Graphing With Excel

Broken lines in Excel Spreadsheet Graph

My wife needed to graph some data from a spreadsheet for work. Usually this is no big deal, simply highlight the data you want graphed, click the chart button and away you go. I've used it numerous times and the biggest problem I have is remembering that spreadsheet people call graphs charts.

There was only one problem in this case: not all of the data was contiguous. Matter of fact, the data was pretty sparse. Still, she wanted to see lines between the data points so we can see the trend, if there is one, over time. You should be able to do that, so I volunteered to figure it out.

Took me the better part of two hours to get it all sorted. The biggest problem was the enormous amount of information out there on how to do stuff with Excel. It has become the new generation's Emacs. (For those of you who have not had the pleasure, Emacs is/was a text editor for Unix. It was the be all and end all. You could rebuild the entire universe from inside Emacs. It was crazy. I tried it once and quickly moved on to something more rational.)

Eventually I came across a web page about making graphs with broken lines, which introduced me to #N/A which is returned by the function NA(). So, for some reason filling all the empty data cells with =NA() caused lines to appear between the very sparse data points. Cool! Victory is ours! The infidels have been defeated! Let us retire and celebrate with blood ale and roast beast!

Update February 2017 replaced missing graph.

Yee, Haw! Let's Nuke North Korea!

My far flung corespondents have something to say about his raptureness Kim Il Jong. From Iowa Andy:

Where is the media? They are missing the story of the century.

The rogue nuclear-capable nation of N Korea has once again shown its rabid dog proclivities to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting.

The US is sending a carrier into this morass. What better target for a N Korean short range nuclear missile?

And Kim Jong can then go out in a blaze of Armageddon.

California Bob replies:

You know, I myself was thinking, too, that Kim Jong Il has been getting increasingly reckless lately, and wondered if he wasn't planning on going out in style -- or as Tom Lehrer put it, "suffused with an incandescent glow."

I'd like to know where all the bigmouth war-mongers are. Oh sure, they were all bluster when it came to the mortal threats posed by Grenada, and Panama, and Iraq. But with a real problem like North Korea -- and I consider North Korea one of the tragedies of the modern geo-political spectrum -- it's sort of, "OK, we'll shut up about that, we don't want any trouble...nothing that would actually start to impact Budweiser consumption stateside." Cowards.

And that's why I vote republican. Because the second Roman empire is nearing the end of days, and I want these morons to witness the consequences of their idiocy.

Or not. I don't care.

Michigan Mike follows up:

As a nation, we are now obsessed with our own internal political warfare. All else is of no consequence.

The truth of effective international relations, industrial economics, environmental sustainability, and human improvement will now be argued in the public forum by CNN pundits who think that "He spent a purr-fect afternoon with his safely rescued cat." is a clever pun.

Update October 2016 replaced missing picture.

Wikileaks & SIPRNET

I am so out of touch. Some Army Private downloaded a whole bunch of "secret" documents from a government server and handed it over to Wikileaks. All the news reports are all about how much trouble this information is going to cause. The only story I found about the actual leak was on the Guardian's site, and they aren't even an American company, they're British!

We're spending billions on security, apparently for no reason. They sure didn't make a believer out of Army Private Bradley Manning.

Minimum Wage

I heard from a guy working at a movie theater this week. He was very pleased that he got some tips while working the concession counter in the theater. I was shocked. I didn't know that anybody tipped concession workers. I always treated them like vending machines, which is a step above what they are, which is accomplices to highway robbery. Here is the price, yes it is exorbitant, but you are trapped inside here and this is the only food there is, so if you want something to eat, you have to buy it from us and you will have to pay our prices.

In recent years, I have modified my outlook. Movie theaters are in business to make money. The ticket prices, while high, are still a pretty good deal for what they deliver. On the other hand, the food is optional. I know the prices are going to be exorbitant, and if I go to the theater with my family it is going to cost me North of $20 for popcorn and soda pop. That's just the way it is, and after twenty years I'm become accustomed to it.

