Ed’s Random Thoughts

I haven’t blogged much lately but I thought I would mention that Studs Terkel died today at the age of 96.  Studs was probably best known for his book “Working”.  If you haven’t taken the time to read it or if you haven’t heard of it then you should do yourself a favor and get a copy.  He was a man who did many things in life but may be best known to the world as an “Oral Historian”.  It was a term that he did not care for but he was stuck with it.  Essentially, he interviewed people from all walks of life and included these interviews in various themed books.  In addition to dealing with the topic of work he dealt with race, war, death, the city of Chicago, the arts, and a host of other topics if you ever had the chance to listen to his wonderful radio program on WFMT.

I’m not one who is all that impressed with the famous nor am I particularly uncomfortable around them but I’m not sure that I was able to sound very intelligent the couple of times I had an opportunity to talk with Terkel.  I respected his work and dedication to that work immensely.  The world is a poorer place without the likes of Studs Terkel.

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I found this quote and thought I would pass it along:

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading now, or surrender yourself to self-ignorance.

The quote comes from Atwood H. Townsend, professor New York University.  I found the quote in an interesting book I’m reading by Steve Leeven called “The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life”.  I came across the book when listening to an interview that he did with David Allen of Getting Things Done fame.  Leeven is best known for being the guy who founded Levenger.  If you don’t know what Levenger is then you need to check out levenger.com as I’m continually tempted by the products they offer.

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I just finished a major project at work a few weeks ago and thought I would reward myself with a new watch.  Lately, I have found that keeping all of the vintage automatics and manual wind watches in good running order is making the watchmaker wealthy and me less so.  I have also found that I really like accurate watches.  I guess I am slowing moving towards more high end quartz movements and less automatic or manual movements.  With that in mind I set out to find a cool looking watch.  As fate would have it I wasn’t overly impressed with the $1300 Oris I saw at Macy’s.  It was a decent looking watch but it was only rated for 30 meters and for that price I could easily jump into an Omega, Citizen Chronomaster, or even a used Grand Seiko.  Each would have a better depth rating and quite frankly be better watches.  I also wasn’t in the mood to spend that much on a watch so I felt lucky when I noticed a Citizen Nighthawk for 50% off.  Citizen just released a new version with eco-drive and syncing to the atomic clock.  I like the looks on the older model better so a purchase was made.

Here’s a shot of the watch:

The watch is interesting in that it has a slide rule in the bezel and was designed for pilots.  I once had a vague idea how to use a slide rule but those days are long past.  My initial impressions of that watch is that it looks very nice.  I’ve received a few compliments on it so far and look forward to wearing it more.  It is pretty comfortable and seems to gain about 4 seconds a month.  Not bad.  My only concern is that the crystal is not sapphire and that the metal ring around the bezel is going to be prone to dings.  I would have also liked a little better finishing on the case itself.  Small things that most people won’t notice.

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What happens when you plan to do work in your kitchen?  You clean your garage.

Made some space on the shelves I built last year since they’re already filled.  I then sub-divided one of the cubes by adding more shelves.  Tomorrow I am planning on splitting one of the other cubes by putting in another 24×48 piece of wood along with supports (each shelf is 24 inches deep and 96 inches wide but there’s a support column in the middle so each shelf looks like it is 48 inches wide).

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It appears that the efforts of the government of China that were aimed at reducing the pollution in Bejing have come up short.  The American swim team arrived the other day wearing pollution masks.  I firmly believe that the IOC is going to regret putting the summer games in China and I believe that future host cities will have to prove that they can provide a healthy and safe environment for the games.

