Nerd Project: Household Temperatures

I spent most of Saturday crawling around the attic and drilling small holes in the ceiling to complete a project I've been batting around for over a year now. Since we put in our whole-house fan (about a year and a half ago) I've been curious to see what effect the fan would have in reducing the temperature in our attic. This got me thinking about temperature regulation in our house in general: the basement having much smaller changes in temperature during both the winter and the summer, the temperature in the two bedrooms we've don't used and have closed off, how much cooking in the kitchen heats the house, et cetera.

Enabled by a friend of mine who loaned me a critical piece of hardware (because he's even nerdier than me and had extras just laying around his house), I built a little system that measures the temperature in six locations around our house throughout the day. This collection of little programs creates an internal webpage that shows the current temperature for all six locations in the house and every morning creates a graph of the previous day's data and adds a link to that graph on the webpage.

Here's an example from yesterday.

A few items of note:

• The dark blue line for our garage shows a little ramp starting around 5:30am. This is when we started the clothes drier which vents into our garage and thus, warms it up. My wife has been interested to see how pronounced this effect is and whether we need to try to modify the venting so it dumps the air outside.
• The spike in the purple line a little after 6pm is dinner being cooked. Again, another wife-requested measurement.
• You can see attic (green) gets very hot during the day, hotter than the outside temperature. It was too hot yesterday to run the whole-house fan so there was no circulation in the attic. This data seems to suggest that getting some kind of attic fan that ventilates the attic better throughout the day may help in keeping the house cooler. We've got a fair amount of insulation but with the temperature knocking around 130'F during the peak of the day when the outside air is barely at 90'F, it seems like our attic could be acting as a heat source and some of that heat is sure to be leaking its ways back into our house.
• Relatedly, the garage is definitely getting warmer than the outside our throughout the day as well. More insulation between the garage and the house would help but an easier solution may be to open the garage doors to allow the air to ventilate. There are plenty of hot days left in the summer to try this.

This system has been running for a few days now with only minor hitches. The biggest bug is that I something is wrong the basement measurements. I know the sensor is good as it was the first (and easiest) one to install and I used it as a proof-of-concept. I've been talking with my nerd-enabling friend and we've got a few ideas I'm going to pursue. I'm also a bit perplexed at how noisy the data is at times. The indoor data (kitchen and hallway) seem very smooth but the rest vary much more than I would expect. Maybe its not noise and the temperatures do vary that much.

Aside from adding a few more sensors (closed-off rooms, maybe the bedroom and the living room), I would also like to add sensors that detect when the whole-house fan is running and when the air-conditioning/furnace fan is running. I hope to get those last two in sometime this summer but I need to figure out the best/easiest way to do it.

I'll write another post soon in a few days detailing the specifics of how the system is put together for any fellow nerd out there who is interested.

Infant Rabbit Update

After about 24-hours of peace and quiet away from Anise, our little guys seemed to be doing fine (psychological damage aside) and so we decided to release him back into the wilds of our backyard. He spent the first hour or so just huddled in the grass. By the time I was leaving for work he was starting to be a bit mobile and explore around. When I came back from work, he was gone. Here's hoping he survived.

Anise did find a sibling of our friend (also under the deck) and after using it as a toy for a few minutes, managed to kill it. I buried it in the side yard out of Anise's prying nose and paws.

Hopefully this is the last of our infant-rabbit woes. Anise is still carefully exploring the deck for opportunities though she hasn't been barking like she did before. The family may have moved on.

Half-Way

For several days now whenever we have let Anise outside to run around and get out some of the crazies she has been trying to get under our deck and, failing, barking animatedly. This is the same thing she does when there is a rabbit out of reach (in the neighbors yard, across the street) and she is excited by the possibility but frustrated by the circumstances. This morning she found a way under the deck and shortly thereafter a rabbit did emerge. A very small rabbit.

I have no idea what transpired under our deck this morning. The rabbit that emerged had a small amount of blood around its mouth and one eye appeared to have been permanently damaged. It was making small, pathetic squeaking sounds and was laid out on its back, chest heaving but otherwise unmoving.

What do you do with a half-way dead infant wild rabbit?

We couldn't leave it laying there but we had and have no interest in a baby rabbit for another pet. We choose to give it shelter for the morning, to try to make it as comfortable as possible. We fully expected it to be dead within the hour and made a home that would be easy to bury when the time came. I found a spot in our basement that they dogs can't get to and where its nice and cool. I left two ice cubes in the improvised water tray we were using along with a portion of a leaf of lettuce and small strawberry before I went to school that morning.

This evening when I returned it was still alive. It seemed to be resting and though not moving around in traditional rabbit style, it was clearly still able to move. We're going to try to assess the situation more clearly this evening.

The end game isn't very clear to me. Do we hope to nurse it back to health and set it free? Where is its mother? What if it has been permanently injured in a way that will make it impossible to survive on its own?

Its hard to say what were going to do with this little fur-ball our dog thrust into our lives.

Its not clear from the photo but the little guy is only a few inches long, more like a mouse than a rabbit.

Basil Goes to the Barber

We've got two outdoor-oriented trips in the near future that our dogs will be joining us on and to cut down on the amount of bramble that Basil collects in his fur, we took him and for a haircut (and bath, ear-cleaning, and nail trimming). We hope this well also help him be more comfortable in the coming hot summer months. Take a look at these very professionally done before-and-after photos.

Just the Simple Truth (Mostly)

Check out this little article I stumbled upon in my blogger reading today: Just the Simple Truth. For those of you who are a little bit more lazy here's a pertinent part where the author is quoting President Obama: "But after the Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program-but we didn't pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in upaid-for tax cuts-tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade." Let's parse this paragraph and look at the basic assertions the President is making in this speech, stripped of their rhetorical ornamentation.

1. Both parties were involved in "fiscal discipline" during the 1990s. (I believe this is a reference to balanced budget we had for a few years in the late 90s.)


2. Spending increased significantly during the 2000s thanks to two wars and Medicare part D.


3. Tax cuts during the 2000s prevented a lot of revenue from being collected from those in the highest tax bracket.

Assuming my interpretation of item one is correct, all of these assertions can be shown to be true.
I don't want to get into the policy angle of whether the extra spending on wars and Medicare was a good idea or the decision to reduce tax income as a whole. Clearly, though, we can say that this combination did not end up working out well in terms of balancing the budget. I know there are plenty of people out there that are philosophically committed to trickle-down economics but in this case the lower taxes rates didn't generate more tax dollars and the budget got way out of balance. Its worth noting that Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan's assertion that "the more you tax something, the less of it you get" may be true; our budget wasn't balanced through the 2000s, though. It didn't seem to work for that decade.
Here's my main point: assuming the above three facts are true, their validity is a red herring in the larger problem of our national debt. Here's one of many graphs you can find online showing our annual federal deficit over the years, this one in terms of GDP rather than just dollars (to try to level out effects of economic growth).


