Violence in the Streets

Rockwell City Courthouse, March 2013.

A police officer was shot and killed early this morning in my wife's home town of Rockwell City, Iowa. I suppose there might have been another murder sometime in the town's distant past, but maybe not. (Update: there was another murder back in the 1960's, and that's as far as my wayback machine goes.) There are only 1700 or so people living there now.
    Last night older son saw eleven Hillsboro Police cars heading North out of town, lights and sirens going. This report of a shooting is the only thing I could find that could prompt that kind of response.

Turn Signal Repair

3157 Bulb

New improved stuff means new improved problems. Left front turn signal on my truck flaked out, started flashing double time. I shouldn't complain, the truck (Dodge Dakota) is 14 years old and this is the only light that has given me any trouble. It pulled the same trick a few months ago, so I figured it was burned out and needed to be replaced. When I inspected the bulb I could not find anything wrong, so I plugged it back in and it started working, so never mind.
     Now we're back and I pull the same bulb out again, and again it looks fine, but plugging it back in
doesn't fix the problem. At this point any ordinary mechanic would have replaced the bulb and been done with the problem. But since I bothered to look at the bulb, I wonder if maybe there is some other problem, like the socket is disintegrating or something. So we futz with it, and lo and behold, pushing the bulb halfway in causes it to light up, but pushing it all the way in causes it to go dark!
    Closer inspection of the bulb reveals what looks like scorch marks on some of the contact wires on the base, and the wire is rough to the touch, not smooth like the other contact wires that are shiny. Looks like a marginal contact was exacerbated by arcing. Scraping at this roughness with a pocketknife does not alleviate the problem, so I pull out a file and file away. It took quite a bit of filing to get rid of all of the rough patch, but it solved the problem. For now.

P.S. I didn't take a picture because I didn't, and I should be able to find a picture of this bulb out there on the internet easy enough, right? You wouldn't believe how many pictures of the wrong turn signal bulb are out there. A zillion at least. Even this one isn't perfect. This one has a plastic base, the one in truck is all glass.

White Alice

1956-1979 White Alice Communications System, Kodiak Alaska

A radio person left a comment alerting me to Lundberg Lens antennae on a small island, just off Kodiak, Alaska, so I had to go rooting around to see what I could find, and what I found was White Alice, another massive cold war era project. It was an RF communications system developed for the Air Force and deployed in Alaska. Big pictures here.

What Does The Fox Say?

If you can get through the first few seconds of silliness you will be rewarded.

9/11- Ayman Al Zawahiri

History channel documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman with subtitles in Spanish. 44 minutes long.
Update February 2017 replaced missing video. The new video caption and description makes no mention of Morgan Freeman or the History Channel, though their logo is visible.

@#$%

The US and New Zealand are racing sailboats in San Francisco Bay, competing for the America's Cup. Fast sailboats are kind of cool, being all high techy and hydro-foily and stuff, so I went looking for some pictures and I was sorely disappointed. There are a bunch of pictures out there, but the boats and their sails have been turned into billboards for their sponsors. They are so covered with crap that you can't tell what the boat looks like, so no free publicity here, you soulless, money grubbing corporate sleazebags.

Germans & Jellyfish

Frogmen from the German Specialized Forces Marine (SEK M) make nice with the locals. © Bundeswehr / Bienert