Minuteman Missile Silo Photos

A couple photos from the Minuteman Missile Natl Park from my visits in 2011 and 2009.

Control Panel

Missile Replica in the Silo

Preserved Silo

Ending August

Wrapping up August by recruiting Cub Scouts and getting ready for a family campout.

We had a good recruiting event for Pack 3094 - over a dozen new scouts and more to come.  Time to round up some more leadership - we need a cub master, treasurer, assistant-everything and a bunch of parent volunteers for committee positions.  But enough of that!

This weekend - Kanopolis State Park!  We'd planned to hit Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, but the tropical storm is raining that out.  So we're heading West, just outside Ellsworth, KS.  Canyons, hiking trails, lake, just an hour from the Cosmosphere, more.  IF we can get everything loaded in the minivan with 4 kids, it should be a good trip.

See if I can find a tripod out in the garage and try for some astrophotography with the ancient Canon 300d.

Time to get packin . . .

Sunday the 26th

Up late, dialed into church.  Weak commentary on violence in the Old Testament.  'sometimes you have to move a lot of dirt to find the gold'.  Really?    Anyway . . .

Cleared up Mom's yard, de-vined the bushes and pulled crabgrass.  Installed safety bars at the steps between levels.  Began clearing the garage and lining out family camping gear.  Drove out halfway to nowhere to pick the boys up.

Shot a few photos of the moon - nothing very good.  Need less gain, more tripod.  300mm lens, F11, 1/1000th second at ISO 1600.  The old Canon does not do high ISO photos very well.

And this morning (Monday now) I find out that Hurricane Issac is headed directly toward central Arkansas, where our camping trip is planned this weekend.  Not the best omen for a family camping trip!  Perhaps we re-orient for the Badlands and Wall Drug?

2009 Riding Map

Got some good riding in for 2009, until I broke my collarbone in karate.  That'll stop that for a while!

Started out with an MSTA lunch ride; I camped out (or tried to) at Devils Den State Park.  Then off to BearSTOC 09 in Montana and back, on the Ducati!

Zoom out for the full view . . .


View 2009 Riding in a larger map

Whitebalance Fail

Was playing with the new (to me) Canon 300D this weekend and set a custom white balance for the very yellow 'soft white' CFL bulbs in the living room.  Ambient light shots in the living room came out great.  The dear wife claims my shot of her in the living room looks like a studio shot.  Then I did some other shots, without changing the white balance.

With the on-camera flash:



In the boy's bedroom with his 5000K 'Daylight' CFL lamp for backlighting:



And a gorgeous blue cast fail with the same 'Daylight' CFL for side lighting:



Lessons learned?  You can get cool effects with custom white balance.  Reminds me of the old film days where you'd use tungsten film outdoors, or outdoor film under tungsten lamps.   Also, reset your settings before you change lighting situations.

Riding your Motorcycle in the Wind

Reading on the CBR250R forum some good tips on riding in the wind.

1 - Use your knees to keep yourself anchored to the bike
2 - Loosen your grip on the handlebars. Don't fight the bike, it will self correct
3 - Loosen up your arms. This will help with posture and keeping your grip loose
4 - Acknowledge that you will not keep a straight line and will drift a bit
5 - Once the gust is over, reposition yourself in your lane


and most importantly:

If it's too windy, and you begin feeling unsafe, PULL OVER. Nothing says you are required to continue putting yourself at risk.

Saturday Wrapup

Got the meal plan for Crater of Diamonds State Park lined up.  Basic but solid foods.  Now to pull the kit from the garage and get it packed and ready to go tomorrow.

Got Alec's room cleared and his new desk built and installed!  He's quite happy as you can see.  It's not the best quality, but it fit well in the space he had in his room.  Missing one part; we'll have to call Monday to get another hinge for the drop front desk.  Sigh.

Nikki and I stripped the middle boys room and re-organized their clothes, closet and drawers.  Came up with 2 huge bags of donations.  Got through totes and bags of out of season stuff too.

Didn't get over to Mom's to get her grab rails done; that's moved to tomorrow.  Going to be a busy afternoon!

Dinner at Cozy's Cafe near Downtown OP; amazing food and service with a great, quiet atmosphere.  Alec tried something new (salmon) and I think he liked it!

Lots of fun, laughter, geeking out and generally an excellent day.

Kickin it with Kahn

Alec just got logged into Kahn Academy today. He's working on exponent math right now - very focused!

