You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2009.
We splurged and purchased a new coffee maker. It’s a multi purpose single cup coffee maker. A Keurig B30 Single Brew Coffee Maker. Takes 3 minutes to brew a cup of coffee, tea, cocoa, etc.
Yes we splurged and paid $89 for a coffee maker. But, at Bed Bath and Beyond you can sign up for their email spam and get a 20% off coupon. So, the coffee maker only cost $71 and tax. Then we also purchased Tea, Cocoa, different coffee’s, a neat little carousel, loose leaf filter, etc. You can see where this went. Ding ding ding. It added up.
Why you might ask? Well, I can get my coffee in the morning. The girls can make Hot Cocoa, and Roberta can make her Tea. All with the same machine. Roberta can’t drink coffee anymore, so there is usually half a pot left to waste after I go to work, but she loves tea and it doesn’t upset her stomach.
We still have the really nice coffee pot Paul and Marnie gave us for use when company comes over. But for the day to day this should work really well.
When we came back from Scotland we told our selves we would not buy cheap stuff. If we wanted something we would spend the money to get something nice. So, that’s what we did. The girls are going nuts over it.
Update: I forgot to add that Roberta thinks I’m a tad OCD because I created a spreadsheet with the different types of teas, coffees, etc with a rating system and put it on the wall over the coffee pot. That way we can rate the different types and know which ones we like and ones we don’t. We currently have 13 types of coffee, 3 different teas, and 2 cocoa’s. Without rating them, how would we know which were the best? Eh? See, makes sense doesn’t it. pthththt!!
Last night if you typed the phrase ClimateGate into Google this website was #4 on the list. Today, just 12 hours later it’s buried 2 pages back with hundreds of other hits.
I was worried that this would get buried. Not going to happen, Drudge, CNBC (rumor), Rush, etc are all carrying the article now. Hopefully the majors like the BBC, CNN, etc will finally get on the stick and comment. One thing I have known for a long long time and that is most media outlets have a political bent to the way they tell stories. So, it shall be interesting to see what they say.
WSJ: “Hacked Sensitive Documents Lifted from Hadley Climate Center”
Telegraph “Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?”
Register“Wrecking CRU: hackers cause massive climate data breach”
BBC“Hackers target leading climate research unit”
You can slant things many ways by how it’s phrased. It will be interesting to see how the different media outlets actually do it. Some stress HACKERS!!! Bad!! These are some of the ones that have really been pushing AGW like the BBC. I love how they don’t mention at all the reason for the hack or what was found. Others point more to the fraud and collusion of the scientists. These are more of the smaller skeptical AGW places.
Ah to be a fly on the wall and watch this go down.
would you trust anyone that could spin this?
You start with
Taken together, the sparse evidence of Southern Hemisphere temperatures prior to the period of instrumental records indicates that overall warming has occurred during the last 350 years. The even sparser records longer than 350 years indicate that there may have been periods of regional warmth in the past 1000 years that were as warm, or warmer than, 20th century means.
And turn it into
The additional variability implies mainly cooler temperatures (predominantly in the 12th-14th, 17th and 19th centuries) and only one new reconstruction suggests slightly warmer conditions (in the 11th century), but well within the uncertainty range indicated in the TAR.
The regional extent of Northern Hemisphere warmth was very likely greater during the 20th century than in any other century during the last 1300 years.
Now that’s how you spin something. I’m impressed. Since the Southern Hemisphere showed warmer periods, don’t mention it. Only mention the periods of the Northern Hemisphere that were cooler than current, and then say the other times were within the error bars. hmmm…
This is interesting reading. I’m having fun.
It seems that the Hadley Climate Research Unit has been hacked. This is the center that produces one of the temperature series used by the IPCC, Al Gore, etc.
What appears to have happened was someone started to put together a Freedom Of Information packet, which has never been released, and a hacker got their hands on it and released it. The zip file consists of 157 MB of documents, data, code, and emails.
The big question is, is the data reliable? Has it been salted with falsehoods? Not sure that it really matters at this point. Even if it is salted with juicy falsehoods, hopefully an investigation will be made and the verified data will be released.
Why is publicly funded data so secret??? Why are there emails discussing ways of circumventing FOI requests?
There are literally billions if not trillions of dollars in regulations, CO2 reductions, etc, that are based on this data, and yet it’s not available for outside review. “Don’t look at the people behind the curtain”. Well, someone pulled part of the curtain back. It’s going to be really really interesting to see what comes of this.
Oh ya, and ironically Al-Gorious Blowhardius is giving a “talk/sermon” tonight at the Supercomputing conference in Oregon. Wonder if he’ll mention this? Heck, I wonder if CNN will mention this.
I don’t condone hacking, and I don’t condone lying and hiding publicly funded data. I’m torn as to which is more damning.
