It’s Monday, and it’s the already end of March in 2014. Time flies !
Monday/ to Denver
Sunday/ stay some more! (or not).
Here’s what happens when you stay at the same hotel 3 or 4 nights every week : you become a ‘Diamond’ member in six months or so. (Or ‘Platinum’ – it depends on the hotel chain). The membership cards arrived in quick succession from the Hilton, each promising more exciting travel experiences. Or the frequent traveler can get an upgrade to a nicer room, or stay for a few more free nights at any property of the hotel. I see Conde Nast says there was a major program devaluation in March, so Hilton points don’t go nearly as far as they used to. Oh well. So there’s a little less of a free thing. And if you travel year-round, the nicest vacation is staying put right at home.
Saturday/ Mammon, the money god
I watched the ‘The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)’ on Saturday night with Bryan and Gary. The movie is quite a spectacle of excessive partying, drug use (abuse), sex and money worship .. and getting away with it for the most part. It is by most accounts an accurate depiction of stockbroker Jordan Belfort’s rise and fall in the 90’s. Today Belfort owes $100 million in restitution, of which he has paid some $10 million. (Paling in comparison against fraudster Bernie Madoff’s $17 billion owed in restitution, though). Belfort spent only three years in prison.
So .. what to take away with from the movie? One assumes/ hopes the vast majority of Wall Street firms operate with much more integrity than that demonstrated in the movie! And have things gotten better after the 2008 financial crisis? I’m not so sure. The federal funds rate still sits at 0% almost six years later. Here in the USA, student loan debt has quadrupled to $1 billion over the last ten years. What is very clear is that each of us has to look out for our own money interests. ‘Socialism never took root in America,’ John Steinbeck wrote, ‘because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.’*
*Credit to Matt Zoller Seitz for mentioning the Steinbeck quote is his review of the ‘Wolf of Wall Street’.
Friday/ Emerald City Comicon
The Emerald City Comicon (‘comic convention’) is held this weekend here at the Washington State Convention Center. It is billed as the premier comic book and pop culture event in the Pacific Northwest. As I walked by there this morning (on the way for a quick stop at the office), I thought for a moment I should go – but later found out all three days are sold out.
Thursday/ another week
Another week done at the Denver project office.. it went by quickly. I presented how we are going to test our solution at the end of April (Cycle 2, of four test cycles) to six different teams. I had to prepare only ONE set of presentation materials, so that helped !
Right : Settling into my seat in 11D. It’s nice to fly in a big airplane .. seat size, headroom and legroom is in short supply on the express jets, one of which I see out the window.
Wednesday/ no blue steak for me
I went to dinner tonight with some directors and a partner from my firm. We went to a swank new steakhouse here in downtown Denver called Guard and Grace. The offering of steak on the menu is extensive. I have to confess I did not really know there was another grill option below rare : blue rare or simply ‘blue’. Even so, with all these options, I opted for the Alaskan black cod – and it was delicious.
Tuesday/ landslide update
It must have been a very tough day in the Oso and Darrington area in Washington State with 14 people now confirmed dead, and many, many more still reported as missing. Hopes that anyone may still be pulled out of the debris are fading.
Here is a before-and-after slider photo of the massive landslide. The area received double the amount of the normal rainfall this season.
Monday/ cold comfort
I got booted from my 10 D aisle seat this morning (actually, the flight attendant asked nicely if a family of three could sit there). The exit row on the wing still had open seats, and I picked one by the window .. a mistake. The seal on the exit door is not perfect, and the airplane hull is a little thinner there, and cold to the touch. So I was cold all the way to Denver. Had my warm jacket on but my legs and feet were cold, and there were zero blankets on board. Where we fly at the top of the troposphere at 35,000 ft*, the air is at about minus 55°C/ minus 67°F outside. Surprisingly, from thereon up in the stratosphere, the temperature of the air increases again. The layer of ozone in the stratosphere absorbs sunlight, which makes it warmer again as one goes up .. and there is a lot of up from there!
*alongside Ruppell’s Vulture, amazingly – see the diagram below
Sunday/ no cherry blossoms yet
I walked down to Madison Park and the Japanese Garden here this afternoon. It was a beautiful day with sunshine and blue sky, but it is still not short sleeve weather (got up to 53°F/ 12°C). I was hoping to find cherry blossoms on the cherry tree from Mt Fuji in the garden, but it’s too early for that. Washington DC is famous for its cherry blossoms as well, and I see the ‘peak bloom’ there is forecast for between April 7 and April 11.