Saturday plans

Supposed to rain today, putting a crimp in outside plans.  So, indoor plans:
* steel hand bars for moms house
* plan and pack for Crater of Diamonds State Park camping trip
* clear Alec's room for a cool folding desk from Target

Traffic?

Wonder what happened yesterday?  300% jump in traffic - all the way to 10(!) page views.

Hm - maybe that's live stats reflecting me visiting the blog as I updated it for the first time in 6 months.

Friday Activity

Today: Project kickoff at work.
Tonight: Alec fixed dinner.  Chicken spaghetti.   I unpacked books from my mom's old place.  Found Stephen King, Fred Saberhagen, more great stuff from the 80s.

Scanned in photos for Nikki while I was unpacking.

Now kicking off journaling on this dopey blog.

Friend of mine, Jeff Schnieder, got me on the 'dopey' saying instead of a pile of cusswords.  He's up in Minnesota, eh, getting fitted for a new Aerostich.

In a couple weeks, I'll be puttin on the 'stich and rolling to Bull Shoals Lake for the BS Rally.  Nice long ride on a stock seat on the CBR250r.  Still riding.  Not sure why - it hurts when you do it, and I dread the rides before I go.

Not sure what I'll do with the books - I haven't finished a book all year.  Last winter I read about a book a day - Zane Grey westerns.

Bloging - not so much

Not so much of a blogger.  Twitter and Facebook have claimed the short updates / linksharing I used to do. Turns out I've never been much at journaling / blogging.  Last time I journaled regularly was 1983. Made it a week. I went to IGA and bought soda.  Then called in sick to school the next day.

It was actually interesting seeing the old notes in my handwriting from 11 years old.

So, perhaps I'll start journaling here.  No one reads this so it's as good as private, eh?

Only drawback is it's typed; when folks go back through your stuff when you're dead, the typed work just isn't as interesting or personal as hand written notes.  I recall going through my dads stuff -- his handwritten notes were interesting; the typed manifestos, not so much.  Couldn't tell if he was writing it, or copying someone else.  No personality in the typed page - or at least not as much as a hand written journal or note.

Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have legible writing.  But once in a while it's good to note down what's going on in life in pen in a good bound book.  Give someone something to decipher.

Lookin at Lines

Looks like some storms tonight.  55,000 foot cloud tops.  Long line of storms going to roll over KC eventually.  Finally - some rain!

Intellicast - Radar Summary in MO - Jefferson City

Native Sprint Coverage Map

The article on Sprint Support:
Know what coverage to expect with older single-band phones or plans that don't include roaming
shows you exactly where Sprint native coverage is - without any roaming partnerships etc. Very informative!

Fracking caused British quakes

(( there's only 150+ fracking wells in OK -- but no word from there if the 5.6 this week was related to that.))

Fracking caused British quakes:

A UK energy company has admitted that their hydraulic fracturing project (commonly known as ‘fracking’) probably caused a few surprisingly large earthquakes in Lancashire this spring. But, their report into the events concludes, it should be safe to continue operations in the area. Protesters disagree.

Fracking involves pumping millions of litres of water underground to fracture shale rock, allowing natural gas trapped inside to flow up the well. Concerns have been raised about whether this technique is safe (see Should fracking stop? and United States investigates fracking safety).

Two quakes of magnitude 2.3 and 1.4 in April and May, along with a cluster of 48 much smaller events, struck near the fracking project of Lichfield-based company Cuadrilla Resources. Cuadrilla stopped operations, and commissioned independent reports from a handful of consultants, including a Czech Republic seismic company and a British geomechanical services company, to investigate whether the drilling had triggered a nearby fault. Their synthesis report is now out.

Using AddThis Endpoints for Email Campaign Sharing

AddThis - Help - AddThis Sharing Endpoints

We're looking at adding sharing of purchases from our order confirmation emails.

Our email confirmation isn't like your typical newsletter, where you can copy the static contents of the newsletter to a webpage, then point everyone to that static page. Each email order confirmation is different, with different products in the order. We want to help our customers share the new phone, tablet or broadband card they just bought with their social networks.

AddThis normally uses Javascript to generate the HTML code; we can't promise that every one of our customers has a JavaScript enabled email client. Our workaround? Use AddThis Endpoints. What the heck are those? AddThis offers direct access to their sharing widgets via custom coded URLs. You can set up a 'share on Facebook' link or a 'tweet about your new phone' link using just the AddThis URLs. No Javascript needed, no fancy coding. Just pull in the device landing page URL and shoot it into the AddThis endpoint as a text or basic image link!

