Ken Nelson

There was Prague

Not as bloody, but a similar stamping down of a green shoot of liberty.

The reforms, especially the decentralisation of administrative authority, were not received well by the Soviets who, after failed negotiations, sent thousands of Warsaw Pact troops and tanks to occupy the country. A large wave of emigration swept the nation. While there were many non-violent protests in the country, including the protest-suicide of a student, there was no military resistance. Czechoslovakia remained occupied until 1990.

I was young at the time and have no memory of it other than the period is often used as a setting for cold-war spy novels.

My beloved wife got me a slot at the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp.

Alas, I don’t really want to go. I haven’t played electric guitar in two years, and neck surgery messed up my singing voice, and the whole idea, while very inventive on her part, stresses me out.   My intuition is that it will be competitive and full of who is bigger on technique and equipment, and frankly, I don’t play good enough to get into those kinds of games.  I play acoustic mainly to relax and haven’t really improved in 3 or 4 years after an initial burst of progress in the first year I owned a guitar.

Anyway… if you are interested in the slot, or know somebody, shoot me a note.  She won it as a minimum bid at a charity auction, so it will probably be as cheap a trip to the camp as you could hope to find.

I love my wife VERY much. And I hope this doesn’t stress her too much, although I could tell she was miffed when I broke the news to her.  The lesson, of course, is the answer to this question… “what do you get the man who has everything?”.

 
Bad Decision?

I may be the only person in San Diego that doesn’t have a tattoo. Well, that is an exaggeration, but it does seem that way.   Most younger people have them. Girls in Yoga class have them. And most people at the pool / hot tub have them.

The attraction, both to the wearer and viewer escapes me.  Folks can do what they want, but I find the human body plenty attractive as is, if you want to embellish it, try working out or skipping dessert.

Tattoos like USMC, or Ranger, or something marking you having achieved something difficult seem okay to me, but others just don’t make much sense.   Even the “Born to Die” tattoo the Drill Sergeant had on his arm when he yanked me off the bus at my Army basic training reception station sort of made sense.  But a tribal tattoo? What tribe?

I’ve told my daughter that Dad will not be pleased if she brings home a suitor with a tattoo. Why? Because it marks bad judgment, IMHO. It says, to me at least, “I got drunk and did something dumb and permanent”. There are other fish in the ocean Jenny – look for somebody that makes better choices.

I know people that have tattoos and that are fine upstanding citizens. And perhaps, like my aversion to men with ponytails, I’ll grow out of this view.  But for now… Jenny, unless it says USMC, don’t bring it home to meet Dad….

I got back from a bike ride this afternoon and was told “earthquake… elevators shut down”. Apparently they have sensors and shut down if the building rocks.  Lacking anything better to do, I hauled the bike up to my apartment.

Apparently the quake was 5.9 but was centered east of downtown a good distance:

I was assured my building was up to code and was built on “rollers”. So I guess if it happens while I’m here, I’ll just enjoy the ride!

Thanks for bringing me stuff, can you be a little quieter doing it?

I’m enjoying my visit to San Diego.  But I must confess to being surprised at how noisy a city it is. I’ve lived in cities before, including a short stint across from a fire station (ouch). But San Diego easily takes the cake as the loudest city I’ve spent time in. 

This is due to the 5 freeway, the airport, and in the harbor area I’m living in, the TRAINS.  Three types of trains come through – the trolley, Amtrak, and BNSF freight trains.  Each has to BLOW its horn at every intersection. The trolleys horn is almost pleasant. Amtrak, not so bad, but the BNSF ones blast and echo like fog horns.  I investigated and found that some train horns are louder than jet engines.

Since most of the downtown urban living centers around the harbor, and thus the tracks, the horns sound many times an hour.

I happened to sit by an active San Diego permanent resident at a cafe yesterday and he told me that new regulations had been passed to keep the trains from sounding horns. It required building better crossing guards and medians, so it won’t happen during my stay.

But the silence will definitely be welcome on future visits.

Everyday at 0900 I do Hot Yoga. The schedule looks like this:

M        T         W    T      F        S   S
HPF   S      HPF  S     HPF   H   H

HPF = Hot Power Fusion. Which I talked about before.
S      = Hot Yoga Sculpt
H      = Hot Yoga

The courses, start at C1, then C2, then H, then HPF and then Sculpt in terms of physical difficulty,

So today I did “Yoga” Sculpt. And it was BY FAR the hardest thing I’ve done since log drills in the Army.  At the end, I crawled out and my stomach still wants to hurl.

