What have I been doing

So I think Thanksgiving had me drained of thought for a few days and then I just tumbled down the road of “I forgot my blog” like many folks do.

As previously mentioned I finished “Deception Point” and much to my chagrin this past weekend I finished “Lightning”. For anyone interested in fiction and some thriller-style with a sci-fi flare, I recommend “Lightning”. As for the other books on my list, I have only been reading an essay or a chapter every other day as it would ruin much of the content in the philosophy books…I’ll still finish them before the year is out. ;)

While I did just say that Thanksgiving drained me of thought, it’s actually a fib. I think I have had more insane ideas floating in my head recently then usual! Okay that might be a stretch too. :) The good news is I made note of the subjects so I’ll start ranting and back posting shortly…good news…because I know 4 million people are lining up to read my back posts…

Cheers

– bd

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

– Henry David Thoreau

What am I listening to today

I have been pulling out old albums lately and recycling them. Wow there is some good stuff here I almost forgot about! Recycled or new…here’s what’s hot right now :)

Avril Lavigne: Let go

Addicting Song(s):

– Tomorrow

– Things I’ll never say

– Naked

David Gray: White Ladder

Addicting Song(s):

– This years love

Liz Phair: Liz Phair

Addicting Song(s):

– Why can’t I?

Ashlee Simpson: Autobiography

Addicting Song(s):

– Autobiography

Kina: Kina

Addicting Song(s):

– Girl from the gutter

Switchfoot: The Beautiful Letdown

Addicting Song(s):

– Dare you to move

Tamara Bedricky: Through these eyes

Addicting Song(s):

– Head over heels

– Beautiful

– Let me in

– Addicted

– Blue

Note: I love this album!! I can’t pull it out of my CD player for more then a week without putting it back in.

I’m sure one day I’ll hear a song that doesn’t stretch out it’s hand as my soul reaches out to shake in a memorable moment of “hello”. Until then, I’m content.

– me

Turkey Day has gone

It’s been a little bit since I got a chance to write, not that anyone is crying about it! :) I finished a few more books last week and over the weekend. I have been taking “The Art of War” and the Matrix Philosophy books slower then normal…each is like a collection of essays and rather then read an essay and move on I find that the book carries much more weight when I just limit myself to one essay a day. It’s like a philosophy about philosophy! Ahhh I crack myself up!

This year thanksgiving was a great time for my family…but I can’t help but marvel how the years go by. My niece starts high school next year for crying out loud! For me, every year when Fall classes start or when Halloween rolls around it feels like the year is almost over! I mean it is, but it really feels like it blows by fast. Before I know it, my birthday is here. Then thanksgiving…then it’s December already! Christmas shopping leads to high stress and fast days because Christmas always sneaks up on you (well it sneaks up on me!); I don’t care if the date is always the same!! :) then it’s New Year’s Eve…

To make time fly by even faster hit up this “slogan” site…wow, trust me you can spend an hour there and not know what the hell happened to the time! Try using your name or your favorite word. Randomly the word “depression” was used and I got this slogan: What Can Depression Do For You? That might be a classic!

More random rants to come, I just need to finish some odds-n-ends and I’ll be a posting mad man again.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

– Aristotle

Alternate power source: would lighting work?

In keeping with my mission to put random ideas out, here is the first of many ideas/concepts I came up with during my life.

I have always stood in awe of the power in lightning, but I also always wondered if that power could be harnessed or saved for future use. I recall reading an article in National Geographic in the late 80s early 90s about scientists studying lightning. They were launching high-end model rockets with copper wire spools attached. When the rocket went up it would run the spool of wire out and then the lightning would make the connection (lightning is capable of connections cloud-to-cloud, ground-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground) and it was a spectacular sight.

So my theory is that while lightning strikes are hard to predict, the idea that running a small charge at the top of a insulated pole in some random valley that has many thunderstorms roll through…okay I am leaving a lot up to chance here…could “collect” lightning. Then what?

“1.21 gigawatts!” The screams of Doc Brown and Marty McFly from Back To the Future can be heard everywhere. 1.21 gigawatts is quite a bit of power. Ask a Scientist has some interesting info on just that idea of power.

So you have this bolt of lightning, now what? Well my thought is that a rig of turbines, glass and aluminum might help create a mechanical capacitor of sorts. The energy would be volatile at first, but I think if you had it stored first then you used capacitors to fuel a turbine or a high capacity electromagnetic motor you could generate electricity. Now with the ups and downs of storms and such it would not be a way to continuously power a city, however, you could use it as a way to create a break on the electrical plants we now use.

With enough capacitors I would think you could create a storage field where you could house a large amount of energy and use it in the summer months when we strain the power grids.

What do I know? I’m not an electrical engineer, nor a scientist. :)

An idea is salvation by imagination.

– Frank Lloyd Wright

My blog template

This design came to me as I was tinkering, but I couldn’t get just what I wanted. With some patience and lots of spare time for trial and error I finally nailed what I wanted. I’m sure I’ll make a few changes here and there, but this is what I wanted. Damn CSS is nice!

Hundreds of ads, blogs, websites, clothes…you name it: it all inspired my design. Burnt, but still bright orange next to a dark grey or black is awesome as an accent in my eyes. That’s why I bought a backpack that looks just like that and why my backpack inspired my template. While my favorite color is indigo, it seems apparent that orange runs in my veins…just as it runs through this blog.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

– Jack London

My computer tortured me

Yesterday I spent over 13 hours in my office. Thirty minutes was for lunch and I approximate sixty minutes for miscellaneous office tasks. The rest of the time was spent trying to recover my computer. I know what you are thinking, “How can someone that into computers go through the same hell I go through?” Well, at the end of the day it’s still a computer and I am still human. I make mistakes and when I do -just like you- I make the computer scream. Thankfully I got it back up and running with a little help from my pals at Microsoft…yes I caved in and called them. It took a support pit full of techs, but they figured it out and I felt redeemed when the said it was probably a one-in-ten thousand chance that it would happen…as I followed best practices to do the task I was doing. At least I didn’t pull my typical “oops!”

After that I was quite drained. I went home and vegge’d out BIG time. I have been working hard on a new layout too, but I just didn’t have the energy to work on it last night, and I don’t have the time today because I need to finish up what I worked on yesterday!

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.

– Jef Raskin