I have too much to do, so you are on your own. Post anything relevant in the comments.
BTW- I just checked my paypal account because I was going to order something from Itunes, and I noticed that a couple of you donated and I didn’t know it until just now. Thanks for that.
gizmo
Now that you’re rolling in $$, can we get rid of that photo of rotten meat over there on the left? Makes it diffifult to enjoy my food while reading Balloon Juice….
John Cole
@gizmo: I can’t get rid of the Coulter ad. Google just assigns them.
NS
The meat looks appetizing, and the pictures of Coulter make we want to eat more, too.
Denyordave
I watched a little of Morning Joe today for the first time since the election. I watched little bits during the weeks up to the election.
Joe wasn’t on so I guess Mika was the hostess. Does she play an airhead or is she actually an airhead? The show seemed pretty much unwatchable to me.
Xecky Gilchrist
Post anything relevant in the comments.
Relevant to an open thread? I don’t know where to start!
Zoogz
Computer questions for those on the upper edge of the curve:
The last MB I bought was back in 2002, and I built my own system with it. Recently, I realized that I filled up both my 80GB and 120GB drives and needed a new HD. Went online to see about prices for a new drive, and found that they had 1TB drives that were pretty cheap.
Unfortunately though, there’s a new connection standard for hard drives, serial ATA. I had to send the drive back that I bought because I had no idea they moved forward, and settle for a 500GB pATA drive.
So, two questions… first, is setting up a serial ATA system harder or easier than a parallel, and what can one possibly do with their old PATA drives instead of scrapping?
(in b4 “Buy a Mac”).
smiley
Related to the previous thread.
@Denyordave:
Yes. But I think the latter. I think she just can’t keep up with the other geniuses on the show but is trying to as hard as she can.
Added: Plus, despite her father, I think she’s actually pretty conservative.
BretH
Loved game 2 (Caps fan). I think the Pens are going to come out all fired up – what will be interesting to see is if they can maintain it even if they don’t get quick success. Or if Ovie takes advantage of a press for a goal.
So, love the blog. Hope the Pens go down hard though.
Joshua Norton
The Dems aren’t going to let Arlen keep his seniority. Of course he never said that he’d be “loyal”, so why cut him any slack? His shout-out to seat Coleman probably didn’t win him any points, either. I guess he just instinctively tries to piss off what ever party he currently belongs to. From RINO to DINO.
Maybe he and Lieberman can form their own caucus. Since they’re “blue dogs”, maybe they can assign seniority in dog years.
Laura W
@John Cole: Oh damn that was funny.
Brick Oven Bill
I would like to talk about electricity. This is because our school system sucks, and as we still live in a democracy, increasing people’s level of knowledge is important.
Electrical current is the flow of electrons through a conductor. Electrical current is a physical, as well as an electrical occurrence. This is because the subatomic electron has mass (0.0006 atomic mass units). In addition to the physical and electrical components, electrical current induces a magnetic field. The interactions of the electrical currents, and the magnetic fields they induce, sustain the large amount of human biomass that currently exists on earth.
If you take time to think about the magnitude of the impact of moving tiny electrons around, it is awesome.
Krista
@2: Nicely done, sir. ;)
I need advice: I’m going on maternity leave at the end of July, and am already finding myself physically and mentally exhausted as I approach my third trimester.
I can keep up with my current workload, but my bosses keep adding more stuff to my pile, in an apparent attempt to squeeze as much out of me as they can before I go. While I can sympathize (I’ve worked hard to make myself indispensable over the last few years), I’ve gotten to the point where I dread seeing them, because they’ll have come up with a bunch of “ideas” that I then have to do all of the work to implement.
Does anybody know of a very polite and reasonable way for me to tell them that I just cannot fucking handle any more than I already have, not due to laziness, but due to the fact that I’m just wiped out? And is it reasonable of me to hope that they’ll accommodate that, or am I being a WATB who should just suck it up?
cleek
@Zoogz:
buy a USB HD enclosure and use those HDs as external drives.