The simple truth that isn't acknowledged by the President or stated in the article I linked to is that the "fiscal discipline" that resulted in a budget surplus for a few years at the end of the 90s was an aberration. From 2011 all the way back to the 1960s it is clear that this period of time is the only one where we had a balanced budget for any significant length of time. It appears there are a few toe-dips into balanced-budget territory over the last half-century but they are minor and are in no way equivalent to the massive overspending that happened in all the remaining years.
We have a systemic problem. For many years now, our country has not been living within its means and this is a trend that we cannot afford any longer. We need to get serious about our problem and make some hard choices. We can not continue to borrow money for government programs and somehow expect to never have to pay it back. There are good programs that are working well that we will need to cut; there are tax breaks that seem fair and good that will have to be removed. We are so far in debt and it is unreasonable to expect that we can get back to living within our means without making significant sacrifices. Our expectations and lifestyles covertly subsidized through our government in the form of low taxes and expensive government programs are unsustainable.
I'll end with the political finger-pointing. Republicans, you have abandoned any claim of being fiscally responsible based on your performance this past decade. I know you believe in lower taxes but you have to also believe in lower spending as well. In fact, during times of national crisis like the launch of our war on terror, you might even need to increase taxes to pay for the military activity or cut other programs so that our budget can stay balanced. Wars don't pay for themselves and emergency overspending for a few years needs to be followed with determined underspending to pay all that debt back.
Democrats, specifically President Obama, its hard for us to take you seriously as a man determined to balance the budget. You inherited a difficult situation in 2008 and choose to try to spend your way out of it. You and your allies are the ones responsible for the spike in the national deficit at the far right-hand end of the graph. You too need to find a way to generate huge budget surpluses to counter-act the huge spending we just went through.
To both parties I say this: I have a house that is always falling apart, a car that needs repair even more regularly and family members who get sick. I understand that there are months that we need to spend more than we make because of these emergencies that pop up. But you know what happens next month? We spend less to make up for it and replenish any emergency savings that has been depleted. Nobody would let me overspend for 35 out of the last 40 years of my life and call me fiscally responsible. They wouldn't lend me a dime.

Season Change

I just turned off the gas to our furnace and turned on our the fan to cool the house off this morning. I think its officially the start of the warm season.

I didn't quite get the timing right this year with the amount of kerosene that I bought for our indoor heater: there's about half a gallon left in the tank of the heater. I guess I'm just going to have to burn it off outside; I doubt the house will be cold enough in the next month or two to justify using it.

This "shoulder" period between winter and summer (I hear some people call it "spring") is the best few weeks to live in Wichita. The highs during the day are not astronomical and the lows at night are cool enough to feel a tiny bit chilly. The trees are starting to bloom, grass everywhere is getting green, and I don' need to bundle up to walk the dogs in the morning.

This is much different than summer here, which is oppressively hot and humid. Nobody wants to be outside and its hard to image how people lived here without air conditioners. The overnight lows are often 80'F; it just never cools off. Being in the city probably doesn't help; maybe outside of town where the wind and blow more to cool things off would help.

Renewable Energy

I'm officially in my first semester of my PhD at Wichita State studying power systems and am taking a class this semester on renewable energy integration. There is debate in some circles regarding the necessity of using these renewable energy sources; much of this debate tend to be centered around the urgency of regulating carbon emissions from traditional power sources.

Another perspective, the one that I think about often, considers the fact that non-renewable energy sources have a severe and obvious limitation: they are not renewable and will run out at some point. All of these fossil fuels are produced by geological processes that we cannot reproduce or replicate in an economically feasible way. These natural resources are a blessing in that we have found ways of relatively easily converting them into a variety of specific refined fuels. The raw resources will run out at some point, though. Unfortunately, the ease of extraction and refinement of fossil fuels have resulted in relatively low costs and promoted the expansion of the use of these fuels. The seemingly limitless supply of fossil fuels leads makes it easier and easier to continue to use them and harder and harder to try to look for alternatives. For decades now Presidents of the United States have got it right in saying that we as a nation are addicted to oil.

The reality, though, is that these fossil fuels will run out at some time in the future and we are so dependent on them that it is hard right now to even imagine our way of living without the pervasive and ready access to fossil fuels. Nearly 100% of our transportation infrastructure from cars to aircraft to cargo ships use only fossil fuels. Most of the electricity in the United States is produced by burning fossil fuels; even electric cars use fossil fuels, albeit in an indirect manner. Even as gasoline fuel prices continue to rise, we in the United States have not reached the point where we are ready to consider serious changes in our lifestyle. We complain; talk is cheap.

To those of you who think the day where we will reach critical levels in our fossil fuel supply is many decade (or even a century) away, well, you may be right. For all of our sake, let us hope that this is the case; we need the time to make these renewable energy sources viable alternatives to the existing system. This brings me to my first point: now is the time to invest (heavily) in these alternative systems. If we wait until the situation is urgent, until we are critically low on fossil fuels to start looking for alternatives, we'll be too late. Gradual change is almost always easier to manage than rapid change. A change this large cannot occur easily and there are many technical and operational challenges that still need to be overcome. As a self-declared representative of all technical professionals in this field I plead with you: give us this time to get this right. This means investing in the technology long before it is profitable and spending the money to research how we need to change our system to accommodate the coming reality.

And again to those of you who think that fossil fuels aren't running out soon I would add this: our society has mis-estimated the bounds of limitless resources in the past. The prevailing opinion for much of the time the Pacific Northwest was settled by white-folk was that both the forest and the fish were effectively infinite. These natural resources seemed so expansive and seemingly immeasurable that there was no effort to moderate their use. The trees and the fish were harvested for many decades until their numbers dwindled so severely that it was clear there were limits to what we thought of as limitless. Now, to preserve these resources for future generations, we try to limit their consumption, especially in the case of trees where it takes several decades to naturally replace what we use.

Considering the non-renewable nature of the fossil fuels we have become highly dependent on and our increasing appetite for them, the day is coming when they will become so expensive so as to be unaffordable. On that day, the lifestyle we in the United States have come to expect will come to a halt. The only way this can be avoided is to prepare now for this eventuality and rebuild our energy infrastructure to be re-orientated around alternative energy sources. The future we want is one where fossil fuels never become expensive because the demand has been radically reduced due to viable alternatives becoming better economic choices. Gasoline would never become prohibitively expensive because nobody will have a use for them; better alternatives will exist. The future we want is one we can create if we choose to start preparing for it now.

National Budget Visualized

Here's a great visual depiction of the budget President Obama has proposed, put together by the NY Times. Items of notes:

• According this this USA today graph, this budget is still larger than the federal income. We are still spending more than we make, like we have for several decades now. Under Obama's budget, we are going to add $1.1 trillion to our debt.
• Our interest on the existing national debt is s$474 billion this year, up 14% from last year.
• It is clear that the biggest spending is, as I have often asserted, in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense (ignoring the interest on the national debt since we really can't do anything about that except pay it).
• Most of the money in this budget is considered "mandatory" spending, meaning that previously enacted legislation (such as the Social Security Act) requires a certain level of spending. New legislation could be passed to overturn these mandatory spending requirements (such as a End Social Security Act, to make up an example) but the money funding the programs created by previous legislation is not up for grabs as a part of the regular budgeting process.
• The big spender not in the mandatory spending pool (called "discretionary" spending) is defense spending. Defense spending is the only one of the Big Three that can be changed without passing additional legislation.
• During the Bush years it was common for the normal budget to be augmented by "emergency" spending bills to fund the wars. This money is outside of the normal budget process and thus does not show up in the kind of graph the NY Times has put together. I don't know whether President Obama has any emergency spending legislation he is going to propose or not.
• Finally, just to be clear, the President doesn't officially get to set the budget for the year; he can only sign or veto a spending bill that Congress passes. Obama's budget is an opening bid in what will be probably a long negotiation before a final bill is arrived at that all parties can live with.

