Hectic

My day started by having to rush to Waikiki to attempt to do a service call on Friday's work. We had to re-route some phone lines in a kitchen remodel because in the 70's builders were too stupid to separate everyone's phone instead of running it floor-to-floor through the kitchen walls. So I cut 5 people's phone lines and had to extend and splice them in the new wall & ceiling. Unfortunately cutting the lines apparently blows fuses in the telecom room which kills their service. My biggest mistake was my affinity for courtesy and helpfulness in which I told the building management that I would be doing this and that the occupants should not be alarmed. Had I not said anything, they each would have called the phone company, which would have sent a technician who would have easily found and replaced the fuse. Instead, they are all told that I had cut the lines and everyone assumes that I fucked it up, and they want blood.

In a technical sense, it is my fault. Unfortunately I had never seen a fused phone block before, and had cut at least 100 live phone lines in the past without incident. I wasn't anywhere near the telecom room, and since we were doing rough-in I had no reason to check the phone in that unit for operation yet. I was extremely careful, meticulous, and painfully slow in making sure my splices were accurate and proper. It then is a crappy way to start the day going back to check my work, which was right, when the phone company would have already fixed it if I had kept my mouth shut. Crappy for the phone guy, but he has to fix it either way, because I don't have an array of telecom fuses and nobody is really allowed to touch their equipment anyways.

So then I drove to another jobsite 15 miles away, dropped off 1 roll of wire, ate my lunch on the road, doubled-back and drove another 25 miles into Kailua. Jumped into a job I have very little history on and we ended up working an extra 2 hours of unplanned overtime and still didn't finish it. The very last thing I did was flip a light switch and hear *pop!* Guess where I'm going tomorrow morning. We still have to take down the scaffolding after we troubleshoot, and the flooring goes in tomorrow. Ugh. So not every day is palm trees and ocean breezes....

Friends abound

Hey, I gripe about being alone and look what happens. Medic guy is taking us to dinner tomorrow for being s nice to him when he got here. Big J up and moves here and we hang out the day he flies in. A Canadian from my gaming clan, (which is semi-dormant since the one game we all played most kinda went to the wayside) visited with his wife. I drove them around sightseeing one day, and we had a picnic with another clan member last Sunday. Medium sized J invited us up for BBQ in Hale'iwa.

Suddenly, I'm not so alone :)

Big J reaffirmed some feelings that I've had for a while. San Diego was a great place to grow up, but it's gone to crap. We're both happy to have lived there, and happy to be gone. I miss my friends and family that live there, but I have no major yearnings to return to far-south L.A. / northern Tijuana. They can keep the smog, traffic, ever swelling population, drought, and illegal aliens all to themselves. Granted, those are problems most major US cities are facing, but it's so different from what it was 20 years ago that it just disgusts me. I'm not saying that it's an overall bad place, but given the decision there are much more desirable places to live. Here, I can drive down the highway and see beautiful greenery. If you see that in So Cal - it's landscaped & irrigated (with water stolen from the Colorado).

Usually, I can kick back during lunch on the lanai (patio) of somebody's house that I'm working on. Often I can see the beach and the beautiful reefs, occasionally you can see gray whales jumping out of the water, and sometimes its clouds kissing the peaks of near-vertical 3000' Ko'olau mountains jutting out of the jungle....
...and think, "How can I possibly top this?"

Big decisions

I'm still alive. I have to work tomorrow, so another short weekend for me. Fair enough. I had a nice long one a few weeks back.

We just got word that our landlord is planning on putting this place up for sale in a couple months, and we get first dibs. It's a good debate. The neighborhood is great, we love our neighbors, the location is good, and its affordable. Due to a combination of ants, termites, single-wall construction (A very unique type of old construction in Hawaii where the walls are built out of 1" thick solid wood planks. No insulation, no 2x4's, no drywall, no plaster, no siding.), and the entire hillside in this neighborhood shifting & settling, this house is really barely standing. The foundation is completely cracked, and it is downhill in any direction from the kitchen. Every time we have heavy rains, the house shifts, and I usually have to make adjustments to a couple doors so they'll close properly. It would be illegal to rent this place out in Cali, but it's all just part of the lovely way of life in Hawaii.