Joshua Norton
@Krista:
Document everything. Tell them “I’ll put you on my list”. Then show them how far down the damned list it will be. If you keep doing everything they ask, as soon as they ask for it, (and make it all look as easy as possible) they’ll never stop asking for things.
Laura W
@Brick Oven Bill: Did you get your high speed connection yet? Here’s a treat for when you do.
She don’t know the system, Plus
she don’t understand
she’s got all her own fuses and splices
NonyNony
@Joshua Norton:
Notice how quiet Holy Joe has been recently? How he’s kind of been avoiding the media spotlight and trying not to make too much noise?
Yeah, Joe is trying to keep his political career alive. He bet on the wrong horse and he knows it. And while anyone with a brain (or who has watched the Democratic Party for any length of time) knows that 60 isn’t a magic number for the Democrats in the Senate, somewhere between 66 and 70 there IS a magic number where the caucus will no longer need Joe Lieberman anymore. And right now, all signs point to it being very likely that 2010 will be a year where the Democrats might just hit that number – especially if the GOP doesn’t change course soon, and if the economy really does start to improve by this time next year as Roubini has started to suggest. If so, the Joe is going to have to keep his mouth shut and his nose clean after 2010 – and any new outrages he makes today will haunt him in a couple of years.
Specter, OTOH, still hasn’t quite worked out the new reality he finds himself in. We’ll see how this plays out for him, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him not make it onto the general election ticket in 2010 despite his shenanigans right now.
Pb
Let’s hear it for Erick Erickson:
Apparently his regret here was that he used profanity — I guess libel is cool, yo. But don’t call him out on it, or he’ll filibuster your meaningless city council resolution with bogus amendments…
smiley
@Krista: Who’s going to take up the slack when you go on leave? Perhaps you could suggest that they start to transition into doing that now by taking on some of the new assignments..
Brick Oven Bill
Just as moving electrons through a wire induces a magnetic field, moving a wire through a magnetic field induces current. Thus;
Conductor + electron flow = Magnetic field; and
Magnetic field + moving conductor = Electron flow.
The whole electrical network boils down to physical force. Through physical force, one can move conductors through various magnetic fields, either self-generated, or pre-existing. There are different ways in which to do this but they all comprise of some sort of force being used to spin wires, which in turn creates electron flows and magnetic fields, which are arranged in a manner to output an electron motion in the transmission system.
These electrons can either move slowly in one direction (DC), or wiggle in place (AC).
Laura; I think I have a high speed connection but I do not know how to use it if I do. Soon enough, I will be able to enjoy your music.
wasabi gasp
RNC Clown College
(via Rump Roast)
South of I-10
@Krista: When I was on maternity leave, we had a temp in while I was out. I started training her about a month before I actually left, so she was picking up some of the slack already, although I did work until the day my water broke. My little one has a July birthday – hope it is not too hot where you are. I swear I had the AC on 65 and every fan in the house going and could not cool off.
Paul L.
THE WINGNUTS ARE CELEBRATING two Innocent man murdered by a gun nut.
Student Prevents Mass Murder
Cat Lady
@Denyordave:
I watched today too, and Joe was on with Barnicle in the late segment, dissing Eric Cantor for being a clueless fuckwit who should go away until he’s got something to add.
Mostly you miss Pat Buchanan and Joe circle jerking, but occasionally a guest shows up that gives them a good chain yanking. Most of the time that guest is Lawrence O’Donnell, who needs his own show.
Re: Mika – yes.
Brick Oven Bill
Thus we have described electrical supply. Now we need to examine electrical demand. We will begin by looking to our western agricultural past.
As you drive, or ride in a train, across the high plains, you will note windmills. These windmills are often used to harness the power of the wind to physically lift water from the water table to the surface of the earth. This makes it easier for the cows to drink the water so that they can provide me with a rare bloody steak in Elko, Nevada at The Star this Sunday night. I know who you are Homeland Security, do not even think about it.
Anyway, windmills work well in this application, as intermittent wind provides intermittent power, but the energy contained in the water is stored in the form of potential energy as surface water elevated above the water table.
This was a practical use of wind power, and windmills spread across the land, because they worked. Their energy was stored for the cows. Kinetic energy – Potential energy – beef.
wilfred
Obama is a pig.