Short

Below is a fantastic little short movie that I'm watching on a regular basis now because it reminds me so much of where I grew up and what I love about it.

Growing is Forever from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

This Week in the Weather

A week ago it was 70 degrees outside. Today the high was 28 degrees. In the past week we had several inches of snow, some relatively fierce winds, and two days when Wichita State University cancelled classes. One of my professors who has been at the school 25 years says he can only remember one other time the school has closed due to weather.

It has been a cold week.

On the upside, pictures of the dogs in the snow are always kind of fun.

Seen today in the neighborhood

Tron: Legacy

I convinced my brother in-law that we should go see "Tron: Legacy" while he was in town recently and we choose to lay out the big bucks and go see it at the newly opened IMAX. Oh, and it was in 3D. The only 3D movie I'd seen before this was "Avatar" and while it was nice, I wasn't convinced that it was worth the extra three or four dollars. This opinion was reinforced by commentary I had read around the web that "Avatar" had the best implementation of 3D as it was actually filmed with two cameras while most of the other 3D movies had been made so in post-production.

I didn't have high expectations of "Tron: Legacy" and was just hoping for an entertaining show: lots of cool looking things on screen with the thinnest of plots to hold the excitement together. Seeing it in 3D IMAX was a novelty, I reasoned, something new to try out. My preconceptions were more or less accurate but were understatements of the reality. "Tron: Legacy" in 3D IMAX an experience more than a movie. I can't say that the plot was superb or the extremely well-written but nearly every other aspect of the film is excellent. The use of 3D is very well done and adds much to the movie, much more than I remember in "Avatar". The visuals are stunning, integrate well with and strongly develop the style of the movie, and are exceedingly enjoyable. Costumes and sets were similarly unique and impressive.

The surprise to me, though, was the the music and sound. This was more than good use of orchestral scoring; it was an embrace of synthesized, manipulated, stretched and compressed alteration of traditional music into a unique sound that, again, adds so much in defining the style and feel of the whole film. I don't feel that the audio overshadowed the visuals just that they were not neglected in light of all the effort of making a visually stunning movie. I'm tempted to buy the score of the film because it was so unique and powerful.

I don't think "Tron: Legacy" would have struck with me so deeply if I hadn't seen it first in IMAX 3D. If you have the option of seeing it that way I would recommend it; its probably the only way I would recommend this movie. In this way the movie is a work of art; the experience of seeing it will not be replicated well onto a more conventional screen and even less so into a home setting. It will be like the difference between an original oil and a picture of the same work in an art textbook.

Its hard to compare this movie to others because it is so much more of an experience than simply a movie. There are much better films out there that don't derive their value from special effects or visual spectacle. But its hard to say that "Tron: Legacy" is better or worse than any of these because its value is so much in the presentation. Pick your favorite movie and even if you were able to see it again on the big screen right now, it would be a completely different experience than "Tron: Legacy".

Maybe that's the best way to think about it. "Tron: Legacy" has brought back something special to the movies. You will either see it in its fullest form or you won't but there won't be any second chances. Once it leaves the theater, there really won't be any way to get the full meal deal. Its like performance art in that way; a one-time experience that can't be replicated. If you can afford the $12 to $15 per ticket I strongly recommend that make an effort to go see this. You won't walk away with inner contemplations about the plot or characters but you can't help to be entertained.

It is the best movie of little consequence I have ever seen.

100% Official

As of yesterday, I have completed all the requirements for my Master's degree. I took my final test of the semester (Statistics) and received confirmation from the graduate school that all my paperwork was in order and that my thesis had been officially accepted.

The graduation ceremony was this past Sunday and I attended but had chosen not to walk, mainly because I'm staying on for my PhD making the ceremony very anti-climactic. I attended the ceremony to see a good friend of mine get his PhD and while waiting for the ceremony to start, I was thumbing through the program. There I was, listed as completed my Master's along with my thesis title. Even for me, a person who doesn't care much for ceremony, this was a little weird. I felt like I should run up on stage and get in line will all the other Master's students. I was literally just a few hundred feet away from being able to participate in the ceremony.

For me now, school will just continue for a while. Classes start up again in mid-January and I'll be attending the normal three lecture classes, just like I have for the past five semesters. Looking at my estimated schedule for the next few years, it doesn't look like things start to change much until spring 2011 when I begin taking my dissertation hours. Each semester from that point on I spend more and more time on my official schedule working on my dissertation until I complete it in the spring of 2013. At least that's how thing stand now; all of this is subject to change and probably this spring I'll be submitting more paperwork to get this schedule of mine officially approved as worthy of PhD work.

There is a hiccup that I already know of in my schedule. The Engineering and Education departments recently got together to form a program specifically geared towards graduate students in engineering who plan on a career in academia, like me. By taking four specific graduate level education classes, I will be able to earn a Certificate in Engineering Education. The problem: the engineering graduate department may not recognize any of those education courses as "counting" towards earning a PhD. This means that if any engineering student wants to earn this certificate, he or she will have to take these four courses on top of the normal course load for a PhD. Nothing is completely decided yet but it seems counter-productive to me to working across departments like this to get the program in place and then to construct additional barriers to prevent students from actually participating in the program. Methinks the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

You Balance the Budget

In terms of posts to this blog, I've written a lot about the Federal deficit and balancing the budget. This is one more item on that list.

The New York Times has an interactive feature on their website that allows everyday normal people like us to take a stab at balancing the budget and getting our national debt under control. The interface is simple: there are a list of options that each make a dent in the budget problem and you go through and check the ones that get you to a balanced budget. Its easy to use and gives you a very tangible handle on what it will take to make our federal government fiscally responsible.

Go ahead and give it a try. Spread the word. Start thinking seriously about what it will take for our government to start acting like grown-ups when it comes to money.

Cranberry Sauce

Do you make your own cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving (or any other holiday meal) or do you buy it in a can? If you don't make your own cranberry sauce you really should. Its just too easy and too fun to pass up. You can buy a bag of cranberries for a few dollars, add some sugar and water and heat it all up until the berry begin to burst. That's right, I said burst; its like making popcorn with fruit! (There are plenty of more detailed recipes out there if you feel you need more detailed instructions but really, its that simple and hard to get wrong.)

Sure, its cheaper, easier, and faster to buy the sauce in a can but the two don't really even compare. Unless you're really strapped for cash and/or time, spend the extra two bucks and fifteen minutes to make the sauce yourself. Or better yet, get some quality kitchen time with a family member or friend and recruit them to do it.

