Science Fair

The Hillsboro-Beaverton High School Science Fair was today. John came up with the idea of building an alcohol cooler for a CPU, basically a heat pipe. You put some liquid in a metal tube and seal it. You heat the lower end of the tube, the liquid evaporates, rises to the upper and cooler end of the tube, condenses back to liquid and runs back down to the bottom. The evaporation and condensation transfer a relatively large amount of heat energy. He got a couple of his friends to go in on this project with him. He got the idea from reading on some forums on the Internet about overclocking CPU's. He had a rough idea on what he wanted to do. I did some calculations and realized we were going to need a much bigger tube than we originally planned. We made a couple of trips to Home Depot for some copper pipe and fittings and started putting this thing together. I tried to stay out of the actual construction. I made some suggestions, but John and his friends did all the measuring, marking, cutting, drilling and assembly. Soldering was a joint effort. John ran the torch, one of his friends would hold the pipe using a pair channel-locks, and I applied the flux and solder. Eventually we got the whole thing put together. It stands about four feet tall, but it does not work. We used the BIOS to monitor the temperature and the CPU gets to 60 degrees Celsius in something less than 10 minutes, whereupon we shut it down. The problem is that the boiling point of alcohol is too high. There are a couple of things we could try to make it work, and maybe we will one of these days.

Today was the Science Fair. We had a very short time to view the projects, less than an hour. I only got to look at a handful. Then we had the awards ceremony. It went on for an hour. They must have given out a hundred awards. They had awards for everything under the sun.

They opened the awards ceremony with awards from the Military. I was a little taken aback that the military was there, but as the Navy man said, many of the inventions we now take for granted came from military research. Nothing like a good fight to stir people's creativity. Each branch of the service has their own research department, and they all gave out awards.

John and his friends got the people's choice award. All the other participants voted for their favorite project, and John and his friends won, even though their contraption did not work.

Burn

Burned my hand today. Not seriously, mild first degree burn, one large, superficial blister that popped almost immediately. Went to New Seasons on Cedar Hills Boulevard to join my friends for our regular Thursday lunch. Went to the coffee bar for a cup of tea. Asked the young woman working there for a large cup for tea. She fills a cup with hot water and double cups it because it is really hot. When she hands it to me it sloshes over the edge and splashes the back of my hand. Yowzer! Set it down. Did not yell. My hand cools down almost immediately. Get a tea bag, put it in the cup, put a lid on, take my sandwich and tea to the check stand, set them down and ask for the restroom. Go soak my hand in cold water. Hard to get enough water in the sink to cover my hand. Water is really cold though which is good. Spend a couple of minutes doing this, then join my friends at their table.

At this point I do not know what to do. Should I go to the emergency room? Go back to work? Call my doctor and see if he can see me this afternoon? I knew enough to put cold water on it, but after that I am not really sure what to do.

Don runs off and buys a bottle of Aloe Vera concentrate and brings it back. I decide I better talk to a manager, maybe they have some first aid stuff. I go look for a manager. Can't find one so I stop at a different (coffee?) bar at the front of the store and ask for one. Nice lady there makes a call, and gets me some ice in a zip lock bag and a towel. A couple of managers show up, one takes my name and number, the other gets some gel and bandages. We sit down at a table and the woman manager applies the gel and bandages my hand. Tells me about the time she burned her foot with oil while wearing nylons. Gives me confidence that she knows what she is doing. The gel contains lanocaine, so it offers some relief. Ask the other manager type to check on their tea procedure. I spend the rest of the lunch hour listening to my friends and alternately applying the bag of ice to the back of my hand and the underside of my wrist. When I leave I notice people drinking tea out of large glass mugs with handles. Go home, call into work, take some Tylenol, eat lunch and take a short nap.

I take my truck to pick up my

Friday, eight days later.

I don't what I was picking up, looks like Google lost some of my original posting. Oh well.

I had a hard time going back to the coffee bar today where I burned my hand last week.