He authorized continuing this kind of thing almost from the minute he took office and now can ride off into LBJ land, ‘how many kids did you kill today?”
There will no doubt be deafening silence from Deemocrats and wingnuts alike, accompanied by Lady Macbeth wanking from the usuals.
Fuck him. All the bank bailouts, health care and job plans aren’t worth the death of one child, let along the dozens who’ve been blown to bits since the philospher king rode into town.
Krista
I’ve tried that. They’re in denial. I’ve sent them two formal letters indicating when my mat leave will start and asking to meet with them to list out all of my various duties and how they will be handled in my absence. His response was to ignore it, and hers was to “casually” mention yet again how she went back to work after just three weeks, taking the baby with her to work. We have hired someone to cover me, and he’s starting mid-month and I’ll train him the best I can, but the poor bastard isn’t going to be able to completely hit the ground running, and my current coworker (there are only two of us in the office) already has a full plate as it is.
And they won’t take on shit. She might, but he definitely won’t.
Anyway, I’ll do what I can, and when I go on mat leave, I’ll screen my calls. :)
Brick Oven Bill
In these western windmill applications, kinetic energy (wind) is converted to potential energy (elevated water).
In the traditional electrical grid, nuclear, or fossil (really solar), or potential (dams) energy is converted to kinetic energy (turbine), which in turn is converted to electrical energy, which we call Watts.
But unlike water’s potential energy, which can be stored in a puddle, or a trough, or behind a dam, it is very difficult to store Watts. A guy named Volta made the first battery in the year 1800, and there has been all kinds of war research put into it since, especially for the submarine force. This makes me bet that battery technology is very ‘mature’.
One very smart government worker-politician, states that we can build virtual dams for our windmills to serve as virtual batteries, and I say good luck to him. In the mean time, our nation’s electrical demand is constant. Bad things would happen if you were to turn off the electricity to hospitals and Google, even for twelve hours.
Wind power subsidies are $23.44/MWh, in comparison with <$1/MWh for traditional electrical sources. This is even before the virtual dam-batteries.
South of I-10
@Krista: How much work can you really get done with a 3 wk old? That is crazy! I’m having trouble getting anything done with a 4 year old (been working at home this week b/c of flu shutting down school) Thank the FSM that school reopens tomorrow.
zzyzx
So, Red State gives once more. They link to a study showing how red states are “freer” than blue ones.
It sounds impressive until you read the study and see how freedom is defined. Pay state employees well? That’s a sign of tyranny. Have some requirements on homeschoolers to show that they know the topics? Are you insane?
So all of the conservative issues are well represented. Then though you see, “However, we do not consider same-sex marriage to be a freedom concern either way. Instead, it seems to be a football in the so-called “culture wars,” and, “We consider medical marijuana exceptions to be the least important marijuana policy in our dataset.”
So it turns out that if you define liberal concerns as unimportant but think that it’s crucial that unions don’t exist and that health care providers shouldn’t have any restrictions on them. If you define freedom as the freedom to be poor and have insurance companies be able to deny you health care for any reason, but – hey – you can have guns bash gays and make sure that your kids remain as ignorant as you, red states are where you want to live.
It’s part of the general paradox of libertarianism though. A Libertarian society would be significantly less free than the one we have. Remember that freedom to assemble only counts if there’s public property and that most of our other freedoms would cease to exist once we have the “freedom” to sign a contract waiving all of our other rights as a condition to have a job enacted.
Brick Oven Bill
In short, General Electric’s Chairman, as well as Berkshire Hathaway, have been selected to be the President’s economic advisors.
Berkshire Hathaway is a major bank holder, and Warren Buffett is still given the platform to pontificate about how healthy the banking system is. He also owns a reported 20% of Moodys.
GE too, is a major bank owner (GE Capital), and they make the windmills that receive the $23.44/MWh government subsidy. I did the math once on the per-minute federal subsidy T. Boone would get from his $2 billion wind investment, and it was a lot of money. Oh, and GE owns NBC too.