Running a movie theater can be a pretty iffy propostion. If the movies are popular, you may draw big crowds and make a ton of money. If not, you could lose your shirt. Concessions is a way to generate more money when times are good, which may keep you in business through those inevitable lean times.

So concession stand prices are a fact of modern life. Get used to it. Still, tipping concession stand workers was a new idea to me. I mean, you don't tip workers at food service restaurants. (okay, maybe you do. I don't). In general fast food places seem to discourage it. I suppose it gives them a slight competitive advantage. Some people are cheap, but are also sheep, and would feel obliged to tip if it were allowed. If tipping is prohibited, then they can be cheap without feeling guilty.

You don't have a lot of interaction with fast food restaurant workers. This is less of a social event than it is a refueling operation. I suspect a lot of people would just as soon swap out their dead battery pack for a new one as sit down for ten minutes to consume food. Keeping prices fixed also speeds up the business end of things. We don't have time to stop and figure out how much the tip is, much less dig through our pockets to find the correct amount of cash.

Which brings us to actual restaurants. Jack and I go out to lunch once a week. We've been doing it for years. There are three restaurants we usually go to. Occasionally we will branch out and look around, but we have pretty much settled on these three:

• O'Connors in Multnomah Village
• Buster's Barbeque near I-5 & Highway 99.
• The Cornelius Pass Roadhouse, also know as CPR, near Highway 26.

O'Connors is a real restaurant, it is not part of a chain, they have a cook and they have had the same wait staff for years. It's in an old building with old furnishings, the food is good, there is always something new on the menu and prices are reasonable.

Busters serves meat buffet style. They've had the same guy with a knife behind the counter forever. He slices off a piece of whatever you want, his assistant hands you a bowl of "side", you pay the cashier and find a table. Don't think I've ever tipped here either. Probably should.

CPR is part of the McMenamins brother's chain. These guys have built themselves a little empire based on their home brewed ales. They typically will take over an old building and refurbish it to use as a restaurant. CPR was such a success they built a new building to use as a restaurant. The original old house is still there and is kept in good repair. It is something of an emblem for the place. The odd thing about this place is that the wait staff is constantly changing. The only person there that I am reasonably sure will be there next time is big bearded guy and I think he's the manager. Waitresses never seem to last more than a couple of weeks. This place is in close proximity to Intel. Is there a connection between this location and the high turn over in staff?

Lunch typically runs $20 to $25 for the two us, and we usually leave 4 or 5 dollars for a tip.

Essay by Iraq war veteran Charles Whittington

Stolen entire from The Baltimore Sun. I saw several articles about this and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I didn't link ABC's story because they had an obnoxious floating ad and a video clip that started playing automatically.

The following is the essay that Iraq war veteran Charles Whittington wrote for his English class at the Community College of Baltimore County. It was published in the campus newspaper Oct. 26:

War is a drug. When soldiers enter the military from day one, they begin to train and are brain washed to fight and to handle situations in battle. We train and train for combat, and then when we actually go to war, it is reality and worse than what we have trained for. We suffer through different kinds of situations. The Army never taught how to deal with our stress and addictions.

War is a drug because when soldiers are in the Infantry, like me, they get used to everything, and fast. I got used to killing and after a while it became something I really had to do. Killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive. I had a really hard time with this problem when I returned to the United States, because turning this addiction off was impossible. It is not like I have a switch I can just turn off. To this day, I still feel the addictions running through my blood and throughout my body, but now I know how to keep myself composed and keep order in myself, my mind. War does things to me that are so hard to explain to someone that does not go through everything that I went through. That's part of the reason why I want to go back to war so badly, because of this addiction.

Over in Iraq and Afghanistan killing becomes a habit, a way of life, a drug to me and to other soldiers like me who need to feel like we can survive off of it. It is something that I do not just want, but something I really need so I can feel like myself. Killing a man and looking into his eyes, I see his soul draining from his body; I am taking away his life for the harm he has caused me, my family, my country.