Turns out it is not a first degree burn, it is a second degree burn and it is really ugly. It does not really hurt, and it has not impeded my ability to do anything. For instance I can still type, well, as well as I ever could. It is a nuisance. I have to be careful not to bang it into anything, and I have to bandage it every day. I left it open one day to air out and it dried out so much it started to hurt. So now I take the bandage off after I shower (it really does not like hot water), let it air out for half an hour or so, and then bandage it again. The bandage stays on for the whole day until I take it off again the next morning. So the bandage serves three purposes: it keeps the wound from drying out too much, it protects it from incidental contact, and it conceals it from view. It is really ugly. The blister turned into dead skin and sloughed off the day after the it happened, which left a raw spot about the size of a quarter. The whole back of my hand, an area about three inches in diameter has turned dark red and is now starting to peel, like a sunburn.

I tried using the Aloe Vera that Don bought for me, but you cannot use it on an open wound, and I have not been worried about the rest of it. And it is a thin liquid. I kind of doubt swabbing the injured area once a day will have much effect. But I may start using it this weekend. Turns out you can drink the stuff. I tried a shot last Sunday and it gave me indigestion. Maybe if I started with a sip and worked up I would tolerate it better. Lot of hassle, and it does not taste like chocolate cake.

Last weekend I was pretty wiped out. I think the burn kind of knocked me down for a couple of days. I have been thinking about compensation, but I am not sure how much to ask for, it any. I do not want to go to a lawyer, or even an arbitration hearing. I would like to think that if I asked for a reasonable amount, New Seasons would gladly pay up. But just what would be a reasonable amount?

On the other hand, I have been getting a lot of mileage out of this. Everyone I talk to wants to know what happened, and about half the time I am repaid with a story about how they were burned once upon a time. So far it has been mostly legs and feet. Some very unpleasant to hear about, but totally invisible. No indication in their appearance or manner that they suffered from such an accident. Other than the ones who are crazy of course, and that may not have anything to do with the burn.

Most mornings I leave the house with my hand unbandaged, letting it air out. When I get wherever I am going, I ask whoever is there to give me a hand wrapping the tape around it. Everyone I have asked has helped, some slightly reluctantly, others without any qualms.

Mike B. parachutes

Mike B. just retired from the Air Force. In his younger days he used to jump out of airplanes. When you are jumping from a military plane, there is a jump platform just outside the door. On a C-47 it is about two feet square. On a C-17, it is about 5 feet square. The plane slows down to about 150 mph, just 10 mph above stall for the C-17, and the jump master steps out onto the jump platform (while hanging on of course) to look for the drop zone on the ground and to see that there are no aircraft following them that might collide with the jumpers. On a C-47, you are subject to the full 150 mph slipstream. On the C-17, there is some kind aerodynamic effect that drops the effective wind speed to more like 70 or 80 mph. Very pleasant, relatively speaking. When you are standing on the jump platform of the C-17, there are huge gray walls up, down, right and left of you. The wing is about 20 feet up. It is like stepping out of a warehouse.

Weekend

Just got back from Eugene, took Ross back to school. 230 miles round trip in 215 minutes. Traffic was relatively light. Still the occasionally dummy I had to slow down for.

Saw three movies with Ross this weekend. Anne and John went with us to see "The Last King of Scotland" Saturday afternoon. Starred Forrest Whitaker portraying Idi Amin.

Ross and I had dinner at Tosis restaurant on Sandy Boulevard in Northeast Portland. Nice standard restaurant. Ross noticed the menu had lots of meat on it, which suited us fine. Ross had prime rib and fries, I had a cheeseburger and fries.

We went down the street to the Hollywood Theatre to see David Lynch's "Inland Empire", a three hour nightmare. Lots of good acting, lots of interesting photographic work. There was something of a plot, but it got pretty lost in all the confusion. There was no coherent story at all. And it was three freaking hours long. It was interesting for the first hour, and for the second hour I kept hoping all these bits were somehow going to be tied together. The third hour I was just waiting for it to be over, and when it finally did end, some people applauded! I was shocked! I would have booed, but I was in shock, and all I wanted was to get out.