This is one more reason that the American public is not made aware that in Europe, 90% of installed wind capacity needs to be backed up by on-line (hot and burning) conventional sources, this number will rise as additional European wind capacity is brought ‘on-line’.
Steeplejack
@Zoogz:
I am currently at the tail end of a troubleshoot/upgrade similar to yours. Old hard drive died, replaced with a 1TB Western Digital SATA drive. My motherboard is an ASUS of 2003 vintage, and it has both IDE and SATA connectors.
SATA drive is easier to set up. No master/slave, jumper settings, which-connector-on-the-ribbon-cable rigmarole. Just connect it to the SATA port (my motherboard has two), give it power and badda-boom, badda-bing! You’re in business.
I can’t swear to this, because it wasn’t an issue for me, but I think you might be able to buy a SATA card to go in an older box to give it SATA capabilities.
I second Cleek’s suggestion at 13 to get an external USB harness. For $20 I bought a simpler rig–no harness, just cables–that allows me to hook up any 3½” or 2½” hard disk (IDE or SATA) or any internal CD or DVD drive as a USB device. Good for preinstallation doinking around or outside-the-box capability. I have an old 30GB drive that was sitting around basically as a paperweight which I now plan to use for external backup storage. Cool.
Brick Oven Bill
Reading source documentation and making independent judgments is important in a democracy, especially one with a press that has, in my opinion, been corrupted. Here is the E.On Netz Engineering Report. I would respectfully suggest that you at least read the one-page summary.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
~ Benito Mussolini
Brachiator
@Krista:
One approach to work is to make yourself indispensable. A former boss who I greatly respect taught me a better approach. Teach someone everything you know and train them (or multiple thems) to do everything you do. This makes you able to move up or to take on new assignments.
This blindness on your employers’ part is not good. I don’t know how much room to be pro-active, that is, instead of asking them, coming up with an action plan (this is the stuff that needs to be done and this is how I suggest that the workload be allocated, to who and when, etc.), to kinda draw them a picture.
Otherwise, you might have to suck it up.
And also consider moving on afterwards at a time of your choosing. Life is too short to work for pigheaded bosses. Even in a down economy.
And most importantly, feel free to ignore any advice given and go with your guts.
John Cole
@Brachiator: There actually has been a great deal of research done in the field of organizational communication regarding behaviors people engage in at work when approaching retirement that might be applicable. The research generally falls under the heading of “organizational entry, assimilation, and exit,” and a good primer is this chapter in the Handbook of Organizational Communication by Jablin.
In fact, a good dissertation or thesis might be comparing behaviors done during maternity leave and retirement (assuming it has not been done already).
Svensker
@Krista:
How about, “thanks for your confidence in me, but unfortunately I have about as much on my plate as I can handle. If you can take away some of the stuff that’s keeping me busy, I’d be happy to see what I can do on your new projects.”
I been working for myself for long, I don’t know if you can tell the truth to the boss these days.
Mary-A
Krista,
I have benefitted a lot from a daily task sheet. It lets me plan out my day/week, assign priorities, and after seeing how much I had going on my supervisor slid some job duties to my coworker. Now when people want me to do something for them, I can pull out my list and show them when it will get done. Sometimes, only sometimes, they opt to delegate it elsewhere. Either way, it decreased my stress 100 fold. Plus, I impressed my supervisors with how much I was getting done and now I get extra points for time management.
Also, consider some flex time on your maternity leave. I know it sucks to be on the job and on leave at the same time, but it can set a great precedent for when you have to stay home with a sick kid, etc.
Also, it gave me a great blueprint to train my maternity temp on how to get most of my job done while I was gone.
DecidedFenceSitter
@Brachiator:
Which only works if there are people above and below you, as well as paralell to you, who are willing, capable, and available to learn. I, by inclination, tend to work for company companies, or small projects. As such, I tend to be the only one with my rather specialized skill set. (Not that it is a difficult skill set, but you need to get government certified, and that requires an organization willing to send you to a three day training course.)
But the sort of training you are thinking about? Yes, it is absolutely vital, and the reason I know that is that it doesn’t happen in the small companies I work for, where the margin is as close to the bone as possible.