AddThis.com rocks.

What I'm Doing Lately

Had to update the one-page resume again (new Director coming on board - wants to know what we all do) -- figured I'd share with the world:


Synopsis:

• Sprint Employee since 1999
• Began with Sprint Paranet as Technical Solutions Consultant
• Moved to Sprint.com as Java Developer for the Shop platform
• App Admin for My Sprint and Sprint Shop
• Business Analyst for Blue Martini (device catalog); assisted in transition from Sprint to IBM
• Created, led, supervised Virtual Business Technology Ops team
• Developed BuzzAboutWireless.com Community site from hardware, software, content, vendor management.
• Technical manager for Sprint Community on Jive

References:

• Space Admin for Network and Coverage, all Apple, iPhone and iPhone 4S spaces
• E20 Consultant for internal social media – SprintSpace – providing VP level consultation to build new spaces and drive internal adoption, communication and collaboration.
• Member Social Media Ninjas team; Product Ambassador team; NLP Core Team; WebIQ facilitator

Current Hot items:

• Leading cross-functional team to transition SprintSpace from internal IT hosting to Sprint.com team hosted platform, coupled with version upgrade and tight integration with Sprint Public Community
• Lead blogger for Network Vision; working with Network and Corp Comm teams  to drive communication strategy around Network Vision improvements

5 Emergency Disaster Kit Suggestions

(( Good suggestions, although the 'always on internet device' runs on the same cell networks that your dodgy cell phone does. If your cell phone is down, so is your 'always on internet device'. I'd suggest a HAM radio and basic license, so you can contact other people at a distance, without depending on 3rd party infrastructure. )) -- from Wired Geek Dad blog:

5 Emergency Disaster Kit Suggestions:

I’m writing this from a downtown hotel in Hartford, Connecticut, the largest city near me. With me are my three younger kids and my husband. It has the virtue of being warm and lighted. After a long week without power with only a promise of an end in sight, we’re grateful for that.

We’re stormlost.

We got hit hard by the October snow storm and even after a full week, we’re still without power at my house. We were prepared for three to four days of no heat but not for a full seven days and definitely not the eight plus we’re going on as of Sunday morning.

I’ve read the CDC disaster preparedness instructions, especially after the ice storm a few years ago, and took precautions. I’d thought four days of firewood for our little-used fireplace, plenty of D-Cell batteries and flashlights, an excellent crank/battery-operated radio, and plenty of food on hand, plus water would work for our family.

The kids' playset suffered some damage also from the October 29th Storm

But I quickly had to expand what was needed because that wasn’t nearly enough.

Here’s what I would add, especially for geeky parents:

1. A wireless device that is always connected to the internet.

Our land-lines went out. Our cell phone service was glitchy. Basically, aside from the radio, we had no way to contact anyone about anything or find out information about our situation. And, the first two days, we were blocked in by fallen trees. I’ve never felt so cut off. I didn’t even know where the local storm shelters might be. I finally was able to drive out onto the main road, still strewn with fallen tress and branches, and check at town hall. They indeed had a warming shelter and, whew, a charging station.

I never thought I’d need one, since my land line has always worked. I’m thinking an iPad or other tablet with 3G service as an excellent disaster investment.

2. Car chargers. For as many things as you think you might want when the lights go down.

We had one car charger for the Verizon Blackberry my husband has for work. I didn’t have one for my MacBook or the various Nintendo handhelds that we owned or the other cell phones. This quickly became a problem. Even though I couldn’t do internet on my MacBook, I needed a lot of the information on it, plus it doubled as a DVD player to entertain the kids which ate up power.

Soon as I get my life back, I’m investing in one. And I checked out the prices of the car chargers for the Nintendo DS family: $9.99 at Gamestop. Yeah, we’re getting a few of those, plus a charger for the cell phones.

3. Gasoline.

Fill your gas tanks in the face of an impending storm or, if you have a generator, find a place to store a decent supply of gasoline to power it.

At a certain point, figuring out just how far our cars would go on the gas left in our tanks became a serious consideration. You can’t flee a disaster if you don’t have the gas to power the car the entire way and it was a good two hours to get out of the area hit hardest by our storm. We headed to my mother’s on the morning of day four — I stayed with my three younger kids until Saturday morning — and I was just lucky we had enough gas to get us ninety minutes away where I could refill the tank.

