The final resting place of Isaac Hunter’s Tavern

Update 3 Dec 10:25 PM: I am wrong about the location while Mike Legeros is correct. The best news of the day, though, is that I found the remains of the old tavern building! I will post details as soon as I can get Google Earth to behave. Sorry for the wait!

Courtesy North Carolina State Archives

Courtesy North Carolina State Archives


If you’ll recall, five years ago I set out on an Internet quest to determine exactly where Isaac Hunter’s tavern once stood. The Tavern was of important historical significance because it when North Carolina’s state capital was being created, legislators decided it should be within ten miles of the Tavern. Sadly, the Tavern met the same fate that many of Raleigh’s historical properties met in the early 1970s: it fell into disrepair and was later bulldozed. Also sad is that I never completed my quest.

Tonight I got an email from Steve Hall, who found my blog post and asked if I’d ever actually solved the mystery. Steve’s email prompted me to actually finish what I started, so tonight I present to you a few additional historical photographs of Isaac Hunter’s tavern, courtesy of some resource links that Steve sent me (thanks, Steve!).

Here is the Tavern as it appeared on an aerial photograph taken in 1959. Wake Forest Road runs north and south on the right side of the photo and you can see St. Albans Road stretching into the northeastern corner. The curving driveway leads up to a larger, more modern home that was built on the tavern property. In the red circle to the west of the home is the tavern, based on some time I spent matching up the tavern roofline. I learned that near the end of its existence the tavern was used as a horse stable, so its spot here behind the main home seems to support that.

Isaac Hunter's Tavern, 1959.

Isaac Hunter’s Tavern, 1959.

The funny thing is, an aerial photograph taken in 1938 does not seem to show the tavern at this same spot. In fact, I’m not sure where the tavern was at this point as I’ve scoured this imagery and can find nothing I can match up with it. My guess is that the tavern might be just south and slightly east of the main house along the curving driveway but I don’t really know for sure. It could actually be in the same spot as it is in 1959 but it sure doesn’t look like it to me.

Isaac Hunter's Tavern, 1938.

Isaac Hunter’s Tavern, 1938.

So where would you go if you wanted to stand in the spot where the tavern last was? Since I only know where it last was and have not located its original spot, I can only show you the last location:

Isaac Hunter's Tavern today

Isaac Hunter’s Tavern today

Here’s the same spot with the current Google Maps satellite imagery added:

The location of Isaac Hunter's Tavern

The location of Isaac Hunter’s Tavern

A smile crossed my face as I was lining up these images. Benson Drive started off as the dirt path that split the home and the tavern! Also delightful is the fact that the land where the tavern itself last stood is still (for now) undeveloped! There still could be historical nails and/or other artifacts to be found at this spot. Hurray!

I want to thank Steve for prompting me to finish my quest and for the handy links he provided: the 1938 aerial and 1959 aerial sets from UNC’s collection of USDA Historical Aerial Photos. For reference, I used images 6W_145 from the 1959 imagery and 13-212 from the 1938 imagery.

Dependent Verification Services are still a bad idea

If there’s one thing the handful of longtime MT.Net readers know it’s that there’s never been a dead horse that I didn’t love to beat! In this case, I’m returning again to the topic of dependent verification services such as those offered by AON Hewitt. My employer is changing health plans and as a part of the transition employees are being asked to go through the dependent verification process.

This is my second go-round with this process and it makes as little sense the second time around as it did the first. The verification firms tout fraud rates of up to 15% as justification for employers to hire the firm. Some research I’ve found online suggests that verification process costs the employer about $21 per employee.

Employers take note: the cost to your employees should also taken to account. The verification process is an anxiety-ridden exercise that does not engender trust in one’s employer. Under threat of terminating their health benefits, you are asking your employees to gather their sensitive and confidential personal documents and scan, fax, or mail them to a third party: the verification service.
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The Jones Street Exodus

The architects of North Carolina’s so-called “conservative revolution” are abandoning ship in droves now. Paul “Skip” Stam, Leo Daughtry, Bob Rucho, and Tom Apodaca, have all called it quits. Thom Tillis started the ball rolling, leaving town to go to the U.S. Senate.

The N&O’s Rob Christensen posits that it’s because the “revolution” has been a success. Apodaca agrees:

“We’ve come to a point where we’ve accomplished almost everything we set out to do,’’ Apodaca said.

Let’s take stock:
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Reagan and Gorbachev Agreed to Pause the Cold War in Case of an Alien Invasion | Smart News | Smithsonian

Interesting. Did Reagan know something about aliens?

At one point during the 1985 Geneva Summit, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev took a break from negotiations to take a walk. Only their private interpreters were present and for years, the details of what they talked about were kept secret from both the Russian and American public. But during a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose and Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz, Gorbachev revealed that Reagan asked him point-blank if they could set aside their differences in case the world was invaded by aliens.

Source: Reagan and Gorbachev Agreed to Pause the Cold War in Case of an Alien Invasion | Smart News | Smithsonian

Update: You can watch Gorbachev’s comment here, beginning at the 2:53 mark.

Spammers are targeting Facebook photo albums

Facebook photo spam

Facebook photo spam


Over the past few days I’ve noticed ads inserted into my Facebook feed. Of course, “Sponsored Ads” are nothing new, but these new ads appear as photographs in which one of my Facebook friends has been tagged by one of their friends. The photos are added as a new photo album to the unsuspecting Facebook user’s album set. Then a number of photos are tagged with that user’s friends. Each of the user’s friends are tagged in the very same spot in the photograph, which should be a good clue to Facebook that the photo is suspicious.
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No Damned Computer is Going to Tell Me What to Do – The Story of the Naval Tactical Data System, NTDS

This is an excellent (and extensive) history of the Navy’s Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS), the computerized mapping of threats. I worked with NTDS in the Navy but never knew how its development not only revolutionized naval warfare but also spurred the development of modern digital computers.

