I’m not sure why, but lately I just haven’t felt like I’ve had anything to say.  I could rant about all the usual suspects and their usual bullshit concerning the New Orleans situation, but why bother?  Sometimes it just seems like it’s all been said already. 

Anyhow, this seems to be the usual state of affairs for me during the summer.  Usually this passes once things cool down.

It seems that there’s a meme afoot regarding the music that was popular when you got out of high school.

Click below for the full horror of 1988.

Key:
   Strikethrough = hate the song
   Bold = like the song
   Bold + underline = favorite (of the set)
   No highlight=no strong opinion

1. Faith, George Michael
2. Need You Tonight, INXS
3. Got My Mind Set On You, George Harrison
4. Never Gonna Give You Up, Rick Astley
5. Sweet Child O’ Mine, Guns N’ Roses
6. So Emotional, Whitney Houston
7. Heaven Is A Place On Earth, Belinda Carlisle
8. Could’ve Been, Tiffany
9. Hands To Heaven, Breathe
10. Roll With It, Steve Winwood
11. One More Try, George Michael
12. Wishing Well, Terence Trent d’Arby
13. Anything For You, Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine
14. The Flame, Cheap Trick
15. Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car, Billy Ocean  (need a different indicator for freakin’ played to death!)
16. Seasons Change, Expose
17. Is This Love, Whitesnake  (Is this singing?)
18. Wild, Wild West, Escape Club
19. Pour Some Sugar On Me, Def Leppard
20. I’ll Always Love You, Taylor Dayne
21. Man In The Mirror, Michael Jackson
22. Shake Your Love, Debbie Gibson
23. Simply Irresistible, Robert Palmer
24. Hold On To The Nights, Richard Marx  (Richard Marx still gives me hives)
25. Hungry Eyes, Eric Carnen
26. Shattered Dreams, Johnny Hates Jazz
27. Father Figure, George Michael
28. Naught Girls (Need Love Too), Samantha Fox
29. A Groovy Kind Of Love, Phil Collins
30. Love Bites, Def Leppard
31. Endless Summer Nights, Richard Marx
32. Foolish Beat, Debbie Gibson
33. Where Do Broken Hearts Go, Whitney Houston
34. Angel, Aerosmith
35. Hazy Shade Of Winter, Bangles
36. The Way You Make Me Feel, Michael Jackson
37. Don’t Worry, Be Happy, Bobby McFerrin (Is there an indicator to use for “OK the first 2000 times it was played, but a bit irritating after that?”)
38. Make Me Lose Control, Eric Carnen
39. Red Red Wine, UB40
40. She’s Like The Wind, Patric Swayze
41. Bad Medicine, Bon Jovi
42. Kokomo, Beach Boys  (Just say Koko-NO!)
43. I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That, Elton John
44. Together Forever, Rick Astley
45. Monkey, George Michael
46. Devil Inside, INXS
47. Should’ve Known Better, Richard Marx
48. I Don’t Wanna Live Without Your Love, Chicago
49. The Loco-Motion, Kylie Minogue
50. What Have I Done To Deserve This?, Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield
51. Make It Real, Jets
52. What’s On Your Mind, Information Society
53. Tell It To My Heart, Taylor Dayne
54. Out Of The Blue, Debbie Gibson
55. Don’t You Want Me, Jody Watley
56. Desire, U2
57. I Get Weak, Belinda Carlisle
58. Sign Your Name, Terence Trent d’Arby
59. I Want To Be Your Man, Roger
60. Girlfriend, Pebbles
61. Dirty Diana, Michael Jackson
62. 1-2-3, Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine
63. Mercedes Boy, Pebbles
64. Perfect World, Huey Lewis and the News
65. New Sensation, INXS
66. Catch Me (I’m Falling), Pretty Poison
67. If It Isn’t Love, New Edition
68. Rocket 2 U, Jets   (Hmm…  I can’t remember this one?  Am I suffering from lost time?  Or was it so horrid that I blocked it out?)
69. One Good Woman, Peter Cetera
70. Don’t Be Cruel, Cheap Trick
71. Candle In The Wind, Elton John
72. Everything Your Heart Desires, Daryl Hall and John Oates
73. Say You Will , Foreigner
74. I Want Her, Keith Sweat
75. Pink Cadillac, Natalie Cole
76. Fast Car, Tracy Chapman
77. Electric Blue, Icehouse
78. The Valley Road, Bruce Hornsby and The Range
79. Don’t Be Cruel, Bobby Brown
80. Always On My Mind, Pet Shop Boys
81. Piano In The Dark, Brenda Russell Featuring Joe Esposito
82. When It’s Love, Van Halen
83. Don’t Shed A Tear, Paul Carrack
84. We’ll Be Together, Sting
85. I Hate Myself For Loving You, Joan Jett and The Blackhearts (You should hate yourself for singing this song!)
86. I Don’t Want To Live Without You, Foreigner
87. Nite And Day, Al B. Sure
88. Don’t You Know What The Night Can Do, Steve Winwood
89. One Moment In Time, Whitney Houston
90. Can’t Stay Away From You, Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine
91. Kissing A Fool, George Michael
92. Cherry Bomb, John Cougar Mellancamp
93. I Still Believe, Brenda K. Starr
94. I Found Someone, Cher
95. Never Tear Us Apart, INXS
96. Valerie, Steve Windwood
97. Just Like Paradise, David Lee Roth
98. Nothin’ But A Good Time, Poison
99. Wait, White Lion
100. Prove Your Love, Taylor Dayne