Sunday afternoon Ross and I went to see Clint Eastwoods "Letters from Iwo Jima", the Japanese version of the pair of movies he made about the World War II battle.

Sales Tax

Oregon is one of the few states that does not have a sales tax, and I am perfectly fine with it. Periodically though, someone raises the issue that we should have a sales tax for one reason or another. Perhaps we should. But let me tell you what I think is the big problem with sales taxes: it is not that it raises the prices of goods, it is that the price you pay at the register is not the price marked on the item. In other words, the merchant has an item marked for sale for a dollar and you go to check out in a state with sales tax and they tell you they want a dollar and so many cents. This is stupid and annoying.

There are any number of other items that are taxed by the state and federal governments that do not suffer from this kind of annoying sticker shock. Things like gasoline, cigarettes and tobacco are all taxed, and the taxes never show up, they are practically invisible.

So if you are going to put in a sales tax, make it invisible. Make it a percentage of a store's gross receipts. Now I am sure there are some sharpies who are going to quibble about a tenth of a percentage point here or there. Don't let that bother you. We are not concerned about hundreds or thousands of dollars the accountants will shave their tax bills by, we are concerned about the millions of dollars of tax revenue we will receive.

And while you are making laws, make one that causes the total tax to be printed on each reciept, especially cigarettes, alcohol and gasoline. That would educate people.

Coinage

I went for a walk this afternoon and saw a penny lying on the ground. I am in the habit of picking up bits of metal, screws, nails and such when I am out walking, but I walked right by this penny. It is worth less than on old nail. We should do away with the penny. It is useless. It costs more to make than it is worth. While you are at it, do away with the nickel and dime as well. Well, that may be a bit extreme. But at least one of them needs to go.

The way I see it the dollar has devalued by a factor of 10 over the last 50 years or so, so we should realign our currency with it's real value. I see two ways to do it:

1) Go back to using bits. Get rid of the penny, nickel and dime, and bring in the bit. It would be worth 12.5 cents, or one half of a quarter (formerly known as two bits), or one eighth of a dollar. The advantage here is we would still use quarters, we could replace three coins with one, and people would be using dealing with bits, similar to the way they are used in a computer. Eight money bits make one dollar, eight digital bits make one byte of data.

2) Go to the decimal system. Get rid of the penny, nickel and quarter. This would have the advantage of being consistent with our decimal number system and the stock market. We would not need a new symbol for bits, though I am sure someone could come up with one. The disadvantage is that you would need a bunch of dimes, which are almost too small to handle easily. You could add a couple of new coins like 20 cent and thirty cent pieces, but I don't know how well that would go over.

Anyway, the penny has outlived it's usefulness and needs to be retired.

Window box for cats

I want a window box for our two cats.

I was thinking about building one myself, but like all my other projects, it would likely take me forever and a day to get it done. Whereas if I could find someone to build it for me, it might actually get built in a timely fashion.

I am thinking:
* a solid platform, perhaps two feet by three feet
* Plexiglas, sloping roof
* window screen sides
* removable Plexiglas back, where it opens into the house, with a built in swinging cat door
* easy to install and remove in an existing double hung window

There is a second part to this idea. I looked on the internet for something like this, but I could not find it. I found some similar items, but they were all rather small and flimsy looking, and certainly not big enough for two cats. If this thing could be designed to be easily assembled, then it could be shipped relatively cheaply in a flat package. Which means they could be sold nationwide, via the internet or pet shops or whatever. Such a design may take more work, in which case we may have to build more than one. A prototype to try out our ideas, and then a second one to sell.

If I could line up all the necessary players (manufacturing, advertising, billing and shipping), it might make a worthwhile business.