit organizations that are in a
better position to receive this type of contribution and who do work
that is consistent with the goals of this foundation. I invite you to
visit our Web site at www.gatesfoundation.org for information
about some of our grantees.

Thanks again for your interest and your kind offer. We wish you all the
best.

Sincerely,

Stephanie Jones
Grants Inquiry Administrator

Very nice of them to respond to my ridiculous request.

(Note: Should you be willing to actually donate, here’s a partial list of grantees the Gates Foundation supports).

Chevrolet Hills

I was dismayed to learn this morning that Cheviot Hills, the neighborhood golf course, has been sold to car salesmen. The new owners are MLC Automotive of Raleigh and Crossroads Holdings, the companies which control land holdings of the Leith and Crossroads dealerships, respectively. One can assume that the links will soon be paved over and loaded up with shiny new cars.

Isn’t it wonderful? Capital Boulevard has sorely needed a car dealership or two and then this old golf course comes up for sale. Now we have everything!

I think I’d rather let crazy ol’ Parker Edwards take out a few dozen more deer than to have yet another lot full of cars blot the landscape. Besides, isn’t there some kind of law about used car salesmen being too close to neighborhoods? Like they have to register with the state or something?

I hope the new owners have done their homework, as this isn’t the best place to put a dealership. You see, when it rains the way it did a two weeks ago most of this property is underwater. Imagine a fleet of shiny new cars here.

Oops.

(this post’s title shamelessly stolen from the N&O’s Jack Hagel.)

The Amazing WRT54G

Over my time off I’ve spent some time messing around with my Linksys WRT54G access point. It had been collecting dust in my bedroom while I focused on other ways in which to waste time. As I mentioned a few posts back, I had been looking into what it would take to create a neighborhood-wide network. The WRT54G seems ideally suited for such a task.

A while ago I installed OpenWRT on the access point as I wanted to see how Linux worked on the box. What I didn’t find out until yesterday is how truly powerful this little box is when Linux is under the hood. For instance, one thing I need to do is to have it be my home internet gateway and split the internet connection into a trusted segment (the LAN) and an untrusted segment (WiFi). When I first read that the wireless connection was bridged to the ethernet switch, I thought this wasn’t possible. I found out yesterday that – while the wireless is bridged to the switch, it is configurable with vlans! Thus, I can treat each port on the switch as if they were independent, meaning that splitting traffic can be easily done with firewall rules.

Its truly amazing to know that a $50 box can do all of this. Linux rules!

Decider In Chief

We were walking through our neighborhood when Kelly pointed out an aircraft flying extemely low. It was a Boeing 737 on final approach to RDU Airport, sporting a yellow-and-white livery I didn’t recognize. It was flying above the legal 500 feet but probably below 1000 feet, well below most approaches.

Now that we’re back it makes sense. The Decider In Chief is in town. The plane – flying lower than Bush’s poll numbers – was probably minimizing its exposure for security.

Fire At Raleigh’s Water Treatment Plant

I was in the middle of some house projects Saturday when my brother Jeff called me up.

“Hey, have you been out today?” he asked. “There’s something going on at the water plant.”

He told me of a large number of fire trucks at the scene, including a HAZMAT team. I needed to cool off from working in the attic, so I grabbed my camera and headed that way.

I came upon four fire trucks, one police car, the fire chief’s car, a Wake Emergency Management car, an ambulance and a HAZMAT truck. The gate to the treatment plant was open and first responders were milling around in the shade.

I was snapping a few pictures of the scene when an RPD officer wandered up. He explained that mechanical equipment had started a fire in a room there. According to the officer, the chemicals weren’t explosive but they didn’t want them to catch fire.

He was kind of vague about what the chemicals would do. Two HAZMAT members in protective suits were walking away from the building. Neither was wearing breathing gear, so I assumed it couldn’t be that bad. Still, I wondered why four fire trucks showed up for what looked like a routine fire.

The building was labeled “potassium permanganate room.” Acccording to the Wikipedia article, potassium parmanganate is used to remove the sulfur smell from water. It isn’t flammable or reactive, but could cause irritation. It does ignite when mixed with certain chemicals, such as powdered sugar and water, and will create deadly chlorine gas when mixed with hydrochloric acid.

While this fire was quickly brought under control, it makes me wonder what other, more dangerous chemicals are over there and how careful the City of Raleigh is in handling those chemicals. That would make a good news story.

Americas’ Sail Pictures

I’ve put up pictures from yesterday’s Americas’ Sail opening ceremonies in Beaufort. I spent a little time with Captain Horatio Sinbad and his crew, who are all great people, I might add.

The ships didn’t go anywhere yesterday as it was just the kickoff. The real excitement starts today through July 3rd, as Sinbad’s crew take the Meka II out to defend their trophy.

Check out the pictures in the gallery.

Casting Off For Beaufort

I’ve got the day off and was going to do some things around the house today but then I remembered that the America’s Sail (the “Tall Ships”) is this weekend in Beaufort. Thus its off in the car for a half-day of photography.

I’ll check in from the coast once I can find a wireless point. Look for some cool pictures this evening.

Silence Is Golden

Before I boarded my plane to Amsterdam last week I picked up a pair of Koss QuietZone Pro noise-cancelling headphones. They were on sale at Rat Shack for 50 bucks. I’ve long been jealous of travelers with their high-end Bose noise-cancelling headphones but couldn’t cough up the $300 or more for a set of headphones. I didn’t have high hopes that a $50 pair would perform well.

Boy was I wrong. They’re great! When they’re actively cancelling they reduce an amazing amount of ambient noise in an airline cabin. I sat there thinking, come on, this doesn’t REALLY work, does it and I’d flick the power button on and off. Sure enough, the wind noise would vanish when it was on. I was astonished at how well it worked!

Three months ago when I made my trip to Australia I had my Sony earbuds and that was it. The plane I flew for that trip, a Boeing 777, had the traditional airplane-headphone jacks in the seat, meaning I could listen with my Sony earbuds but only in mono.

That wasn’t enough to filter the noise out, however. I spent the trip with my in-flight movie’s volume cranked to its highest level. Even then I couldn’t hear some of the dialogue. With the noise cancelling headphones, not only could I hear the dialogue but I had the volume set to the absolute lowest level! I honestly couldn’t believe what I was hearing (or more specifically, what I wasn’t hearing)!

My only quibble with the headphones is that it is quite mysterious figuring out where to install the batteries! I couldn’t use the noise cancelling on the way to Amsterdam because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to power them. Only after I’d gotten on the Internet did I realize that one of the ear pieces rotates off, revealing the battery compartment.

If you fly with any frequency and want some relief from the drone of the engines, pick up a pair of these noise-cancelling headphones. Your ears will thank you!

Monkeying With Maps

I saw someone’s Mapquest directions left on the company printer this morning and it inspired an evil idea.

Let’s say you’re the IT administrator. Let’s say you devise a clever hack with a transparent proxy so that all directions from a site like Mapquest have some random detour inserted into it. Or perhaps the directions always lead to a particular fast-food restaurant.

That would be cool, and totally evil. Too bad I don’t have the time on my hands to actually implement it.

Finance

After watching Warren Buffett donate beeeeellions to his bridge partner BillG I’ve become inspired to get serious about investing. It seems like every picture I’ve been of Buffett, he always looks like he’s having the time of his life (well, most pictures, anyway).

The little dabbling (and I mean little) I’ve done in investing has been fun. Perhaps I’ll start an investment club and get some other people involved. If you think this sounds fun, drop me a note and I’ll include you in on the planning.