Last week the Keller Lions Club held their annual fair on their property at the corner of Keller Parkway and Cindy St.

I mention all this because of something interesting I saw at the local Sonic, which is only a block and a half from the fair.  It’s only in the context of the fair that this sign can be fully understood:

Normally, I don’t think any sort of food establishment would want to associate itself with the word “barf.”  However, all things considered, I found it fairly amusing.

Perhaps I’m insufficiently open to “diversity of opinion”, but I think I have a better solution to this situation.  SNIPERS.  Lot of snipers.  Lots of snipers with high-powered rifles.

Phelps and his ilk make me want to hurl. 

My flight last night from Chicago to Dallas was on an American 777.  This was the first time I’d been on one, as most of my trips seem to be on S80’s and 737’s.  One of the good things about it was the in-seat video screens throughout the cabin, which included a status channel, which showed the position of the aircraft as well as altitude, speed, and outside temperature (we went from -56°F at 38,000 ft to 95°F on the ground;  I wonder how much stress that kind of temperature swing puts on the aircraft?).  However, I was in seat 43C, which is way in the back and has no visibility to any window.  I think a neat addition would be a channel with an outside view.  That way you could have sort of a virtual window in your seatback.  Of course, I have no idea how much it would cost to add something like this.  But the 777 already has tons of electronic bells and whistles, so it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to do it.

Maybe I’m weird, but even if I’m not in the window seat, I like being able to see what’s going on outside of the airplane.  The view from the ERJ-145 I took on my connection into Chicago was great (although a bit disconcerting at the end, as the pilot landed the plane just barely across the end of the runway; I was expecting us to land in a field for a minute ).

On a few occasions lately I’ve noticed people without handicap permits parking in the reserved spots or even in the hashed “no parking” areas right next to them at the park.  Considering that I’ve seen these people out and about on the trail, it seems odd to me that they’d be worried about parking an extra fifty feet from the trail entrance if they’re about to walk two or three miles.  But I suspect this doesn’t register in their minds.

To get an idea of the scale of the folly, consider this map of the area.  The parking lot is on the southwest corner of the Bear Creek and Rufe Snow intersection (right across from where Pate Orr dead-ends).  The trail winds around and goes under Rufe Snow and ends up over at Keller Smithfield road (for now; they’re in the process of extending it from there).  The distance from the farthest point in the parking lot to the entrance is less than the distance you walk from the entrance of the trail to the end of the first bridge (that brown-looking structure just to the left and below the parking lot; it crosses the creekbed, which was pretty dry when the picture was taken).

I was shot by a member of the Keller PD Tactical Team last night.  No, not for real.  It was part of a training exercise and I was a volunteer hostage-taker.  I was holed-up in a back bedroom of a house with a fake gun, while two more of my cohorts were holding a hostage in another part of the house.  What’s amazing is that while we all knew they were coming* we didn’t know they were there until they were in the house.  I don’t want to say much more than that, though, lest I inadvertently give away some of their secrets.