Fresh cranberries will be readily available in the US for several more weeks so don't wait. I'm betting once you try it, you'll never go back. I haven't.

First snow of the season

Its not accumulating here in Wichita but it is snowing. See for yourself

Master Hardy

It's all but official. I defended my thesis this last Friday and now just have some editing, probably a bit more formatting, and hopefully just a tiny amount of paperwork to do before I have earned my Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Wichita State. Oh, and I need to pass my classes this semester as well. On a practical level things don't change much for me, though. I'm continuing on with my PhD so I have many more semesters to go before this is all done.

We'll, here's a mostly completed, almost perfect draft version of my thesis. Feel free to read, enjoy, and ask questions. Or you can just smile and now and not worry about it. Whatever.

Basil's new trick

We've been working with Basil to train him to go and get the paper in the morning; we anticipate this trick being very handy for the coming winter months. Here's a demonstration from this morning:

The word is spreading!

David Leonhardt must have been reading my blog because, on a nationally syndicated radio program (Marketplace), echoed nearly exactly (almost verbatim) what I've been saying about what it will take to balance the budget. We've got the make big cuts in one of the following: Medicare, Social Security, or defense and/or raise taxes. The most politically fleasible option will probably involve modest changes to many or most of these.

The message is getting out! You heard it here first (maybe)!

Everyday Amazing

That's how I'd describe this video; its an example of everyday amazing. There are cooler videos out there, I'm sure and other people have done similar things but here is a pretty normal looking guy who wants to do something at least slightly extraordinary: make a spacecraft. And he does. And captures some footage that can best be described as awesome in the traditional sense of the word.

Watch it full screen in a dark room. Prepare to be amazed.

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Before Congress gets back to balancing the budget...

I know I just wrote about this a few posts ago but one of my favorite podcasts (Planet Money) mentioned a report that effectively gave a receipt showing how are federal tax dollars are spent. The categories they chose to track seem a bit arbitrary but its worth taking a look at. And the top 3: Defense, Social Security, Health Insurance.

The report also referenced a few other great websites that try to get a handle on the same data. WhatWePayFor.com lets you plug in your salary and generate a dollar-amount break-down for your tax bill and the National Priorities Project has a Tax Day page that does a similar thing in less detail.

Health Insurance and Me

I've ranted about this before: I have no love for the health insurance I currently have. There are many things to complain about but the one that is troubling me most lately is the plan's attempt to portray its bugs and difficulties as features; I'm talking about consumer-driven health-care. The theory behind these plans place the health insurance policy-holders in the role as consumer and thus place the responsibility of controlling health-care costs in said policy-holders hands. By placing the burden on the policy-holders to make the financial choices on how the health-care dollars are spent, a more direct relationship between those paying for the care and those receiving the care is formed. Financial self-interest becomes a factor in making health-care choices and the policy-holders/patients don't freely spend money when they think of it as theirs rather than the insurance companies.

I like the theory but the way my insurance is set up now it utterly defeats any attempt to make this work in practice. I found this out again when I tried to price out the total cost I will have to pay for a minor procedure I have soon. Due to specialization, fragmentation, multiple providers and a complicated billing system, it is practically impossible to determine the cost for this procedure before I actually get a bill in the mail. I can get a price for the doctor performing the procedure and I can get a price for procedure (if its at the only in-network hospital here in town but it could be at any other number of smaller clinics who charge their own prices). I can't, though, get a price for the anesthesiologist who will be helping during the procedure because nobody, not the doctor, not the hospital, knows who that will be anytime closer than a day or two before the procedure. Getting the incomplete prices I did took me three or four hours of phone calls.

To state it plainly, my health insurance company forces me to go shopping for the my health care providers and when I do, I find out that nothing has price tags. It is virtually impossible to try to manage my health care costs the way my insurance company says I should. The health insurance company wants to make it seem that by shopping around I can control my health care costs but I know this isn't true and it is hard to imagine that health insurance executives don't know this as well. Besides, would you choose a surgeon, radiologist, or oncologist you had never met to perform a one-time medical procedure because he or she was the most affordable? I can't think of anybody who would unless they had no choice. And don't even get me started on in- and out-of network, deductibles, co-insurance, co-pays, and the cyclical billing routine between medical service provider, insurance company and patient.

I've made this challenge before and I'll make it again: I double-dog dare you to try to find out the price you will actually have to pay for any given medical procedure a priori. Unless it is not much more than a simple visit to your everyday doctor where no testing is done (and what doctor do you know that doesn't want to "run a few tests" while you're there) you will not be able to get a price of any value before you actually go in.

At least I can't. Not one accurate enough to be useful, that is.

Recently heard on campus...

"I'm addicted to feeding the squirrels."

More on Federal Spending

I recently found an interesting report outlining how the income and expenditures of the federal government broken out by state. In partcular, the report highlighted the fact that there are some states in the union that historically consume more tax dollars than they generate; they are subsidized by the country as a whole. Conversely, there are states that generate more in taxes than they receive from the government.

Take a look at the report here and see where your favorite state (or maybe the states you love to hate) stack up. The most important columns are the last two showing the received-to-spending ratio (values over $1.00 mean the state was subsidized, values less than $1.00 mean the state did the subsidizing) and the ranking of the state in terms of dollars received.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide whether citizens should be proud or not of their states' abilities to attract federal spending. Some call it "bringing home the bacon" and they vote based on who they think can bring the most money to the state. When it comes to tax dollars, though, its a zero-sum game; federal dollars flowing into the state have to come from somewhere and it will largley be taxes collected from another state. This is another way to look at federal taxes as wealth redistribution: money moving from "rich" states to "poor" states (or something like that).

First Day

My first lecture has come and gone as a instructor at Wichita State University. It went well. Despite the late hour of the class (5:35pm to 6:50pm) the students seemed awake and participating. We got through the introductory material and started into the content; I was even able to put up the first homework assignment (though it won't officially be due for over a week). I made one blunder in assigning an in-class problem which turned out to be much more difficult than I realized when I opened my mouth. I caught it after a minute or so and was able to call it off before I did too much educational damage. At least that's what I'm telling myself right now. Moral of the story: stick to the notes I've prepared for myself, particularly when it comes to examples and practice problems.

Oh, and I accidentally left my travel mug of water in the lecture hall overnight. It was still there when I came by early the next morning.

I still haven't received the official contract for teaching this class, though. Its the only thing holding me back from being 100% officially hired.

Windows

Two days out of the week I have long days at school, about twelve hours on campus. While I was waiting for my last class of the day I noticed the following. I've speeded up the video to make the effect the wind was having on these windows more obvious.

The last part of the clip is slowed down to normal speed so that I could provide some context to the problem. The windows are probably five feet tall and each pane is probably three or four feet wide. The hallway is a hundred feet or so. This is a lot of glass that doesn't seem to be solidly attached to the rest of the building. I have the distinct impression that the plate screwed into the window frame shown in this clip was added after installation.