It was 1962. Some of the prospective commanding officers of the new guided missile frigates, now on the building ways, had found out that the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) was going to be built into their new ship, and it did not set well with them. Some of them came in to our project office to let us know first hand that no damned computer was going to tell them what to do. For sure, no damned computer was going to fire their nuclear tipped guided missiles. They would take their new ship to sea, but they would not turn on our damned system with its new fangled electronic brain.

We would try to explain to them that the new digital system, the first digitized weapon system in the US Navy, was designed to be an aid to their judgment in task force anti-air battle management, and would never, on its own, fire their weapons. We didn’t mention to them that if they refused to use the system, they would probably be instantly removed from their commands and maybe court martialed because the highest levels of Navy management wanted the new digital computer-driven system in the fleet as soon as possible, and for good reason.

Secretary of the Navy John B. Connally, a former World War II task force fighter director officer, and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh A. Burke were solidly behind the new system, and were pushing the small NTDS project office in the Bureau of Ships to accomplish in five years what would normally take thirteen years. The reason behind their push was Top Secret, and thus not known even by many naval officers and senior civil servants in the top hierarchy of the navy. Senior navy management did not want the Soviet Union to know that task force air defense exercises of the early 1950s had revealed that the US surface fleet could not cope with expected Soviet style massed air attacks using new high speed jet airplanes and high speed standoff missiles.

Source: First-Hand:No Damned Computer is Going to Tell Me What to DO – The Story of the Naval Tactical Data System, NTDS – Engineering and Technology History Wiki

Scientists have figured out how to shock the salt out of seawater – ScienceAlert

Cool!

Researchers have developed a system that uses an electric shockwave to extract salt and other impurities out of salty or contaminated water, and say it could be scaled up for use in desalination or water purification plants, or be used to clean the vast amounts of dirty water produced by fracking.

Known as ‘shock electrodialysis’, the technique applies an electrically driven shockwave to a constant stream of flowing water. The current interacts with the charged salt particles, causing a stream of salty water to be pushed aside and separated from a stream of fresh water, and these are then funnelled into separate pipes.

Source: Scientists have figured out how to shock the salt out of seawater – ScienceAlert

Wake judge rules against teen facing off against NC on climate change | News & Observer

News and Observer reporter Anne Blythe wrote a follow-up story on Judge Morgan ruling against Hallie’s climate change petition case. Perfectionist that she is, Hallie was really nervous about how she thought her interview went but was pleased with the final result.

I was also glad that Anne’s story mentioned the outrageous attacks some have launched against our daughter and her efforts. Hallie could truly care less about them and Kelly and I find them sad. I really only mentioned them here in my blog because I think these folks really don’t understand how this makes them look. I’m sure their parents taught them manners, so they would certainly be above spewing hate towards a kid.

The truth is that Hallie is a tough, determined young woman posessing more self-confidence than many adults. She can handle herself just fine. And besides, when you pick a fight with a kid you’ve pretty much already lost, right?

Hallie Turner, the 13-year-old girl who took North Carolina to court over climate change, received disappointing news the day before Thanksgiving.

A Wake County Superior Court judge ruled against her effort to overturn a December 2014 decision by the N.C. Environmental Management Commission.

But with the pluck of a teen wise beyond her years, Hallie said Friday the ruling from Judge Mike Morgan had not deterred her.

“It’s an issue that I’m always going to continue trying to make a difference in,” Hallie said during a phone interview. “There’s lots of next steps that can be taken.”

Hallie, an eighth-grader at Ligon Middle School who has been marching and rallying against global warming since the 4th grade, is one of a number of teens taking their states and politicians to court over climate change.

Source: Wake judge rules against teen facing off against NC on climate change | News & Observer

Fun with a green screen

Travis's green screen setup. Lights are helpful but not necessary.

Travis’s green screen setup. Lights are helpful but not necessary.


Since the office was officially working a half-day Wednesday due to it being the day before Thanksgiving, I decided not to make the monotonous one-mile commute into the office and instead worked from home. Being geographically dispersed, my team meets daily via videoconference and I decided I was done with putting the walls of our spare bedroom on display for my coworkers to see.

The day before a holiday called for something a little more whimsical, so I hatched a plan. I found some free software for the Mac called CamTwist that can do chroma key. Chroma key is the “green screen” technique that TV studios use to insert backgrounds behind their reporters and presenters. A few years ago our son, Travis, got a green cloth that makes a decent green screen. I borrowed his green cloth, set it up behind my office desk, fired up CamTwist, and displayed a holiday-appropriate scene behind me of wild turkeys in the woods. My coworkers loved it!
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Thanksgiving at sea

It was Thanksgiving in 1991, a time near the end of my tour aboard the USS Elliot (DD-967). We were nearing the end of our three-month Persian Gulf deployment, bored nearly shitless with endless tacking around the warm bathtub known as the Persian Gulf. I was on the far side of the world from my home, sick of looking at skies that were either hazy with desert heat and sand or blackened with the smoke from still-burning fires in Iraq’s oil fields. It seemed the end of my enlistment couldn’t get here fast enough.

In spite of my homesickness, in spite of the boredom of the Gulf, in spite of all the griping I could have been doing that day, I knew down on the mess decks awaited a scrumptious Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, ham, stuffing, and the works. I was healthy and fit and (like my shipmates) took great cooks, air conditioning and my bed with me everywhere I deployed.
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