The husband, who stayed behind because his office opened in Hartford, Connecticut, was left waiting the next day in a line of “Carter Administration proportions” to fill up his vehicle to get home. I consider that lucky because so many stations were out.

4. The phone numbers of hotels about ninety minutes from your area in all directions.

When people lose heat or basic functions, so do the local hotels. And those that are smart enough to have generators or lucky enough to be missed, fill up fast. If I’d had a list of hotels and called one the minute power went out last Saturday to book a room for the following day, we might have been able to find a place to stay. As it was, it was impossible until just yesterday, when the southern half of Connecticut largely came online.

5. Gasoline-powered chain saw.

We have a chain saw. We’ve used it very little around our house, save to cut down some small brush. And it’s electric.

This does you no good in a storm that knocks out power. On the day after the storm, in the afternoon, the neighbors with gas-powered chain saws took it upon themselves to clear the road way well enough for cars to drive through. Yes, that was awesome. We were trapped in before.

One warning: beware of clearing debris with fallen power lines. They will be dead but they won’t necessarily stay dead. Apparently, the power companies sometimes turn on the power in an area with downed lines without clearing the downed lines first. This boggles my mind, since one would think they’d remove the safety hazard first but there’s even a warning about that on my local power company website. Of course, if you’re without power, you may not be able to read that warning….

The last item is more after-disaster preparedness. I’d suggest having handy the name and address of the officials of your local power company and the local authority that overseas them to vent your frustration about how the heck it could take a week for power company trucks to even arrive in your neighborhood.

Siri Quick Tip: Wikipedia

Siri Quick Tip: Wikipedia: I haven't seen this hint anywhere else, but I've found that in Siri, if you say 'Wikipedia' followed by anything like 'Muppets' or 'Zombies,' it will take you right to the Wikipedia entry for that request. Pretty cool.

How to get a job with a small company

{{Seth Godin offers some great advice about getting hired - especially relevant in the 'new economy', and parallels what I was just talking about with my son last night. It's not just what you can do, but how you can *present* what you do.}}

How to get a job with a small company:

Most advice about job seeking is oriented around big companies. The notion of a standard resume, of mass mailings, of dealing with the HR department--even the idea of interviews--is all built around the Fortune 500.

Alas, the Fortune 500 has been responsible for a net loss in jobs over the last twenty years. All the growth (and your best chance to get hired) is from companies you’ve probably never heard of. And when the hirer is also the owner, the rules are very different.

1. Learn to sell. Everyone has sold something, some time, even if it’s just selling your mom on the need for a nap when you were three years old. A lot of people have decided that they don’t want to sell, can’t sell, won’t sell, but those same people need to understand that they’re probably not going to get a job doing anything but selling.

Small businesses always need people who can sell, because selling pays for itself. It’s not an expense, it’s a profit center.

2. Learn to write. Writing is a form of selling, one step removed. There’s more writing in business today than ever before, and if you can become a persuasive copywriter, you’re practically a salesperson, and even better, your work scales.

3. Learn to produce extraordinary video and multimedia. This is just like writing, but for people who don’t like to read. Even better, be sure to mix this skill with significant tech skills. Yes, you can learn to code. The fact that you don't feel like it is one reason it's a scarce skill.

Now that you’ve mastered these skills (all of which take time and guts but no money), understand the next thing about small businesses--they aren’t hiring to fill a slot. Unlike a big company with an org chart and pay levels, the very small business is an organism, not a grid. The owner is far more likely to bring in a freelancer or someone working on spec than she is to go run a classified help wanted ad.

And many small businesses are extremely bad at taking initiative that feels like risk. They’d rather fill orders than take a chance and go out prospecting for a person who represents a risk. And that’s your opportunity.

When you show up and offer to go prospecting on spec, offer to contribute a website or a sales letter or some sales calls--with no money on the table--many small business people will take you up on it, particularly if they are cash-strapped, profit-oriented and know you by reputation. (Please don't overlook that last one).

Hint: don't merely show up and expect a yes. It's something you earn over time...

The rest is easy. Once you demonstrate that you contribute far more than you cost, now it's merely a matter of figuring out a payment schedule.

This is probably far more uncertainty and personal branding than most job seekers are comfortable with. Which is precisely why it works.