Saturday/ landslide near Oso, WA
Saturday brought news of a deadly landslide that happened east of the town of Oso here in Washington state. Three people have been killed, more in critical condition in the hospital; 6 houses destroyed and 16 others damaged. As of Saturday night a rescue effort was still underway to find more people trapped in the debris. The mud and debris also blocks the Stillaguamish river, and people are warned to stay out of the downstream area. The blocked body of water is increasing in size, and can break through at any time.
Friday/ a very, very long night ahead
Spring has arrived here in the northern hemisphere, and it was a beautiful day in Seattle today (51 °F/ 10°C). I had time tonight to check out more pictures from the Big Bang research that had been done with the BICEP2 radio telescope at the South Pole in Antarctica. And no, BICEP is not a muscle – it’s short for Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation. The equipment measures gravitational waves caused by the Big Bang. Check out the spectacular pictures of BICEP2 at this link.
Be sure to also read the Wikipedia entry for the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The sun has just set there, and there is a six month night ahead! I hope those scientists stationed there have sun lamps, to stop them from going absolutely bananas. The South Pole is the only place on land where this happens (the North Pole is in the sea).
Thursday/ Capitol Hill, Olive Way Exit
‘Capitol Hill, Olive Way Exit, please’ is
what I tell the little Prius Yellow Cab driver every Thursday night when I get into the taxi at Seattle airport. (It’s the exit to take from Interstate 5 to get to Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood). We arrived late again last night – we departed late – and by the time the taxi pulled up at my house it was exactly midnight. The front porch light that I had left on on Monday morning, was out, I noticed. I have to replace the bulb. And there was something lying in the street .. oh, a paperback. I picked it up and brought it into the house. So now I will have to read it, right? It’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ from Kazuo Ishiguro. One review of the book says the writer poses the fundamental question ‘What makes us human?’ in the book. Hmm. And I thought we were all computers. (Just kidding!).
Wednesday/ Colfax Avenue
Colfax Avenue (named for Schuyler Colfax, 17th Vice President of the United States from 1869–1873), is the main street that runs east-west through the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area here in Colorado. As U.S. Highway 40, it was one of two principal highways serving Denver before the Interstate Highway System was constructed.
Tuesday/ looking back 13.8 billion years
There are a number of articles out this week that report that the Inflation Theory is very probably true: a postulate from the 1990s that the initial expansion of the Big Bang happened even quicker than had been thought before then. The Big Bang is calculated to have happened 13.8 billion years ago. So that made me run down all kinds of other milestones in the known universe and in our tiny little corner in the darkness, called Earth. Check out my compilation below.
13.8 billion years ago .. the Big Bang happens
13.2 billion years ago .. the Milky Way galaxy is formed
4.54 billion years ago.. our planet Earth forms
3.6 billion years ago .. the first simple cells (prokaryotes) are formed
231.4 million years ago .. radiometric dating of the rock formation that contained fossils from the early dinosaur genus Eoraptor establishes its presence in the fossil record at this time
65 million years ago .. dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period
20 million years ago .. great apes from the family Hominidae appear
2.5 million years ago .. the genus Homo (human predecessors) appear
1 million years ago .. evidence from the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa point to the use of fire by early humans
200,000 years ago .. anatomically modern humans appear
110,000 years ago to 12,000 years ago .. the most recent Ice Age; a small number of humans survive, one such community on the southern coast of Africa
10,000 years ago .. the last mainland species of woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) die out, as does the last Smilodon species
5,000 years ago .. the earliest known iron artifacts are nine small beads, dated to 3200 BC, from burials in Gerzeh, northern Egypt, that were made from meteoritic iron, and shaped by careful hammering
2,600 years ago .. the ancient Greeks discovered that rubbing fur on amber (fossilized tree resin) caused an attraction between the two : static electricity
900 years ago .. the invention of gunpowder was made perhaps as early as during the Tang Dynasty (9th century), but certainly by the Song Dynasty (11th century).
578 years ago .. the printing press is invented, in 1436
326 years ago .. in 1688 the dodo goes extinct
131 years ago ..in 1883, the quagga, a subspecies of zebra, goes extinct
129 years ago .. Benz invents the first gasoline automobile, in 1886
111 years ago .. the Wright brothers invent the first airplane, in 1903
100 years ago .. in 1914, Martha, last known passenger pigeon, dies
69 years ago .. the Manhattan Project culminates in the test explosion of a nuclear device at what is now called the Trinity Site on July 16, 1945. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki happen a few weeks later.