Killing is a drug to me and has been ever since the first time I have killed someone. At first, it was weird and felt wrong, but by the time of the third and fourth killing it feels so natural. It feels like I could do this for the rest of my life and it makes me happy.

There are several addictions in war, but this one is mine. This is what I was trained to do and now I cannot get rid of it; it will be with me for the rest of my life and hurts me that I cannot go back to war and kill again, because I would love too. When I stick my blade through his stomach or his ribs or slice his throat it's a feeling that I cannot explain, but feels so good to me, and I become addicted to seeing and acting out this act of hate, and violence against the rag heads that hurt our country. Terrorists will have nowhere to hide because there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers like me who feel like me and want their revenge as well.

Aircraft Landing System, Part 2

Seahawk Helicopter landing with RAST System

Comrade Misfit denounced my big idea as old hat, and suggested I look up the RAST system, so I did. The Navy stole my idea before I even thought of it. Durn their hides anyhoo. Works with the Navy's SH-60B helicopter, an eight ton behemoth.

From Global Security's article on the SH-60B Seahawk:

The Seahawk helicopter differs from other helicopters in the Navy inventory in that, the Recovery Assist, Secure and Traverse (RAST) landing system is used. This system allows for recovery of aircraft in high sea states (6 degrees pitch, and 15 degrees roll). During RAST operations, the helicopter lowers a messenger cable that is connected to the ship’s haul down cable. The messenger cable is raised and locked into the helicopter’s RAST probe. Four thousand PSI of force is applied to the haul down cable which guides the probe into the locking beams of the Rapid Securing Device (RSD). The RSD also serves as the motive force to traverse the helicopter into and out of the hanger. The main rotor blades and tail pylon can be folded for storage. Movement of the SH-60B by hand is prohibited except during emergencies due to the 15,500 pound empty weight. In addition, the helicopter can operate from non-RAST equipped combatants and a variety of other naval ships.

On a pitching ship, where the flight (or landing) deck is moving up and down, there is going to be considerable stress on the chopper. Every time the deck goes up, the rotors need to producing enough lift to keep the line taught, and every time the deck goes down the chopper is going to be dragged down through the air.

Curtis Wright builds the system. I only found one video of it in use. It looks like a dry run in good weather and it's hard to tell if it is even doing anything.

Update November 26, 2010: An anonymous source provided me with a more accurate description of how this thing works. The cable doesn't actually pull the helicopter down. It acts more like a guide to ensure that the probe on the bottom of the chopper is caught by the trap on the deck on the ship (the life raft looking thing sitting on the deck directly underneath the chopper). The shipboard winch reels and unreels the cable to maintain constant tension. So the force of impact when the chopper actually touches down is still in the hands of the pilot and depends on gauging the distance from the deck, how fast it is moving and in what direction. I imagine that's were the cable and all it's associated equipment comes in. A very tricky bit of flying in any case. You also have the added terror of being chained to the boat, though I imagine there is a quick release for emergencies.

Originally posted November 20, 2010.

Update February 2017 replaced missing picture.

TSA Nakedizer

There's a lot of flak in the blog-o-sphere these days about the new, improved, TSA security screening protocol, at least in the small corner of it where I while away my days. Since my brain has received so much input on the subject, I had to come up with logical explanation for it, and I have!

Used to be before deregulation air travel was expensive and therefor naturally restricted to the upper classes. Someone wants a return to those days, and if they have to destroy the airline industry to do it, well, all and good. This TSA thing is just the first step. After the airline industry has collapsed, they will bring back regulation, prices will jump four-fold, and the only people who will travel by air will be those rich enough.

That's not really a very good theory, is it? I mean 80% of the population are sheeple and think the nakedizer is a fine idea. I wonder if 80% of air travelers think it's a good idea. What percentage of the population travels by air every year? Half? 10%? I suspect 1% of the population accounts for 50% of the travel. Hard to find numbers that give any kind of accurate picture.