Krista
Thanks for the advice, everybody! :) I’m sure it’ll all work out. I think I’m just going to have to take the bull by the horns and make all of the delegation arrangements myself. At least I’ve been proactive. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I started creating a procedures manual for some of my more complex tasks. And my files (paper and electronic) are beyond organized and easy to navigate. So my replacement will still have a learning curve, but I’m definitely not leaving him with a mess.
Original Lee
@Krista: Get a letter from your OB that essentially tells them that she is requiring you to start reducing your workload and that they need to stop being assholes. When I was expecting my first, I was on mandatory overtime and eventually had to go out on disability because that was the only way I could reduce my hours and still keep my job. Apparently the letter my OB sent my boss was a classic of its kind, because the very next worker in my department who was pregnant got gold-plated considerate treatment from the get-go. I would post it here, but I have never seen it (more’s the pity).
Krista
We’re a two-person office. Believe me, I don’t WANT any new assignments, because I have nobody to whom to delegate my old assignments. :)
Original Lee
Last week, Fox News showed the dancing parrot video that parallels the dancing cockatoo story Tim F. referenced. In their now extremely typical anti-science fashion, they bashed the federal research dollars that paid for PhDs to watch YouTube. My daughter’s science class has to present current event reports every month, and today was her turn, so I suggested this story. (About half of her classmates have a regular diet of Fox News, poor things.) She had watched the Fox News segment and was very puzzled about what the real-world relevance of this research could be (a required element of the report). Who could blame her? Fox News didn’t point out any science in the report at all, because they were so focused on the “wasted” money.
I had to explain that stroke victims who have lost the power of speech can sometimes express themselves by singing, which is related to speech, so maybe now that this study has demonstrated a link between dancing and speech, dancing can be used as a method of communication as well. This would have been very easy for any of the news services to include in their reportage, if they hadn’t fired all of their science people.
R-Jud
@ Krista:
Oh dear. Pre-maternity leave scope creep. You have my condolences. I was just in a similar situation and no matter how cleverly I laid out my spreadsheets showing all the plates I was spinning, no matter how pointedly I cc’d my temp replacement and actually bolded his name in e-mails, I was still delegated more stuff in a frantic rush to the end (I worked until I was 7 days overdue).
Now I am working 10-hour days to catch up on stuff that wasn’t done while I was gone. C’est la guerre. You will most likely have to suck it up, but you are not being a WATB.
Agh! Passive-aggressive bosses! Run! I had these “hints” dropped to me, too. It sort of made me seethe, especially since I was only taking eight weeks leave to begin with, and routinely bust my ass for them, save them from disaster, go above and beyond, etc etc. I managed to convey politely that I thought I would only be able to handle crucial projects and that I would probably bill at a higher rate for that time (I had that option). Funnily enough the c-section drama kept them from calling me… for a whole month.
D-Chance.
A news story I was forewarned about… New H1N1 flu cases.
Drudge and others hyping the “killer” angle may lead you to believe that this is a possible second outbreak when, in fact, this is simply a backlogged CDC getting out data that is a couple of weeks old. IOW, there is no spate of new cases and there is no impending pandemic. As is the history of this non-story, it’s continued hype from the hysteria crowd.
BTW, to date in 2009, the US has suffered almost 13,000 deaths due to regular, seasonal pneumonia and influenza. This is NORMAL. And THAT strain mutates and evolves every year. So don’t sweat a couple of pigs getting the sniffles.
Elroy's Lunch
@Krista:
My next-door office mate is about on the same maternity schedule as you. She’s been dealing with what she calls “maternity moments” where she blanks out on some of the details of the project that we are working on together. I equate them to “old-timers disease.” I sent her the link to your comments for her amusement.
And since BoB can go on about energy I’m going to bring up a cat topic: Elroy’s Lunch has got some seriously nasty smelling pee. Like tomcat nasty. His adrenal glands are toast so he overproduces cortisone and testosterone. The steroid problem is under control but I’d gladly trade that for some moderation on the male cat smell thing. And it’s produced some re-growth of uniquely male reproductive features…
binzinerator
@Brick Oven Bill:
Electricity comes from other planets.