45 years ago .. man lands on Earth’s moon in 1969
21 years ago .. the World Wide Web is created, in 1993
17 years ago .. the Prius first went on sale in Japan in 1997, and was available at all four Toyota Japan dealerships, making it the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle
6 years ago .. in 2008, the Baiji, the Yangtze river dolphin, becomes functionally extinct
Just a few seconds ago .. this entry is posted on the Willem’s Planet blog
Monday/ forgot my green for St Patrick’s Day
I thought I was free and clear with an open seat next to me on the plane this morning, but at the last minute at 5.10 am, a middle-aged couple stepped on board filling the last two middle seats, one next to mine. One could tell they were flying for maybe the first time. After getting up one time, the guy made himself at home on the jump seat in the exit row, even putting the seat belt on (that’s where the flight attendants sit). Sure enough, only a minute or two, and he got chased back to his seat.
Later – arriving at the office in Denver, and seeing the other people, I immediately realized : where’s your green? Should have worn something green! Groan. (But not too big a deal). It’s officially St Patrick’s Day (even though there were parades and celebrations over the weekend already).
Sunday/ fold me an elephant
It is almost spring, and I was looking for cherry blossom pictures from the Seattle Japanese Garden when I stumbled upon origami artist Sipho Mabona’s life-sized paper elephant project. He must be African, I thought, but he was born in Switzerland and lives there in Luzern. The artist took a single 50 ft by 50 ft piece of paper, and folded an elephant out of it. (He did have assistants help him lift the paper and fold it with his instructions).
Check out some of his other work on his Flickr page, at this link.
Saturday/ ‘True Start’ battery
‘True Start’ is what Toyota
calls its car battery that I had installed in my 1996 Reliable Driving Machine (Toyota Camry) on Saturday. The old car battery had some dead cells. The car had trouble starting up several weekends, every time after sitting in the garage for only 5 days. Yes, lead-acid batteries is ancient technology (compared to those found in electrical and hybrid-electrical cars), but the recycling of lead-acid batteries is extremely efficient. Some facilities recycle 95% of the battery, its electrolyte and its housing. Lead is extremely durable. I love my collection of pictures for the elements, scanned from pages from an old TIME-LIFE book – and I posted the one for lead on the right.
Friday/ lots of little errands
I ran out today for lunch with an old friend. He and his partner have a condo on the 28th floor in downtown Seattle, so of course I had to take a picture of the city from there. I also took care of many little outstanding and annoying errands : new printer cartridge for my home office, new C-size battery for the alarm clock in the bathroom (yes, bathroom : so that I am not late for the cab at 4 am on Monday mornings! hurry up sleepy head!), food for the weekend, cash withdrawal from the bank, changed into some $5 bills ($20s are no good for cab fares* and tipping in Denver).
*I should try the cash-free slick Uber car service some time soon, and ditch the taxis that still want cash.
Thursday/ please don’t throw up in our airplane
Thursday night’s usual 2-hour trip back home turned into a 6 hr affair. Our incoming aircraft from Portland, Oregon was already more than an hour late. But there we were eventually, all settled in, with me in 10C. That’s in Economy Plus. The first six rows are the big Business Class seats. That’s when there was a commotion going on in up there in Row 6, and it was some time that the pilot announced that a passenger got ill and threw up*, and that a cleaning services crew was on the way.
*He has my sympathies, the poor guy. I know what it feels like to be sitting their, in bad shape, just from two weeks ago with my painful ear.
Man! That clean-up took a long time. The original 7.45 to 8.50 pm delayed departure was now approaching 10.00 pm. Some passengers with only carry-on luggage took their stuff out of the overhead bins, and disembarked. (I was surprised that they were allowed to). Apparently the last flight out to Seattle scheduled for 10.00 pm still had seats. This worked for them until the flight attendant announced that that flight is now also full. Alright, anyway, we all thought. What’s happening with us? Good to go? Well, no. Someone (not the pilot) came and inspected the seats and floor and declared that the cleaning crew had to come back and dry the wet areas properly. It was about 10.30 pm when we finally were pushed back from the gate, and everything went without incident from there – which I am always grateful for. We arrived at 11.53 pm Seattle time (12.53 am Denver time). I was so happy to be able to go home! As for the airplane, it had yet another flight scheduled for it – to Alaska, I think. Patiently waiting for us at the gate to clear out, was this group of Alaska-bound passengers.
Wednesday/ debris or not debris?
I couldn’t check the news all day long, and thought all day surely by tonight, some debris of the MH370 flight would be found, but no. All we have are inconclusive satellite images of .. something, on the water’s surface. The images were more or less from the ‘right’ area, published by a Chinese satellite company, but really does not show a whole lot. I’m going to bed. Tomorrow is another day.