So I need to get some opinions from several of my contractor friends as to what it would take to rebuild on this lot and what kinds of temporary fixes will make the house a little safer for the next couple of years until we're ready for a project that big. I know it can be done, it's all a matter of how much will it cost. The largest factor is that the house sits on clay fill from a marsh, and they didn't understand the hydrodynamics of clay that well in the 50's - especially not here. When it rains, it swells, and when it dries, it shrinks. I know we can have pilings driven/poured down a ways until we hit something more solid, but are we talking $10,000 or $100,000?

I'm excited because I've always wanted to build my own home. Heather looks at homes that are pretty with nice appliances. I look at homes and say, "Here's a nice lot, and the house is CRAP! Let's get it! I'll bring my sawzall!!" I really want to be able to build something to my specs, wire it myself, and know that every bit of work I put into it is saving me serious cash. After years of doing new homes & remodels I've seen what works and what doesn't, and would love to integrate ideas and details that would normally be far to expensive as options for other people or that you can't normally convince them to do until it's too late. Stuff like;

1. Installing the conduit for underground service so that the utility just has to tie in whenever they get around to taking down the power poles.
2. installing conduit and laying out areas for solar power so it can just be "plugged in" when affordable. In the meantime make it compatible with a backup generator.
   
3. Putting all of the low voltage wiring in pipe so it can be upgraded as technology changes
4. Lighted Solatubes - they're just way cool.
5. Extra capacity circuits or extra pipe in garage for vehicles - Plug in hybrids are coming, and full-electric vehicles probably are, too.
   
6. Panic/storm room
7. Rainwater collection - May be better as an augmentation or irrigation source, but I've seen homes further up the mountain that get all of their water this way.
8. Re-install solar water heater - and add anti-scald plumbing fixtures!
9. Install a hot water recirculating pump. The small amount of electricity it occasionally draws is nothing compared to the water wasted every night waiting for hot water at the shower.
10. Have the plumber install a 1/2" cooling loop somewhere cool outside for my computer. It's already watercooled, pump that heat somewhere outside of the room!
11. Whole house surge protection. Why spend $20 each on a surge strip when you can cover the whole house for under $100?
    

Ben Stein lost my money

I've been seeing the teasers for the new Ben Stein movie Expelled lately. I couldn't tell exactly what it was about, and perhaps that's because he wants to control the potential damage that could be caused if intelligent people were to see it.

I was drifting aimlessly around the web today, as I usually do when I should be taking care of real life responsibilities, when I came across this site: http://www.expelledexposed.com . Apparently the movie is an attempt to portray the scientific community as a good 'ol boy system which will blacklist and run out anyone who believes in creationism/intelligent design(ID). We're taking creation and religion out of the required teachings in schools, and now some people think it's a massive conspiracy. Enough so that they have deceived people (as to the intent, and even the title of the movie) for their interviews, cherry-picked commentary and quotes, and flat-out lied about the supposed destruction of careers and defamation of character of certain ID scientists. I'm too worked up to paraphrase, so I'll quote some examples.

The Claim

“A few months after this interview Baylor University shut down his research website once they discovered a link between his work and intelligent design.” (Ben Stein, Expelled)

The Facts

Robert Marks’s “Evolutionary Informatics Laboratory” website – touting intelligent design – was originally hosted on a Baylor University server. Concerned that the material on the website misleadingly suggested a connection between the intelligent design material and Baylor, administrators temporarily shut the website down while discussing the issue with Marks and his lawyer. Baylor was willing to continue hosting the website subject to a number of conditions (including the inclusion of a disclaimer and the removal of the misleading term “laboratory”), but Marks and Baylor were unable to come to terms. The site is currently hosted by a third-party provider.