Its almost 100% official...

Yesterday I got a few more keys to add to the growing ring, today I was given another and received training on how to use the projector system in the room I will be using for lecture.

Then there's this little excerpt from the course catalog listing for this semester:

Now all I need is for the last bit of paperwork to go through giving me access to the part of the computer system where I enter grades and I'll be set.

Defense, Social Security, Health Care

I was in a discussion with a friend recently about the national debt, a topic that we are both concerned about. I was trying to point out that most of the federal budget is being spent on just a few things but didn't have the numbers in front of me to confirm this. Now I do.

The chart comes from Wikipedia; they used publicly available data.

There are three general areas of federal spending that make up a significant portion of the federal budget: defense, Social Security, and health care (Medicare and Medicaid). (Since this is 2008 data, there is no mention of the new health insurance reform and it will several years before we have data on how much that is actually costing us). The total of these three is 58% of our budget. If you throw in welfare and other "non-discretionary" spending the total comes in at 67%.

If we are serious about being fiscally responsible we need to look at cutting spending and when cutting costs, you don't look at the small things first. Completely eliminating, say, the funding for the Department of Justice will not make much of a difference in terms of limiting spending. Killing NASA won't help out much either. The federal government is involved in many, many, programs but when you get look at the data, most of these spend very little in the scope of the entire federal budget.

Here's my point: if you get in a discussion about balancing the federal budget just remember the big three. Make it a mantra. Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Don't let anybody get you off topic with talks of killing NASA or ending the Department of Education. Everybody has a part of the federal government that they love to hate and often political motivations can hide behind the mask of fiscal responsibility. (This is the reason I don't like including the "welfare and other non-discretionary" spending in the total; everybody has an opinion about welfare.) These programs are small fry's and killing them won't really help us out any.

To balance the budget we have to choose to confront the reality that most of our spending is in programs and that most people see as non-negotiable. Even my wife's very conservative mother, a woman who wants a smaller federal government, lower taxes, and a balanced budget, does not want to see significant cuts to the entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare. Reality is unforgiving in this regard, though. The big three need be smaller. Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.

How are we going to get from there to here? What sacrifices will you make to bring the help bring the country back into financial balance? The federal government has for some time now been balancing its budget by borrowing and we all know that this can't go on forever. The sooner that we get serious about a legitimately balanced budget, the sooner we can start paying down the debt. In 2008, we spent 9% of our federal dollars just on interest for the debt.

Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.

We are the federal government. Don't simply blame the politicians for making politically expedient choices and avoiding unpopular ideas like cutting Social Security benefits. These ideas are untenable only because we, the people who elect them, don't want to make the choice for ourselves. If cutting Social Security benefits had our strong support then there is no doubt elected officials would openly advocate for it. We, the electorate, have to be willing to sacrifice if we expect our representatives to make the changes in law that will be required to balance the budget. Don't blame them; we gave them the job.

Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.

Watering

My wife just got done watering our maple tree in the backyard. It is a full, mature tree but due to the weeks of high heat (highs at 95'F or greater, lows of 80) and no rain, the tree has started to shed its leaves. The backyard has a pool of green, dry, crinkly leaves around the tree; it looks quite sad.

Teaching

I found out yesterday around lunch time that I will be teaching my first course at WSU this fall, CS 194 Intro to Digital Design. The appointment comes pretty close to the start of the school year (two weeks away) and so I'm going to be scrambling a bit to try to get prepared. Thankfully the professor who teaches it normally has mercifully volunteered her notes and homework so me to use/copy/modify.

The content of the course is not difficult for me to understand and I'm hoping my students will be able to catch on relatively quickly. The bigger struggle for me will be the less direct issues in teaching: pace, proper amounts and difficulty of homework and tests, classroom management, etc. This will be especially true given that this course will consist largely of freshman in their first semester at college.

For now I'm busy trying to re-learn the specifics of the material that I've forgotten and formulate the early lectures, at least in my head. This should be an adventure.

While I've been gone

This month has been extremely busy with trips to Oregon, Colorado and Missouri and I'm just now working on getting life back in order. Until I figure out what (if anything) I'll have to say from these trips, here is a little gem from my time in Missouri. This is a sign at a state park we stayed at; what does it mean?

When I saw it I had just realized the camp ground had no cell phone coverage and so I thought that it was pointing the way to a magic location where cell phones would work. It wasn't.

Puppy Surgery

What you see above is a bit of grass seed that has been aggravating one of our dogs, Basil, for the past few weeks. When we first noticed the problem, the only symptom was Basil licking between his toes on one paw. We investigated and found that a knot of fur and grass seed had formed there and with a quick flick of the scissors, thought we had solved the problem.

A few days later we noticed he was still licking and further investigation revealed a tumor-like enlargement between those same two toes. It didn't look like a blister and early attempts to lance and drain it produced no fluid; it seemed to be more like a callous than an abscess.

But it kept growing, slowly. We called Katie's mother, a small animal vet, and her over-the-phone diagnosis was that it was an abscess where something had gotten embedded in his skin and was festering away, motivating Basil to try to fix the problem through licking. We speculated that probably some grass seed was the culprit. Our problem: the wound didn't act like an abscess that could be drained and the offending particle removed, it was just too solid.

Last night I looked at it again and saw a long dark spot near the surface of the enlargement and the "tumor" did appear to be more fluid than before. I soaked Basil's foot in epson salt while Katie rounded up the alcohol, swabs, and sterilized a sewing needle. We dried off the foot and I poked the blister. Some blood came out but very little (if any) of the expected pus which would have indicated an infection by a foreign body and confirmed Katie's mom's theory.

We gently squeezed the sore and tried to explore and coax anything out of it but we got nothing but more blood. I talked with my co-surgeon and we decided we needed to cut it open and go after it while we could. Katie sterilized a razor blade, I cleaned the area with alcohol. She handed me the blade and while distracting Basil with puppy treats, I gently cut across the surface of the sore.

A little more blood but no obvious culprit. Another deeper cut and still no sign of anything wrong other than the obvious damage I was doing myself. Basil is a laid back dog and he normally doesn't object to our ministrations, even when we are doing things he doesn't care for, such as cleaning his ears or trimming his nails. He wasn't fighting us yet and I didn't want to make things worse but I was convinced that cutting just a bit deeper would yield results.

I did; it did. The point of the seed popped up through the blood and I grabbed it out with tweezers. We cleaned the area with alcohol, applied a topical anti-biotic, and bandaged the wound. Basil got more puppy treats and a chance to sleep in our room as both a reward for being a good patient and a half-hearted attempt to make sure he didn't lick the surgery site. This morning we redressed his foot and things appeared to be healing well. With the antagonist gone, Basil seems to be feeling much better and isn't lick his paw any more. As of right now the pocket in his skin is closing up nicely and the "tumor" is receding.

Katie's mom was impressed with our work and I'm glad we were able to get it out so easily. I bet Basil would enjoy a local anesthetic next time, though. Any ideas on how to get something like that?

