Phone Voice Quality Metrics

Where are all the metrics? We replaced the cordless phone in our kitchen recently. The last phone was some brand I did not recognize that I bought at the local supermarket. It works reliably, but the voice quality is poor. We had an AT&T phone a while back, and it was great, but it died eventually. We replaced it with a Uniden, which was pretty good. When it died, we tried an AT&T phone from Office Depot. I was thrilled to find an AT&T phone, I thought this will be great. But that was not to be. It had some kind of horrible problem and we ended up exchanging it for another Uniden phone, which seems to work pretty well. I would like to see a metric for voice quality, but I haven't.

New Guy

We have a new radio man: Mike B. He is here for three weeks, maybe longer if things work out. He is going to be working on GHT's (GOES High data rate Transmitters). Former military man, moved here three weeks ago from Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. His wife is from Oregon, she is a Native American from the Warm Springs Indian Reservation.

As one might expect of a military man, he has an interest in firearms and shooting. Recently he has taken up black powder shooting, and has been teaching his kids to shoot. It is one thing to take shooting seriously and make every shot count, but with modern rapid fire firearms, it is very easy to just start blasting away for the fun of it. Shooting muzzle loaders means you have to work for every shot, which means you are more likely to make every shot count. You can spend all day shooting 20 or 30 rounds from a muzzle loader, whereas with a modern semi-automatic rifle you can whip off that many in a few seconds. And if you are shooting a high powered rifle, it can get very expensive.

He has taught his 15 year old daughter and younger son to shoot. His daughter has gotten quite good. She wanted to go shopping, so he gave her a goal. If she met the goal, he would take her shopping. The goal was to put a hole in a 308 shell casing at 100 yards using only four cartridges using a modern center fire rifle with a scope. He taped the shell to target board. A 308 shell is about one half of inch in diameter and maybe two inches long. She knicked it on the first shot, and managed to put holes in it with the next three. Mike took her shopping.

Games - Cubox - Sliding Block Puzzle

I found a new source of online computer games:

http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/games/

One I like in particular is:

http://www.unclebenny.com/nickel/CUBOX/cubox.html

It is sliding block puzzle, and it is a little curious. Most solutions can be done in six moves. Sometimes I can just look at the puzzle and instantly know how to solve it. Others will baffle me for a long time. What is even odder, is that I can come back and replay puzzles I solved easily before, and have a very difficult time solving them the second time. Others that I had difficulty with before, I solve easily.

Update September 2015: Links are not, but they are pretty useless.

Rage

I lost my temper at work first thing this morning. Yelled, screamed, cursed, even threw things. Poor Martin, he triggered it, by making a simple, ordinary request. A field representative wanted to show a potential customer what could be done in the way of displaying environmental data. No big deal, except that the program that we would run to do this was dead in the water due to the lack of a password. The computer this program runs on also runs a e-mail forwarding program that must always be running. If it fails for any reason, customers call up and raise hell. The demo program, which displays weather data, has recently been upgraded, and as is the nature of upgrades, has become unstable to the point that it will occasionally crash the computer. This is very bad. It is not a problem to restart the computer, but the e-mail program must be started manually, and that cannot be done unless you can logon, and to do that you must have the password. Which until I threw my fit, I did not have, even though I had asked for it a month ago.

These programs should not require the administrator to logon. They should start automatically. It should not be necessary for someone to logon and manually start them. Hopefully, we should be able to correct these shortcomings.

Breakage

The life cycle of numerous devices came to an end last week. We located the source of the squeak in the garage door, the bearings at the end of the main shaft were shot. The hot water dispenser in the kitchen sprung a leak, the electric motor that runs the driver's window in my truck gave out, and we finally decided to get the furnace fixed. The garage door man came on Wednesday and replaced the bearings. The furnace man came on Friday and replaced the ignitor in the furnace, which got it going. The plumber is due to come out some time this weak and replace the hot water dispenser.

The furnace died last winter, but the weather (as I recall) was fairly mild, and we have two gas fireplaces. I had just spent $500 getting a valve replaced in one of the fireplaces, and was not looking forward to spending more money on the furnace. So I just let it slide. Things got a little dicey this fall. Gas fireplaces work best if they have a fan to circulate the air around the firebox and blow hot air out into the room. The fan in the basement fireplace was rattling. It got cold and we turned on the furnace. After about a day, Anne notices that the house is not getting any warmer, and the furnace seems to be blowing cold air. Oh! That's right, it broke last winter and we never got it fixed! But wait, we have another gas fireplace, let's just fire it up. It lights up, it warms up, the thermostatic switch engages, the fan starts blowing warm air. All is well for about 30 seconds and then the fan starts screaming it's head off. Gads! Shut that thing off! A couple of hours of fooling around, a little epoxy, and the fans are running again. But the furnace is still broken and it is really cold outside.

I took my truck in to the Dodge Dealer in Beaverton to get the window fixed. They could not get it done. They did not have the part, they were busy, they did not have time. If I wanted, they could order the part for Monday. I declined, partly because they wanted $400 to fix the window. $400 is a stink load of money for one broken little do-dad. The garage door repair and the furnace repair were about $150 each, and they came to my house to do the work. I looked on the Internet and there are places that sell window regulators for about $80. The dealer wanted $160 for the part. The Internet part is risky. It might be perfectly good quality, but it might be shoddy, and that would mean another repair in a year or two. Reputation means a lot.

