I’m on my way to Canada, flying above 30,000 feet now. The flight attendant just announced rough riding is ahead, right before taking a seat for herself. It’s rare that you see flight attendants taking a seat. Must be serious weather below us. As I type this, I can see some towering clouds reaching up near the left of the plane. It seems there’s no way around it so we’re buckling down and flying right through it.

The kid in the row behind me reminded me of Hallie every time he shreiked in the boarding area. I would smile when I heard him. Now that he’s in the seat behind me, shreiking AND kicking the back of my seat, I’m not so fond of him.

This is the first trip I’ve made to Canada in … wow, fourteen years. I bet it’s grown up so much I won’t recognize it. It was in diapers last time I visited, you know. My Canadian experience is limited to a visit to the stunningly beautiful city of Victoria, British Columbia. I was wearing a uniform at the time: a sailor onboard the good ship USS Elliot. We put in for three days or so, a bit of a shakedown cruise right after getting out of the yards.

It was the first foreign port visit of my short naval career. I was still getting to know my shipmates and didn’t entirely trust them yet. I was always alert for them to pull some silly “new guy” stunts on me and my buddy Craig, who joined the crew the same time I did.

I can think of very few sights more beautiful than following a tug along the Strait of Juan De Fuqua in the rising spring sunshine. It was all new to me, and armed with my ever-present camera, I snapped pictures of everything I saw.

Our Canadian hosts, the Royal Canadian Navy, were incredibly friendly and welcoming, though the base was a bit on the quiet side, possibly owing to it distance away from town. We were a busride from town, and as soon as liberty call was announced, those buses were soon full.

A sailor’s first stop in port is usually a bar, preferably one with women. True to form, my shipmates and I soon discovered an inviting strip club in a downtown hotel. Not much of a drinker (and a person who liked to stay in control) I nursed a beer or two while I watched the show. We were all knocked out by the sheer beauty of the women, who turned out to be some of the friendliest dancers you could meet. Honestly. A friend in my division was invited to lunch with one the next day, where they talked and talked. The rest of us were in awe of his social skills.

We rented scooters at a streetside vendor and began to explore the city. I spent most of my time taking photos, since a sailor of my paygrade had very little spending money. Those fancy hotels were the domain of the wealthier officers (and wealth is a relative term here, believe me). The hotels made for nice pictures, with all the surrounding flowers in bloom.

I wound up drinking too much at one bar and took a cab back to the ship, forgetting my camera in the process. Two shipmates brought it back to me, thankfully. When I had the roll developed, however, I discovered the strangest pictures that ever came out of my camera. I expected the usual pranks that drunk sailors might try with a stranger’s camera, but these shots were nothing of the sort. The strange shots all contained streaky, eerie lights, and dim scenes of buildings. To this day, I can’t figure out how these streaks were created.

I consider the Pacific Northwest area to have some kind of magical, mysterious qualities. It’s so easy to feel fantastic surrounded by such beautiful country. No doubt that my experience will be different with Toronto, though it has its own source of mystical energy in the nearby Niagra Falls.

Beautiful clouds stretch as far as the eye can see on the left side of the plane, while the right side is beginning to reveal some woodsy hills. Upstate New York, likely. A place I’ll have to visit some day in its own right.

The work I’ve got to do today is not the most exciting. Once again, I’m going in nearly blind to the work that needs to be done. I suppose I’m getting much more comfortable just “winging it.” Like the con man in the story “Catch Me If You Can,” I can convince everyone I know what I’m doing, including myself. Improvisation for fun and profit.

I’m sitting in the Charlotte airport waiting to board my plane to Toronto. I still can’t get over the fact that I’m able to post from the comfort of my boarding-area chair.

Sprint PCS is kewl. What would be even kewler would be a wireless network signal here. Apparently there isn’t one. Note to self: pitch free 802.11b service to the folks on the RDU Airport Authority board.

I was formulating my own post on the subject of traffic circles (yes, I am a geek) when I noticed today that Fark beat me to it. How fortuitous!

I’ve driven around a few local traffic circles during the past week and have decided they’re a smart idea. First off, they are known as “traffic calmers,” meaning they slow traffic down. While this is certainly true if you are comparing them with a street lit by green lights, they actually speed up traffic that ordinarily would be waiting for red lights. This not only means you’re not kept waiting at the light, it means that your car is not sitting there idling. Thus, not only are you not wasting time, there is less ozone being created by idled engines. Sweet.

Traffic circles are also safer. Instead of having two directions of traffic to avoid (left and right of you as you pass through an intersection), you only have to look one way: your left. Also, the only cars going fast in a circle are on the NASCAR circuit. You don’t have to worry that some jackass is going to appear out of nowhere and sideswipe you. If you do get smacked, you only have yourself to blame for not looking in the ONE direction you have to look. No one can “run” a traffic circle.

Traffic circles are also much more appealing visually. You can actually landscape a traffic circle, or even put a fountain there. Beats having an open, dirty square of pavement any day.