New Site Design

I had a bit of free time on my hands and accidentally discovered Blogger's easy to use site designer and with a little bit of fiddling, gave the blog a new look. And, because my wife asked, the background picture behind the title is mine, taken in our unimpressive backyard.

How to...

Katie got this little container for holding plastic bags from Wal-Mart yesterday. We hang onto our plastic bags for dog-related purposes and they tend to clutter up in the pantry closet. This cheap container is supposed to hold all those bags and even has a (faux?) stainless steal finish.

Installation is easy and straight-forward and instruction are only necessary if you've never done anything like this before. Two drywall anchors and two screws. Done in less than five minutes.

The instructions do have some comedic value, though. Check out the list of needed tools, shown in universal-style images.

That's right. In addition to a screwdriver, drill, hammer, and pencil you'll also need to be a human male.

Water Dogs

Both our dogs are English Springer Spaniels, a breed whose original purpose was to help in hunting water fowl. Its not surprising then, that they love water and the only things that make baths unpleasant is all that soap and shampoo. Last year we purchased a large inflatable pool for them to play in and that lasted a week or two until they popped it. It also took much more water to fill than I expected.

This year we went with the cheaper, smaller pool and bring it out on hot summer days to help cool them off when outside. Our dogs are very different in temperament and I think the following two movie clips will make this clear.

Anise:

Basil:

Attic Fan

This past spring, in an attempt to save ourselves some money, hassle, and discomfort, we decided to purchase and install an attic fan. Katie had experience with one growing up and insisted that if we were going to do this it had to be quiet so we ended up on one provided by Airscape. As with my home projects, the install took longer than I thought but once it was in and running we were loving it. Instead of messing with multiple box fans that didn't seem to work very well we open a few windows and flip a switch. The fan pulls in the cool air from outside and shoves the hot air in the house and attic outside.

The fan ceases to be useful, though, when things don't really cool down at night very much. We knew that the fan wouldn't be able to be used all summer but based on historical data on the temperatures here in town, it seemed it would still be worth it the rest of the year. The summer heat has seemed to hit a bit early this year and already the night-time lows are 78'F at our house; there's no sense in exchanging one set of hot air with another so the fan is staying off.

Other than this not so small complication, we have been big fans of the fan. For people who live in places where the night-time lows are more reasonable, I can whole-heartedly endorse the product. Where I grew up, we didn't have air-conditioning and this worked out fine most of the year but a fan like this would have made all the difference and saved my father from same box-fan routine we used to do here.

Helping with the move

Our friends were making a move this last Wednesday and I volunteered to help them out. I have no classes during the summer leaving my schedule very flexible and I was glad to do what I could. Unfortunately, most of the working world does not have weekdays off so when we started in the morning at 9:30am, there was four of us. By lunch there was just three. The morning turned into a long day but by early evening we were starting to see more help show up, thankfully.

As the sun was setting a group of guys was trying to manipulate a sleeper-sofa down a tight squeeze in the stairwell to the basement. We were very close to making it work but just couldn't get it to fit. After tearing up the door jamb, putting a small hole in the wall of the stairwell, and scuffing a big of paint off the other stairwell corner, we gave up and decided the sofa would have to live upstairs. We gathered to eat a quick bite before finishing for the evening and I took stock of the man-power we had present and came to a conclusion: as tired as we were, we needed to move the piano tonight. We probably weren't going to have any more help at a future date and needed to get it down while we could.

I made my case to my friend the home-owner and I could tell that he wasn't thrilled with the idea as he was as tired as I. Using what little skills of persuasion I have, though, I was able to convince him to at least give it a shot. It was the last item to be moved and if we could get the piano moved, we could claim victory for the day. Six guys, one big, heavy, wooden box.

Loading it into the truck was not too difficult, though one of the casters was broken so we lifted it the entire way. Once in the truck we started the short ride back to the new place.

Half a block from the house, at the last turn of the ride, the most unbelievable event occurred. The piano, which we had not tied down, came flying out of the bed of the truck. It came crashing to the ground but, amazingly, stayed more or less in one piece. I was in the vehicle behind the fateful truck and I have never seen anything like this. The piano started to lean to one side, the top of the console got over the edge of the truck, and somehow, the caster wheels ended higher up than any other part of the piano as it seemed to jump and flip towards the street.

We all stopped, got out of the cars, and stared for a minute, still in shock over what happened. I looked back at the road on the corner we had just turned and couldn't see any of Wichita's famous potholes, drainage troughs, or uplifted pavement. It was as smooth as roads get around here. How did this happen?

We loaded the piano back into the truck and, after traveling a few hundred feet, into the house. A quick glance while walking by the piano and you wouldn't think it had fallen to the road but even the most cursory inspection showed not only deep scuff marks and gouges in the wood but also that the keyboard was uneven, elevated, and none of the keys could be moved. The piano was no beauty to begin with but now it couldn't even be played.

Epilogue:

Katie and I rode over to the new house the other day on our way home from a farmer's market to see how the unpacking was going. We found out that, as miraculous as the flying piano incident was, even more miraculous is that our friends were able to easily fix the piano and every key works! The only problem with the keyboard was that the keys had lifted out of their guides and were resting on top of them rather than sliding between them. Simply lifting the keys and resting them back into place solved the problem. The piano needs to be tuned, of course, and all the beauty marks are still there but the instrument functions the way it was designed.

June 5th

June 5th 2009 was the day I was laid off at Cessna. That morning I was told by my supervisor that I was being let go and after that day I never went back to my desk again. It was not a happy day.

June 5th 2010 at 4:30am my first niece was born to my wife's sister in Enid, OK. She had a high-risk pregnancy and was induced so as not to prevent any complications. (I assume that was the logic, anyways.) She checked-in to the hospital on Friday morning but for a variety of reasons did not progress as quickly as was expected. As seems to be the case for every mother I meet, the labor was lengthy and Maylin Brooke wasn't born until nearly twenty-one hours later.

Thankfully, other than the long labor everything went smoothly. The epidural helped that as well.

I hope to be a father some day but for now, I'm an uncle, now three times over. This June 5th was much better than the last.

Escape!

Last night Anise had a brief night on the town. I had left the door between our garage and the backyard open as well as the garage door to help cool off our garage. I forgot to close them, Katie let Anise out into the backyard, and she took advantage of the opportunity to explore the neighborhood. Thankfully somebody managed to grab her long enough to read her collar and give us a call. By the time I headed out on my bike, I could see her up the street, playing with the dogs of some of our friends. As best we can tell, she just kind of took herself for a walk along the route we normally go. She came right away when I called and raced me back home, enjoying her freedom and crazily zig-zagging down the street in front of me. When we got her inside she just kept running around the house; she was completely wired and it took half an hour for her to calm down enough to put her to bed.

She appeared to have a lot of fun and if it weren't for the fact that she lacks complete common sense when it comes to cars (and many other things) then I don't think we would have been very worried. Owning pets is like being parents in many small ways and we had a small parenting scare last night.

The Other WSU

I just got back yesterday from a conference at Washington State University in Pullman, WA. Wichita State is part of a university/industry research organization called PSERC. Twice a year the group holds a conference where new research proposals are made, updates and reports on existing projects are presented, and general networking/collaborating takes place in spades. The conferences are not very large, perhaps 50 or so individuals were there this time (though I was told that this was a bit lower than usual).