Anyway, after subtracting the cost of the parts, that means $240 for labor, which means about three hours of work, maybe two hours if the mechanic is really good at it. Which means it would probably take me all day. I thought I would open up the door this weekend and have a look, but between helping my kids, doing a few chores, and goofing off, all I managed was to pull the truck into the garage. I know my limits, I could pressure myself to fix it, but that would cut into my slack time, and that would make me grumpy, and nobody likes me when I am grumpy, so I am going to have the dealer perform the repair.

But I do not think I will be going back to the dealer in Beaverton. This is the third time they have disappointed me. First time they replaced an intake manifold gasket on warranty, which failed a month or so later, which necessitated a tow. The second time they did not have time to do an oil change when I showed up around noon. This was the last straw. So now I have to arrange to drop the truck at the dealer in Hillsboro. Probably do it on Christmas vacation.

Tribalism

I do not care for President Bush. It is not his apparent stupidity, after all he was smart enough to get elected. He is not as articulate as some would wish, but that does not mean he is stupid. Different people have different abilities, and simply because one is a glib blabbermouth does not mean they are any smarter than anyone else. Rather it is because he is a Republican, and Republicans have become repugnant to me. My mother was a bleeding heart liberal of the first order, and I suppose that to be a prime influence on my outlook. Democrats are not much better. It was a Democrat who proposed reinstating the draft last month, just after they had gained control of Congress.

The problem is, has been, and will no doubt always be, tribalism. Us versus Them.

America's horrendous foreign policy since World War II is what got us to where we are. I have been aware of it, more or less, since Kennedy was assassinated when I was twelve, and I have been aghast at the things I have heard from supposedly intelligent people. Henry Kissinger is a prime example of a really stupid, intelligent person. I say this from my gut, I cannot site any specific examples, but everything I have heard from him reinforces this feeling.

The Republicans, for example, are only for the Republicans. Never mind the poor, where is my next ten million coming from? If you are not rich, you are not one of them.

What we need is more people of means making opportunities for people without means.

Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving Weekend

Long Holidays and vacations give me trouble. If I travel I end up exhausted. If I stay home, I sluff off, and end up bummed out that I didn't get much done. This extra long weekend was not too bad. Ross came home from school Wednesday evening, Anne fixed a nice meal for Thursday, I stuffed myself and then took a two hour nap.

James Bond

Anne and the boys and I went to see the new James Bond movie Thanksgiving evening, it was a great Bond movie. It had most of the standard Bond elements, great stunts, exotic locations, fast cars, beautiful women, murder, mayhem, villains and explosions. The only thing missing was Q explaining all the latest gadgets.

Books

I finished a book by Alan Furst, "Dark Voyage" was the title, I think. I really enjoyed it. He is my favorite author at the moment: World War II intrigue and adventure. I picked up several other books later on, but none of them could keep my attention. Three of them were Science Fiction, by authors I used to enjoy:
- David Weber, of "Honor Harrington" fame,
- Larry Niven, whose accurate science made him required reading in my astronomy class back in school, and
- Eric Nylund, who wrote a Star Wars novel that I really enjoyed.
Finally, on Sunday, I picked up a small non-fiction volume about Napoleon, and so far, so good.

Napoleon is the main villain in Patrick O'Brians sea stories ("Master and Commander", a recent film, was based on his series of novels). Besides being a tyrant, Napoleon accomplished a number of things that are still with us. Very curious. Reminds me of the Carrdasians occupation of Bijor on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", or my own evaluation of recent presidents. David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series parallels Britain's war with France during the revolution, complete with a cast of despicable revolutionary leaders with names taken right from the French revolution. And don't forget the English in India. So it is interesting to see the other side of the coin. I may have to read more about the French revolution.

Computers

I tried cleaning my old Okidata laser printer (actually it is an LED printer, but never mind that). It had been working fine, but then one day it started leaving big black clouds all over the pages. I accused Johnny of banging into while rough housing with his friends, but he denies it. It is fairly old, but it hasn't seen much use. Opening it up reveals toner all over the inside. Vacuum cleaner does not do much good, neither does the air compressor. I pick up some laser printer cleaning sheets at Office Depot ($13). Before I try the cleaning sheets, I decide to do a little exploratory surgery. A dozen or so screws and some wiggling later, I have it pretty much all apart. Not that it helps. I put it together and run a cleaning sheet through but it does not really help. Matter of fact, it is behaving worse than before. So much for disassembly and reassembly, a technique that has often worked before. Next step would be to replace the toner cartridge, but I am afraid it will probably cost more than a new printer. The cartridge incorporates the imaging drum, so it will no doubt be expensive.

Kids

I helped Johnny take apart an old, broken down laptop. It was a bit of a challenge to do so without breaking anything. We got some tips from the Internet, and when we were still stymied, we knocked off one of the plastic feet using a screwdriver and a hammer. That gained us access to the last screw holding the top cover on. After that is was just a matter of about two dozen more screws.

More

I worked with daughter a bit on her math homework, and with Ross on his paper about sound systems for his physics class. Neither one likes math. They can do it if they apply themselves, but they have no interest in doing so.

Movies

Stopped at the video store the other night. Did not see much that interested me, which I thought was curious. I had seen a bunch of ads on TV over the summer for movies that looked interesting, but I do not recognize any at the video store. I do not remember the titles, I just remember seeing some ads, and I think I would recognize the covers of the those movies, but I do not. So I go to IMDB and try to find these films that I saw advertised. It takes some poking around, but I eventually land on their "power search" page and I get a list of about 300 titles. I look through it and find maybe a dozen movies that look like they might be worth watching. Am I picky or what? Anne and I rented a movie one night, but I cannot remember what it was. Some action/adventure film, most likely. I rented the most recent X-men movie and watched it by myself Sunday night. Johnny joined me for a bit, but he had already seen it, and mom sent him to bed before it ended.