I’ve been reading through some of the emails. Holy crap. They talk about twisting data so that the Medieval Warm Period shows colder than current, talk about how to circumvent FOI requests, doing synchronized data deletion, massaging data to get a better hockey stick, etc.
I don’t care what your take on Climate Change is. I just think that things should be as see through as it’s possible to make. If your data won’t stand up to scrutiny then it’s not solid enough to publish. Period. That goes for both sides of the fence. Our climate is more complex than we currently understand, lying and hiding data does not help.
The flu has found us. At least Roberta and I. So far the kids are doing okay. I feel rotten, but it’s nothing compared to Bert. I guess having cancer and the flu at the same time isn’t recommended. She’s down hard.
I laugh at the media induced hysteria over the swine flu. Remember the Bird flu? SARS? Frankly I don’t give a hoot if it’s some named flu or not. Roberta getting the flu in her current condition sucks. Fingers crossed she gets better quickly. Well, as better as she can right now.
Cancer update: Another 4 pounds lost since last doctors visit. The doc suggested a type of Chemo on the last visit but one of the markers in her blood work was to low. He wanted to wait and see if it came up. I guess it needs to be at a minimum level before they try to kill you with chemo. We’ve been talking about whether to do it or not. Chemo is so chancy on this type of cancer. It’s a real toss up over cost/benefit. (cost being physical not monetary) Anyhow, she just had another set of blood work done and the marker dropped even further. So, it’s a moot debate. No chemo at this time.
We won’t be going to DC. After some discussions we decided it’s not feasable. We’ve waited to long. Roberta just can’t handle a flight that long followed by all that walking. Not anymore. Maybe a couple of months ago, but at this point a day out locally puts her down for a day.
We’ll plan a weekend trip down to San Juan Batista or the like. Something close by and an easy drive.
While scanning some old pictures into the computer we came across pictures of Megan’s first birthday. Within those pictures we think we’ve found the reason for Megan’s fear of clowns (not really, but it makes for a better story).
 |
| From Family |
Sis and Dad were part of the Boeing Clown Club many moons ago. Can you find Sis in the picture? 
From the “Get a Perspective” file.
- I have a job. That’ s good in this economy.
- I have a job that pays enough for me to raise a family in Pacific Grove California.
- I have insurance.
- I work in a field I love. How many can say that? I could be roofing again. Hello!!
- Boo hoo. It’s ONLY a single rack of equipment. $250K of toys.
It doesn’t matter if it’s 1 rack or 60. You perform your job to the best of your ability. Period. No discussion.
Playing with only 1 rack should also give me time to do some of the odds and ends I haven’t had a chance to. Like becoming a better programmer. Which, frankly I suck at. Maybe a little GPGPU CUDA style programming on the side. Maybe start working on my degree. Having time could be a good thing. Maybe I was just looking at this from the wrong perspective.
I’ve just discovered that the project I was working on is now being handed off to someone else. This will leave me with a single partially full rack of crappy little dell servers and a single small IBM system to work on. Let’s try to put this in perspective.
Past jobs.
IBM: One of the first P690 SMP computers ever at a customer location. Iceflyer, Arctic Region Supercomputing Center.
IBM: Largest IBM cluster ever scratch built at a customer location, also first 100+ node IBM ever connected via Federation switch. (beat SDSC by a couple of days). Largest IBM p655 cluster in the world at build time. Iceberg, Arctic Region Supercomputing Center. $10,000,000 project.
IBM: 9th fastest computer in the world. 44 Frames of IBM power4. Kraken, Naval Oceanographic Office. $50,000,000 project.
IBM: Kept 44 Frame IBM Power4 system up and running through the eye of Katrina. Kept 30 Frame Power4 Marcellus up and running through the eye of Katrina.
Cray: Largest Cray computer in Europe, 60 Frames. 2nd fastest computer in all of Europe. HECToR, University of Edinburgh. $250,000,000 project.
Current job.
Single rack of Dell’s and a baby IBM. Oh be still my fluttering heart. The only thing saving me from jumping off the bridge of excitement is it pays the bills. Actually pays better than most of my past jobs. Go figure.
I guess it’s a matter of perspective. If I didn’t have the past I do, I could get excited about this. As it stands, well, not so much. Patience. There will be more toys in the future. Just need patience. This too shall pass.
The big question. Can I build this system complete, including hardware, high speed networks, software, and security hardening in under a week and then sleep for two months without anyone noticing? Hmmm.. Interesting theoretical question.
Roberta and I went out on Friday night, just the two of us. No kiddos. We ended up going to the 4th annual Celtic Winters Eve here in Pacific Grove.
 |
| From Monterey Living |
It was pretty good. There were several celtic groups that played. Gas Men, Molly’s Revenge, and Tempest. It was nice to get out and listen to some music and just relax for a night.
Recent Comments