I felt very fortunate that I got to attend and thoroughly enjoyed the time. Just being a part of the conference made me feel like a "big-boy" researcher even though my part in presenting findings from the project I've been working on this past semester was very small, I had a display in the poster session. This type of presentation is exactly what it sounds like and is very similar to the grade school science fair in format, just without the classic baking-soda-and-vinegar volcano. In the world of academic prestige, being a part of a post session is the lowest form of data presentation but for graduate students in PSERC, its the only option we have available.

There were two great benefits for me in attending. One was the previously mentioned networking value. Though I was slightly sick and had a sore throat which made talking difficult, I was able to meet a fair number of other students and some of the other researchers both in academia and industry. Assuming I am able to attend more of these conferences in the future, I expect these relationships to become increasingly useful in staying connected to the current state of the art. This brings up the second key value in the conference: I now have a much better and more concrete understanding of what topics are of interest to those in the know and where the research effort is being made. This not only makes me feel more connected and a part of the academic community but will be of great value as I go forward and try to define the scope of my PhD dissertation.

Details from the conference are probably not worth getting into here so for now I'll simply leave you with some slightly interesting pictures I took while in Pullman, mostly of sights seen on campus.

I'll leave it to you to judge the validity of the labeling in public places at Washington State.

The area and the campus as a whole is very hilly and covers a lot of space. Just walking around campus would be a great form of exercise.

You know you're in a Northwest college town when the VW buses start showing up.

The community garden near campus. A great idea and use of space.

Right at the edge of campus. I think they've got their demographic nailed.

Why I don't like Quicken

After talking with a good friend the other night I got inspired to look into upgrading our old version (2005) of Quicken to the newly re-designed Quicken Essentials 2010. I talked with my wife about it and we decided that the money would be well spent since we would be able to electronically access all of our financial statements and Quicken had a converter that would transfer over all our old data.

After ten or so hours on the phone with technical support, I can attest that the former is wonderfully true and the later is maddeningly not. A converter is included with the software but in our case, it doesn't seem to work the way it should. I've called Quicken four times, each time addressing a different symptom of the bad conversion and each time the only slightly helpful technical support person has run me through the same steps of trying to re-import my data, come to the conclusion there was a problem with my file, and escalate my issue to some higher ups that may get back to me eventually. This process usually takes about an hour or so on the phone. So far, I've only been contacted once by these mysterious higher ups and, thankfully, they were able to clear up that particular symptom. I've yet to hear from them the for two of the other problems.

This last time I called things ended differently. The technical support person said there was no fix for my problem and that I could either use the software in its broken condition or I could ignore all the historical data from my old version of Quicken and start with a clean slate. I couldn't believe what I was hearing so I asked a few clarifying questions and repeated that the "solution" to my problem was not really a solution at all. He agreed that this was the case.

From a business stand-point this is hard to understand. Intuit, the maker of Quicken, is the only one that knows the format of my old data and it is the only one that can migrate this data to any other format. It has me locked in to their software right now and is in a perfect position to keep me there by supporting the transition to their newest version of software. But they have decided that they don't want to support me in this transition, that they want me to start over with my financial record-keeping. This makes two points abundantly clear to me:

1. Intuit doesn't believe in customer support. I'm having trouble migrating my data from one version of their software to another version and they aren't able to help me make this work. I've invested ten or so hours of my time with them to get the data converted and they aren't able to get the job done.
2. If I'm going to lose all my historical data, then I am free to choose software from any of Quicken's competitors and in light of the above point, I'm more inclined to choose something besides Quicken. Not only are they not able to persuade me to stay but they seem to be encouraging me to take my business elsewhere.

So we did. We have resigned ourselves to losing our historical data (sad but not the end of the world) and have found another program that is better in nearly every way, iBank 3. We haven't used it much yet but so far, it seems to do everything we need including some things Quicken didn't do very well or at all. We'll be getting a refund from Intuit and aren't looking back.

Closing remark: I can't recommend highly enough that you avoid Quicken Essentials 2010.

Tragedy on the 17th St. Bicycle Expressway (or Losing My Life on the Way to School)

Today started out pretty normal for me. Katie was going to bike home after work so I drove her and her bike there this morning before returning home and preparing for my bike commute into school. The morning was a bit cooler (~55'F) with little wind which made for a nice ride. I pulled up to the school gym to park my bike and head into the shower when my stomach sank. It was the same feeling I had when, in the same spot, my bike was stolen several months ago.

My bag, which was attached to the rear rack on my bike when I left home, was no longer there.

This bag had a good chunk of my life in it. My hard drive with both my Master's thesis and research computer files in it. My lab notebook and 3-ring binder with relevant journal articles in it. My wallet and house keys.

I hopped back on my bike and began to retrace my path, my mind racing. The bag was on the left-hand side of the rack meaning when it fell off it would have fallen off into the traffic (rather than the sidewalk) side of the road. This means it would get the way of cars traveling on the road. It also means it would be obvious and out in the open for any passerby to snatch up and claim for his or her own. This was another sinking revelation.

The movie "Signs" has a fantastic and telling bit that I call "the two kinds of people" scene. Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) and Graham (Mel Gibson) are sitting on the couch after the kids have fallen asleep watching the news coverage of the incredible events of the day. Graham, a reverend who had left the faith after the death of his wife is explaining to Merrill that there are two kinds of people and they respond differently to big events in life. One group (and I'm paraphrasing from memory) sees fantastic events and "it may be good, it may be bad but they know deep down that they are going to be all right"; they believe in a higher power that is working in their best interest. The other group knows "that whatever happens, they are on their own." There is no higher power, no God and when tragedy strikes it is up the individuals to define their future.

I don't write about it much on this blog but I am squarely in the first group, a spiritual man. When my personal tragedy struck today, I was quickly calling on God for help and mercy. The situation was entirely out of my control and it was going to take divine intervention to get the life I had in that bag back. I was pedaling and praying, both frantically, as I headed back towards home, eyes on the other side of the road, looking for that small treasure. It would take so little for things to turn out poorly. The bag could be run over and the contents destroyed or somebody could have picked it up. It would take a miracle for somebody to stop, pick up the bag out of the road, and set it aside for me to find. A small but definite miracle.

As I flew back home I began to think more about this. If I really believed in God and believed He was for me and not against me, then I had to accept the possibility that I might not get my bag back and that this would be a good thing for me. I'm reading a fantastic book right now, "How People Grow", that makes this point. Often it takes tragedy for us to grow and mature as people because we tend to slack off when life is easy and pain free. Painful events in life can work out for our best but only if we respond well to them. Cruising down the streets of Wichita I didn't want to accept that this could actually be the case. I didn't want this pain and hassle, I had things to do today. Please, please, just left me have my bag back. I was praying for mercy, for the easy way out of this. I was entirely dependent on God and I wanted Him to give me a break.

He did.