So why is it hard… well do hard yoga, then add weights, and do hard yoga.

Whew… tough. But I’ll be back Thursday.

(-:

Think a journalist, lawyer, or cop asking you questions is your friend.

Scary pictures from the top failed states around the world:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/21/postcards_from_hell?page=full

Leading indicator… be in Africa or have a mostly Muslim population.

Collins, a lifelong sailor who has competed in long-distance races and endured winds up to 80 knots, said possible scenarios in these extreme conditions include "pitch-poling," which is when a boat flips end-over-end. Boats in heavy seas also have "submarined," which entails riding down a wave and driving nose-first into the water, possibly flipping.

From this article on Abby Sunderland, the 16 year old who was attempting to circumnavigate the earth when she set off her distress beacons yesterday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/01/AR2010060101735.html

12 job interview questions and what they “really mean”:

The interview is a classic point of stress for most job seekers, and with good cause. Many firms like asking indirect questions that make it hard to judge what information they’re really fishing looking for. Of course, interviewers don’t want anyone to know the motivation behind their method of questioning, or else potential job candidates could easily game the system. For this reason, most firms ask slightly different questions and have their own method of interviewing. Today, we explore twelve common indirect questions that employers often ask and the motivation behind them.

I’ve asked the hobby, salary, and how long have you been looking questions.

I also ask about their reading preferences, and other personal stuff.   I have to spend 8 hours with them, personal needs to be known. But mainly I just let other people ask questions and watch for lies, then we go eat.

But I can’t say I’m that good at hiring. I can say, with certainty, that my hiring is over for the next couple years at least.

Reciting pi while balancing books on your head and solving a Rubik’s cube isn’t a bad interview technique either (-:

One company had people eat a piece of white bread quickly, in less than one minute. I could do it, but nobody I ever saw interviewed ever did.  Try it, it’s hard.

The Arctic Oscillation Index and the North Atlantic Index are acting up and that means it is GONNA GET COLD!  For the next couple weeks anyway:

For cold of a variety not seen in over 25 years in a large scale is about to engulf the major energy consuming areas of the northern Hemisphere.

Handy tips…

Via the Oatmeal:

Click here to see the entire poster.

I’m surprised, btw, by the number of e-mails I get where “loose” and “lose” replace each other.  I can understand an occasional “it’s” “its”, or even a “there” “their” blooper but not “loose” for “lose”.

Any typos on this blog are just that… typos!  I know how to spell, but due to the speed I crank this stuff out with mistakes slip in. I’ve got a job you know!

It will only get worse! or better depending on your point of view

My daughter has a math worksheet of polynomials to do over the Christmas holiday. When doing it she asked why does “10^0 = 1” ?

Why is that?  It isn’t obvious looking at exponent values:

10^3 = 10*10*10 = 1000
10^2 = 10*10 = 100
10^1 = 10
10^-1 = 1/10
10^-2 = 1/10 * 1/10 = 1/100

but how do you do something zero times?  I couldn’t recall off the top of my head, so later I sat down to doodle on it. And I remembered how to sort it out.

Welcome to the tricks of math, where you use something else you know to figure out something you don’t know (yet).

First the rules of exponents…

10^2 * 10^2 = 10^(2+2) = 10^4 = 10*10*10*10 =  = 10,000

So multiplying exponential numbers (of the same base) is the same as adding the exponents.

How can we use this to figure out zero?  How about this expression:

10^2 * 10^-2

Expanding it out we see this:

10 * 10 * 1/10 * 1/10 = 1

and since

10^2 * 10^-2 = 10^(2-2) = 10^0

we now have proved that

10^0 = 1

It also sort of makes sense logically, after all, what is between:

10^1 = 10
10^0 =  ?
10^-1 = 1/10

So there you have it Jenny… welcome to your first math proof.

Google knew

In addition to the 2000”s being the worst stock market decade ever, we also ended up with less jobs at the end than at the beginning:

On employment, there were 130,532,000 payroll jobs in December 1999, and 130,996,000 payroll jobs in November 2009; an increase of 464 thousand jobs. However the preliminary estimate of the annual benchmark revision "indicates a downward adjustment to March 2009 total nonfarm employment of 824,000". So it appear there will be fewer payroll jobs at the end of the aughts than at the beginning.

Add in national disasters like 9/11, Katrina, and Obama and the decade pretty much just sucked.