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I generally try to stay away from politics but there’s something about McCain that has bothered me for some time.  He’s a luddite.  When asked what kind of computer he uses he gave the answer of “Cindy McCain”.  According to the candidate, he doesn’t know how to use a computer and doesn’t.  Some people might wonder why our President should have even rudimentary knowedge of how to use a computer.  Here’s why: a number of technology issues that are going to require astute decisions will become important within legislation over the next four years.  These issues include electronic voting, the net neutrality act, increased personal privacy concerns as they relate to data collection, and copyright/file sharing issues.  It should also be noted that the Bush Administration made a concerted effort to avoid following statutes that relate to how e-mail correspondence is handled within the white house.  As a result of their efforts they “lost” millions of e-mails that they were entrusted with preserving for history.  Some of these e-mails relate specifically to a number of the scandals that they have been embroiled in over the years.

A President doesn’t need to understand the finer points of TCP/IP or even FTP but they should understand the concept of e-mail and how data integrity/recovery procedures need to be structured so that their administration can follow the existing statutes.  They also need to be able to understand the limitations of electronic voting machines in order to help insure that legislation enacted allows for our elections to decrease the possibility of voting fraud committed by those who are entrusted with conducting and supervising fair elections.

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Jott.com has become one of my go to tools for productivity.  It seems like a lot of things occur to me as I’m driving in my car (which may be due to the fact that I spend almost an hour every day commuting).  Jott.com ties my cell phone and various emails account together.  I can call jott and indicated who I want to jott - the service then translates my voice message into a text message.  Sometimes I get back to my work email and I have forgotten what I sent via jott.  Which is a big endorsement for it.

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I see with great amusement that our benovent leader President George W. Bush has lifted the Executive ban on offshore oil drilling.  He is now urging congress to lift federal bans as well.  Leadership is about a lot of things and one of those things is having forsight.  Bush is sorely lacking on this front (amoung many others).  Anyone with half a brain and that still has a pulse could probably have predicted that oil prices would go up.  Oil is a finite resource and the demand for it has increased signficantly.  This is not a new trend.  Leadership identifies issues like these and proposeses potential solutions.  We haven’t seen this from our current President.

Here are some interesting quotes on this:

“If we were to drill today, realistically speaking, we should not expect a barrel of oil coming out of this new resource for three years, maybe even five years, so let’s not kid ourselves,” said Fadel Gheit, oil and gas analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. Equity Capital Markets Division.

“Candida Scott, an oil industry researcher at Cambridge Research Associates, said oil needs to be priced at $60 a barrel or more to justify deep-shelf drilling. With oil now selling for $145 a barrel, companies are almost assured of profiting from offshore drilling, Scott said”.

“In his statement last month, Bush also renewed his demand that Congress allow drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, clear the way for more refineries and encourage efforts to recover oil from shale in areas such as the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming”.

The real solution to America’s oil problem come down to a mixture of strategies.  First, reduce usage - this can be accomplished by mandating higher CAFE standards.  Second, encourage the use of alternative fules - the government should give tax incentives to American companies that do R&D and product introduction in this area.  Third, encourage electric cars.  This is a no brainer to me.

Additionally, we need to build nuclear power plants and leverage clean energy technologies such as wind and solar wherever they make sense.  Coal and Natural gas don’t make sense over the long term anymore than encouraging people to drive gas guzzling trucks.

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I’m going to be doing some camping this summer and picked up a Casio Pathfinder 1300G from Amazon.  The 1300G came with two straps and I can easily put on a Zulu or Nato band.  The watch is full of features.  It is solar powered and syncs to the atomic clock (in Ft. Collins as well as four others around the world) every night automically.  The other reason I purchased it is that it has a built in barometer, temperature, altitude, and a compass.  Add to those features five alarms, a stopwatch, and a countdown timer.  It also has a light.

The watch is by far the most technologically advanced quartz piece I have in my collection.  I suspect it will get a lot of wrist time on trips and weekends.

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I’ve spent a lot of time on the road (for me) over the last few weeks and it occured to me that someone needs to create a GPS that has an integrated radar detector and internet capabilities so that it could report to a central system potential speed traps.

No tickets were issued and I wasn’t pulled over to inspire the idea.

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