Since this exercise was done in a house that they didn’t want to damage and it was near other houses, they didn’t use any flash-bangs or simunitions.  However, I’m told that they may want volunteers for a full-scale exercise next month that will include these elements.  I may be weird, but for some reason that actually sounds like fun.  If my schedule allows it I’m definitely interested in being there.

*The scenario for last night was that we had taken a hostage for ransom and were holding her in this house.  We weren’t supposed to know that the Tac Team was coming (i.e. we were supposed to be somewhat off-guard).  Of course, being a training scenario, we had advance knowledge that they were coming, which I suspect affected the scenario in some ways.  For example, I could have gotten off at least one round on the first officer through the door of the room I was in (if it had been for real) before he got me.  However, in real life someone in that situation would not likely already have a gun in hand (unless he were extremely paranoid).  And if someone was asleep in that room, he’d wake up to a lot of yelling and bright lights and wouldn’t have a chance to do much of anything.

While walking the dog this morning I had a weird thought.  As we were being passed by a man on a bicycle it set off a rememberance of the way some old-timers say the word motorcycle.  They pronounced it “motorsickle” (and no, this wasn’t just an Arlo Guthrie song; I suspect he got it from contact with these people), so that both bicycle and motorcycle sounded a lot alike.  While it seems odd to our ears, when you get down to it, what’s really odd is that both of these words have the same root (“cycle”), yet are pronounced differently now.  Perhaps those old-timers were actually more consistent than we are now.  But if you try saying either of the words using the pronounciation we currently use for the other, it just sounds weird to our ears (“bi-sycle” or “motor-sickle”).

As part of our CERT training, we’ve asked the local head of EMS to teach us the First Responder class.  The first installment was last night, and we spent a lot of time working on spinal immobilization techniques, such as putting on a cervical collar and getting someone onto a back board. 

During the class I had one of those “Ah Ha!” moments, when it dawned on me that the back board is really just a great honkin’ splint.  The principle behind a splint is that it’s used to immobilize an area of the body by tying the area above and below the injury to the splint.  When you consider a possible spinal injury what areas do we have to work with?  Above the injury is the head, and below is the chest.  So, when you get right down to it, you’re just splinting the potentially injured area.

The fact that the patient is trussed up like a chicken is either a bug or a feature, depending on the patient. 

In my earlier ruminations on the changes to Daylight Savings Time I mainly considered computers.  However, the change will affect many other devices besides computers.

All of the clocks that you see in stores that bill themselves as “atomic clocks” are actually regular clocks that set themselves using the NIST WWVB reference signal.  WWVB broadcasts at 60kHz, using a BCD time code format.  I have three clocks that use this method (including my alarm clock) to keep themselves accurate.  Generally, they resync once per day, late at night (when the wave propagation is best for LF transmissions).  These clocks also have adjustments for DST and for your local timezone, so that they correctly compute the correct local time based on the UTC standard that is being sent.

I was initially worried that these clocks will not properly adjust to the new beginning and ending dates of DST.  However, it appears that the time code format includes two bits for signalling DST.  Page 21 of NIST Time and Frequency Services (NIST Special Publication 432) (PDF) gives the information on how these bits signal if DST is in effect or when DST is starting or ending:

Daylight saving time (DST) and standard time (ST) information is transmitted at seconds 57 and 58. When ST is in effect, bits 57 and 58 are set to 0. When DST is in effect, bits 57 and 58 are set to 1. On the day of a change from ST to DST bit 57 changes from 0 to 1 at 0000 UTC, and bit 58 changes from 0 to 1 exactly 24 hours later. On the day of a change from DST back to ST bit 57 changes from 1 to 0 at 0000 UTC, and bit 58 changes from 1 to 0 exactly 24 hours later.

So it appears that the data stream includes enough information for the clocks to adjust to the change as long as NIST sends the DST/ST transition bits on the correct days.  Of course, this also requires that the clock designers followed the standard and didn’t code the DST start/end rules into the firmware.  I’m hoping that they followed the standard.  Otherwise these clocks may require manual fiddling (provided it’s possible) to continue to show the correct time in 2007.

Update:  A short article on problems for VCR’s and cell phones, via Slashdot.