Krista
Oh, give her my sympathies. It’s absolutely pitiful how abysmal my memory has become. I’ve been writing down all of my tasks (like some people have suggested here), not only to show the bosses that I’m busy, but also because I will quite literally forget something 5 minutes after being told. It’s brutal. Yesterday I blanked on the name of the guy to whom we outsource our print jobs. I’ve only been dealing with him regularly for the last 4 years or so.
R-Jud
@Elroy’s Lunch:
“Momnesia.”
Brachiator
@Original Lee:
This is great stuff. I recall some suggestions that the area of the brain used for singing was not they same as the area used for some forms of speech. I don’t know if this panned out as being as dramatically different as early research, but I do recall that singer Mel Tillis had a considerable stutter when speaking, but was able to sing without any hesitancy in his vocalizations.
Jan Berry of the group Jan and Dean was injured in an auto accident, and suffered brain damage and aphasia, and suffered slurred speech, and yet his ability to sing helped him greatly in his general recovery.
If the science on this is still being downplayed…. what a tragedy.
I think you mentioned that your company was going to hire a fill-in. Maybe the best you can do is to find a way to paint a picture to accelerate this process.
Excellent observation. Maternity and other temporary leave is like a “temporary retirement,” with employees returning. I can easily see that there might be much overlap here.
I wonder if work in this area might also apply to organizations that have had to downsize because of the economy, and which now need to consider ways of optimizing their staffs’ abilities instead of simply cutting out people and departments and trying to figure out how everything should now work.
Zoogz
Cleek @13 & Steeplejack @31 :
Thanks for the advices. I honestly don’t know if my MB supports SATA, I’ll have to see if I can dig up the old documentation. (For that matter, I barely even remember WHAT that MB is.)
I’d go for the harness, but probably after the three children get a bit older. They touch pretty much everything they shouldn’t. :)
bago
BoB: how’d that merging of state and corporate power work out with AT&T?
Ash Can
Just wait till milkbrain hits.
SnarkIntern
How lucky for us that this is an electricity forum, just your cup of tea.
“Basic electricity for second graders.” Wonderful, Bill. Really.
Henceforth, I am referring to you as “Sparky.”
Thankovsky
Apropos of nothing, but Paula Abdul just made probably the least-expected revelation of all time:
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20276698,00.html
“Paula Abdul Reveals Struggle with Prescription Painkillers”
…sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssHOCKING!
R-Jud
@Ash Can:
I’m there now. Whee. I used to be… um…. um….
Competent. That’s the word.
TenguPhule
<blockquote. This is because our school system sucks, and as we still live in a democracy, increasing people’s level of knowledge is important.
BOB, you could improve the average IQ by several points if you’d be silent.
smiley
@SnarkIntern:
When I was growing up the local power company had a cartoon mascot named Ready Kilowatt (added: it might have been “Redy”). Light bulb shaped head and limbs and torso like lightening bolts. Was this just a local thing or was it more wide spread?
TenguPhule
I can predict the future.
BOB’s next job will be drafting the next verision of the ID book.
TenguPhule
And thus BOB proves he has never in any circumstances worked for, with or even talked to anyone involved in the power grid.
Electrical demand fluctuates all the way down to the home level. You turn your lights on, demand goes up, turn them off and down it goes.
We even have different rates charged for power consumption based on time because electrical demand tends to go down at night when most people are sleeping and thus do not have lights and tvs on.
bloodstar
this is fucking relevant:
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/5049867
can we beat every chickenshit who voted for the PATRIOT ACT until they get some fucking sense in their head to not be such scared little babies and grow a pair.
I wonder if the fuckers will waterboard him.
asiangrrlMN
@bloodstar: Yup. This is terrible. Too bad much of our criminal system works this way. Guilty, until proven innocent.
Tattoosydney, I was looking for you because I am in a funk, and you have the music mojo. I need some major uplifting.
Steeplejack
@Zoogz: Most MBs have manuals on line. Manufacturer and model number printed on MB. (Sorry, thumb-typing on cell phone.)