The Claim

Sternberg’s “life was nearly ruined when he strayed from the party line while serving as editor of a scientific journal affiliated with the prestigious Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.” (Expelled)

The Facts

As stated above, Sternberg did not lose his office or his access to collections, he did not lose his job, he was not “fired” from the (unpaid) editorship of the journal (he had resigned six months before the publication of the Meyer article), and from the e-mails in the appendix to the Souder report, it appears that his colleagues were civil in their communications with him. The Smithsonian renewed his Research Collaborator status for another three years in 2006. It seems, then, that the worst that happened to Sternberg is that people said some unkind things about him in private email to one another. Since the same can be said of almost every person, it’s hard to see how this could be construed as “life ruining”. There is no evidence of any material harm done to Sternberg as a result of the publication of the Meyer article. And any damage done to his reputation would seem to have been self-inflicted.

There is an excellent blog article by one of the scientists interviewed in the movie here: http://richarddawkins.net... where he eloquently vents his frustration at being used and misrepresented in the movie, as well as some of the more glaringly obvious errors that it portrays.

You know, I don't mind people believing in creationism, etc. but to portray the scientific community as close-minded and largely organized against any theory is ridiculous. Post a theory with supporting evidence for peer review, and it will be checked and eventually confirmed or found to be inaccurate. There is resistance to change from "standard" theory, but once proven the scientific community evolves and accepts new ones. They are more than happy to rewrite the textbooks if the new theory is capable of advancing or replacing an older one with repeatable results. It's both dirty and telling when you have to manufacture a story in order to advance your cause.

The sad thing is I will never be able to laugh at Ben Stein again. Wait a minute, did I say again?

Religion bashing

I've found recently that I have a strong affinity for bashing religion. I'm not sure where the innate pleasure of trying to tell people that everything they believe is a momentous tower of lies and over embellished fables comes from. Nonetheless, it exists. The inner turmoil is, if you take away someone's faith, what do you replace it with? In general, churches are great for bringing people together, instilling good values, creating excellent charities, and building great communities. How can people replace all of that in their lives once you disprove their beliefs? The debater in me wants to win the arguments, but the compassionate person in me wants to let them have that crutch. Aaaaagh!

references:
http://www.evilbible.com/
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

Short long weekend

You know, after kids, down time is never down anymore. I took last Friday and this Monday off from work, giving me a 4 day weekend. I did it partially because we're trying to get my daughter cleared up from the colds that get passed around at day care before she goes to San Diego Wednesday to spend some time with her cousin. My poor Wife is in Tax hell until the 15th. I took today (Moday) off because I had a migraine this morning, possible from three days and nights with my daughter, but I'm watching her again today, too. Might as well. I mean, a migraine can only get better, right?

The problem is, although it sounds like a nice break, it's not. I love my daughter and all, but the supervision is never-ending. For instance, this is what she's been occupying herself with while I've been typing.

She's not a bad kid. On the contrary, she's a great kid. But kids need to be entertained and supervised. It's exhausting. We like to watch a show called "Jon and Kate Plus Eight," where a couple had twins, and then had sextuplets a couple years later. The poor woman is a stay at home mom, and is amazing. I don't know how she still has her sanity. The dad is great, too. Every once in a while they lose it just a little, and you want to criticize them, and then I think of how I can lose it with just 1 kid.

Anyways, regardless of my nice long weekend, I've gotten amazingly little accomplished. I did become very domestic and managed to do some laundry, clean the house, and pick up in the back yard. I haven't been able to do stuff like mow the yard, work on my truck, or clean and service all of my tools, which are all very high on my to-do list. As a guy, that's frustrating. As a dad, I'm okay with it now. Younger Daughter is a whole lotta fun to play with now, and they're only little once.

Gotta go, she's chasing the dog with a crayon!