A small miracle occurred. Though it took me most of my ride home, I found my bag. Somebody had taken it and leaned it against the fence by the sidewalk. As best I can tell, it wasn't riffled through or explored, just tucked away out of harms way, waiting to be claimed.

I was thanking God the whole way back to school.

On the trail today

A few highlights from my bike ride to and from school today:

• A squirrel that had managed to abscond an entire doughnut from who knows where. He couldn't seem to decide whether to run and keep the doughnut safe or stop and eat it. He was doing some of both.
• A dozen or so Wichita Police bike-mounted officers. They were all congregated in a small neighborhood street. I had no idea we had so many bike-mounted officers and I have no idea why they were all hanging out together. I waved as I rode by; they waved back.
• A sign calling for volunteers to come out and protest Sarah Palin while she was in town for a fundraiser this past weekend. I think the newspaper said there were a few dozen protesters so I don't think that the sign was very effective. This is confirmed by that fact that I only noticed it a few days after the event.
• A long line of SUVs and trucks picking up students from the Catholic school in our neighborhood. There must have been forty or fifty of them, each picking up a child or two from the school.

Power Meter

(A warning to all my non-engineering friends: this is a highly nerdy post.)

A few years ago I received as a gift a wonderfully nerdy item for any electrical engineer: the Kill-A-Watt. The device is used to measure electrical power consumption in household items and I've been using it to do just that, mainly to see how much power devices draw when they are plugged in but turned off.

One of the measurements this device makes is something called the power factor. The power factor is a measure of the ratio of real power a device consumes to the amount of power the device appears to draw from the grid (the apparent power). Devices with a low power factor are bad because they demand more power from the grid than they actually use, sending the excess back every half cycle. Some of this power that gets sent back gets burned up in losses on the wires and is in essence, wasted.

Traditionally, power factor has been caused by electric motors due to their high inductance and the fix was relatively straight-forward: adding a capacitor near the motor provides a place to temporarily store the energy that would have been sent back to the grid. When the motor then appears to demand it again, it gets pulled out of the capacitor. In fact, in these cases, the power factor can be calculated by a tiny bit of math measuring the difference between when the peak current flows and when the peak voltage is present. The larger the difference in time between these two events, the lower the power factor.

Over the past few decades, though, there has been another big power factor culprit on the rise: rectifiers. These are the circuits that change AC into DC and are in nearly every electronic goody around the house: computers, TVs, DVD players, laptops: if you buy it at an electronics shop it has a rectifier. The power factor problems these devices create is very different from motors, though. They send the power back to the grid in a very different way; they convert some of the power at the traditional 60Hz frequency to power at higher frequencies, distorting the waveform. The fix that works for motors does nothing in this case and measuring the power factor is much more complicated.

Well, in a lab I was finishing for class, we had a very fancy (and expensive) power meter we were using that measured the power factor in two ways, the motor way (displacement power factor) and the rectifier way (true power factor, the more useful and accurate of the two). Since I had access to this, I brought in my Kill-A-Watt and we set up both meters to measure the power factor on a PC (which contains a rectifier). Much to my surprise, the fancy power meter showed that my Kill-A-Watt measured the more complicated true power factor. I was very impressed that such a simple and inexpensive device was able to measure this accurately.

This made me a happy nerd for the day.

Thunderstorm

Our helpful weather radio just went off and alerted us to a severe thunderstorm warning for our county. This is the first warning of the thunderstorm season which has thus far been pretty slow. It is not, though, the first significant thunderstorm this year; I guess the others didn't have high enough winds to be classified as "severe".

The weather radio is a curse and a blessing. We are thankful that it is loud enough to wake us (if necessary) when life-threatening weather is passing through the area. We curse it, though, when it wakes us in the middle of the night for these severe thunderstorm warnings. If we are in bed and asleep, we don't want to be waken just to find out that we have already taken the precautions necessary for a thunderstorm, namely, to be inside. There have been a few nights when we felt like parents of new-borns, being waken every few hours to a whining radio.

What can you do, though? All of this disturbance is worth the hassle when tornados do come around and we'd much rather over-alerted than under.

Happy Tax Day

Hopefully all you US residents have your taxes done and mailed in. I happen to live in Kansas right now and the state has figured out that they can save money if they allow people to fill out electronic forms online. To encourage people to do so, they make filing through their website free. Once your federal returns are done, completing the forms online is fast, maybe twenty minutes. All the forms are completed and submitted electronically and any refund you may get is direct deposited in a week or so. I'm a big believer in this idea and am glad to see the federal government is slowly coming around to the idea and realizing manually processing paper returns is expensive and error-prone compared to electronic forms.

This is all beside the point, though. The uplifting topic for today is national fiscal responsibility, the national debt, and what we are going to do about it. First, some data:

• 47% of US households won't pay any income tax at all this year.
• Most tax revenue comes from a small percentage of people with the highest income.
• (Or here, presented graphically.)
• The National Debt clock (and links to related stories).
• Holders of the national debt and how it has grown over time.
• National debt over recent past.

I don't put this data up to simply give people something to worry about. I truly believe this is a very serious problem that has been effectively ignored for several decades. We are on an unsustainable course that needs to be corrected. Sadly (but fairly) I think that the solution will involve increasing taxes (sorry Tea Party) and decreasing spending (sorry social welfare and defense people). In other words, we've dug ourselves into this hole and the path out is going to be painful.

To help keep me honest and the conversations on-track as I bring this up with friends, I'm starting to think of the solutions to this problem in terms of the sacrifices that I need to be willing to make. Rather than looking at the problem as a whole (which needs to be done), I'm trying to think of it very personally. What government benefits do I need to give up to get our country back on track financially? How much more taxes will I need to be willing to pay to make this happen? What tax credits and deductions that I enjoy now should I surrender so that our country can be fiscally responsible? Being an academic, which research and development programs that I care about should lose their federal funding?

For each of us, the answers to these kinds of questions are different. There are some that are going to have to give up federal subsidies (Medicare, welfare, etc). Others will be paying a lot more in taxes. There will probably be federal employees who will lose their jobs in the government's attempt to control spending. Its not going to be pretty or fun.

It needs to be done, though. It may not seem like it to some, but these past few decades have been ones where we as a society have ignored the financial costs of the federal fiscal lifestyle (if you will) we have been enjoying. The time is coming when we will have to face these costs and the sooner the better. The first step is always admitting you have a problem.

I encourage you to write your federal Representatives and Senators. They will only be motivated to action if we make it clear that this is important to us. Vote accordingly. The attitude of the federal government is a reflection of the attitude of us, the people. We can't expect them to act responsibly until we take responsibility for our own actions and choices. Until we are upset enough with the situation to actually do something about it, we can't expect them to do any better. Doing something can start with a simple letter or email.

If you are a person of faith as I am, pray for our nation. I have been convicted lately of just how desperate a situation we are in (beyond but including our finances) and have begun to ask God to work in the hearts and minds of others and help save us from our own self-destructive desires. For the USA, a nation that has enjoyed tremendous financial wealth, to be willing to accept a lower standard of living for the sake of our country as a whole will take a miracle.