But the best reason to think about traffic circles is that the alternative we’ve got now – traffic lights – just doesn’t work. Traffic lights drive me nuts when I’m the only one waiting at an empty intersection. It’s a waste. And there are scores of intersections in town with faulty traffic lights: lights that provide turn signals to phantom cars.

What really drives me nuts about lights is how many of them aren’t synchronized. You can be stopped at one intersection, and just when the light turns green and just when you’re moving at the speed limit, the light at the next street turns red in front of you. Stop and go. Stop and go. Ridiculous.

When the power goes out, as it did during last winter’s ice storm, intersections with traffic lights become free-for-alls. I was more afraid of driving around town than I was from falling tree limbs. Seriously.

Traffic circles solve all of these problems. They keep your car’s momentum up, making your drive go much smoother. They’re practical and they’re attractive. I’m glad to see them popping up in the area. I really hope they catch on.

On my way back from Chapel Hill tonight I was in awe of that shining bright red orb in the sky known as Mars. Through all the construction lights blazing along I-40, through the stadium lights at Carter-Finley, that mysterious world could be seen, floating above it all.

I’m kicking myself for not taking advantage of Morehead Planetarium’s free observation sessions this week. A lucky few will get to see Mars through a 24-inch telescope. There will be smaller telescopes outside the observatory, so maybe there’s still reason to visit Chapel Hill.

You owe it to yourselves to take a look at Mars. You’ll never see it quite this way again.

I’ve never seen gas prices as high as they’ve been this week. According to Reuters and the Lundberg Survey, an oil research group, these sky-high gas prices are due to the Northeast power outage.

Bah! This is nothing but price gouging. You can’t tell me that just because power was out for 12 hours around New York that the entire U.S. gas supply took a huge hit. The article vaguely mentions some refineries being offline. Doesn’t New Jersey (which never lost power) have more refineries than New York? Come on, Manhattan has no room for refineries. You can’t tell me that this was the problem.

This is nothing but simple price gouging, taking advantage to raise prices before Labor Day. Sure, Arizona has a pipeline problem, but that’s refined gas on the way to retail stations and it affects only the Phoenix area. There’s no reason that should be affecting the rest of us.

Man, oil companies are scum.

This is pretty embarassing. U.S. Troops in Iraq are stuck having to borrow AK-47s because they jam less and ammo is more readily available for them.

“We just do not have enough rifles to equip all of our soldiers. So in certain circumstances we allow soldiers to have an AK-47. They have to demonstrate some proficiency with the weapon … demonstrate an ability to use it,” said Lt. Col. Mark Young, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment, 4th Infantry Division.

Now, if our Commander In Chief spent less time in carrier-landing photo ops and more time equipping the troops to do their jobs, we may actually get OUT of Iraq some day.
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This N&O article says that college kids these days are more optimistic, selfless and tolerant than ever before. Sounds like they’re sheep to me. There’s “Generation X,” and after that comes “Generation Rx:” kids too doped up on happy pills to notice the cracks in the thing we call a country.

I’m hoping they’re not too blind to put that optimism and selflessness to good use. In other words, I hope they’re not as jaded and cynical as I am. If you can’t be good, be a bad example. 🙂

I just finished ordering a Voice over IP phone from Packet8. They have a residential deal that provides all the custom calling features that Bellsouth charges an arm and a leg for, but with Packet8, you get everything for $20. A VoIP phone works over your DSL or cable modem connection and plugs right into your regular telephone.

Callers to your VoIP phone never know their call is going over the Internet. In fact, you can take it with you on trips. Wherever you have a broadband connection, you can receive your phone calls.

Now that I’ve ordered my phone (risk free, thankfully), I found this in the Triangle Business Journal which talks states are considering regulating VoIP companies as telephone companies. I don’t think VoIP companies should be considered telephone companies. They have not strung any cable, are not benefitting from the public right-of-way, nor are they guaranteed a profit from cushy tariffs. It’s just a ploy from the scared-shitless local phone companies to stave off their inevitable deaths.

Time Warner Cable is also planning to offer VoIP services, according to the article. Unlike other VoIP firms, TWC actually did file as a phone company. That’s probably because they DO benefit from public rights of way. Whatever you think of the cable company, having more phone competition can only be a good thing.

During my recent trip to Birmingham, I was talking with someone about the funny slang that doctors use to describe patients. Fark linked to just such a story today.

A patient who is “giving the O-sign” is very sick, lying with his mouth open. This is followed by the “Q-sign” — when the tongue hangs out of the mouth — when the patient becomes terminal.

General practitioners may use LOBNH (“Lights On But Nobody Home”) or the impressively bogus Oligoneuronal to mean someone who is thick.

But they also have a somewhat poetic option: “Pumpkin positive”, referring to the idea that the person’s brain is so tiny that a penlight shone into his mouth will make his empty head gleam like a Halloween pumpkin.

Here’s another story on Dr. Fox from the Beeb and one from Ananova. A horribly-formatted page of slang terms is here.