Valiant effort for USA World Cup soccer ends in defeat

Posted By on June 26, 2010

usasoccerlosstoghanaI was drawn into World Cup soccer like most Americans after following their recent advancement … so Brenda, Taylor and I tuned in to watch Saturday’s USA – Ghana from South Africa. Although I’m not a big soccer fan, I did coach a few years and enjoyed playing on an intramural team, still I’ve never had an interest to follow soccer as a fan.

That said, the excitement intensified as Ghana and USA went into extra time after Black Star’s Kevin-Prince Boateng scored in the first half and US’s Landon Donovan tied it up 1-1 in minute 62. The winning goal was scored by Asamoah Gyan in a shot that went over the head of American goalkeeper Tim Howard.

Commentators were critical the US team’s lack of team effort in the first half and rightly acknowledged the consistent and disciplined team play of Ghana throughout the game. Disappointing as it was for the US, the Black Stars ability to control the ball and move it around the field to eat up the clock allowed them to defeat our US team and move to the quarterfinals.   will take on Ghana’s Black Stars are now the only African team to advance and will take on La Celeste Uruguay next Friday in Johannesburg’s Soccer City stadium in hopes for a spot in the semifinals.  The World Cup ends July 11.

justinbieberconcert

In an event closer to home, my son Taylor was invited to a Justin Bieber concert (free tickets) and claimed he was the oldest non-father/grandfather at the concert. Nevertheless, he admitted he had a great time acting a few years younger with 3 of his friends … who looked as if they had fun too.

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Fresh-Water Wind Farm on Lake Erie

Posted By on June 25, 2010

Cleveland Ohio is undergoing a skyline change …

Wind Farm on Lake Erie A fresh-water wind farm is taking shape at Lake Erie and when completed will provide 20 megawatts and get on to about one gigawatt power by 2020. Huge individual turbines 300 feet tall, to be built by GE will be erected off Ohio, Cleveland. Better designs: These are special gearless super-efficient turbines, with three 176-foot long blades, which run with the help of a giant ring of magnets. The blades are longer due to strategically placed carbon fibre, and lighter too. Many moving parts like gearbox, coils and starter brushes are eliminated with resultant reduced maintenance. The giant magnetic ring array helps the turbine generate power even at very low speed.

Continued at alternative-energy-news.info

Posted via email from richc’s posterous

Category: Environment, Misc | 6 Comments »
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Strange YouTube viral video: Oil Rain in Louisiana

Posted By on June 25, 2010

oilrain

One wonders what this is all about – video below. (lots of stories)

The auto blog Jalopnik dug up a 2003 study that shows that oil on the open ocean could evaporate under the right conditions. And it’s unclear how the Corexit 9500 dispersant affects evaporation.

If it were raining Corexit 9500 in River Ridge, that would be very bad news. Calling the dispersant unnecessarily toxic, the EPA has ordered BP to stop spraying it on the slick, an order that the oil company has so far ignored.

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Questions to test analytical thinking

Posted By on June 25, 2010

thinkerI was reading in a LinkedIn college group which posted ten questions “often asked at Google job interviews that are designed to test candidates’ analytical thinking.” The list might be worth looking over if you are charged with hiring or planning to interview in the near future. The questions are of the brainteaser type and I’m not sure I would get hired?

🙂

  1. How many times do a clock’s hands overlap in a day?

  2. How would you cut a rectangular cake into two equal pieces when a rectangular piece has already been cut out of it? The cut piece can be of any size and orientation. You are only allowed to make one straight cut.

  3. In a country in which people only want boys every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country

  4. How many vacuums are made per year in the U.S.?

  5. A certain town comprises of 100 married couples. Everyone in the town lives by  the following rule: If a husband cheats on his wife, the husband is executed as soon as his wife finds out about him. All the women in the town only gossip about the husbands of other women. No woman ever tells another woman if her husband is cheating on her.  So every woman in the town knows about all the cheating husbands in the town except her own. It can also be assumed that a husband remains silent about his infidelity. One day, the mayor of the town announces to the whole town that there is at least 1 cheating husband in the town. What do you think happens?

  6. You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

  7. Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.

  8. You have eight balls all of the same size, 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weightings?

  9. You’re the captain of a pirate ship and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive?

  10. You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?

Answers (perhaps not all correct?) can be found in the comment section of the Resumark.com blog.

Category: Business, Education | No Comments »
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Consider the economical 2011 Volkswagen Golf TDI

Posted By on June 24, 2010

For many A3 and A4 Volkswagen Golf TDI diesel lovers, it was good to see the TDI badge back on the North American version of their favorite economical and comfortable hatchback — some are glad to see the Golf badge as well. Boston.com‘s car reviewer Bill Griffith came to a similar conclusion in his recent review.

The TDI is rated between 30 miles per gallon (city) and 42 (highway). I carelessly forgot to note the odometer reading with the tank full, but it made four 70-mile roundtrips to Boston from Newburyport, plus a half-dozen other decent-length trips on barely more than half of the 14.5-gallon tank. My Kentucky-windage guess is we got in the 38 mpg range, though the on-board computer was saying 43.2 mpg.

VW officials point out that the TDI emits 25 percent less greenhouse gas and achieves more than 30 percent better fuel economy than comparable gasoline engines. Only a reassuring bit of clatter lets you know this is a diesel.

MORE

via cincitdi.com

Posted via email from richc’s posterous

Category: Automotive, Volkswagen | 1 Comment »
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Pilots Caught in Middle of Conflicting Federal Rules

Posted By on June 24, 2010

Compliance dilemma for pilots and aircraft owners … stay tuned.

On June 15 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released for publication a change to 47 CFR Part 87 that will “prohibit the certification, manufacture, importation, sale, or continued use of 121.5 MHz emergency locator transmitters (ELTs) other than the Breitling Emergency Watch ELT.” Meanwhile, the FAA in 14 CFR Part 91.207, stipulates that U.S.-registered civil airplanes are required to have an approved automatic type emergency locator transmitter in operable condition attached to the airplane. The FAA does not specify either 121.5 or 406 MHz, but the overwhelming majority of aircraft are equipped with 121.5 MHz units, meaning they would be in violation of federal law when it goes into effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.

EAA, other aviation associations, and the FAA are in ongoing communications with FCC to work out the situation, and EAA advises members to not make any changes with regard to their ELTs at this time.

MORE via eaa.org

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Trying Poster for WordPress on the Palm Pre

Posted By on June 23, 2010

Since Palm is encouraging webOS Pre and Pixi users with a half price app sale, I picked up a couple applications including one to manage and post to both WordPress.com and server installed WordPress.org  blog sites. So this is a first post from the Poster for WordPress (for $1.00) app posted from the Palm Pre.

The smartphone based app offers the convenience of composing a post … or making edits when away from a computer. Rich text and links can be added when preparing a post as well as tags and categories. Here is a test of bold, italics and underlined text. (l’ll test a photo after the ‘jump’ below)

After the more break, it is easy to add additional text or a photo directly from the Palm Pre. Not perfect but it works.

Photo from Palm Pre

Category: Cellphone, LiveBlog, Technology | 2 Comments »
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Windows: So Easy Even a Child Can Do It

Posted By on June 22, 2010

I found this online security story from one of the tech blogs I read interesting. This is from Paul Thurrott who co-wrote the book Windows 7 Secrets who shared a bit about his kids online spending spree.

This is amusing to me because my kids are 8 and 12 years old. You may have heard about the ZD blogger who, in late April, announced he was compromised via Facebook and forever banishing Windows to a virtual machine; he would run Linux as his primary OS going forward because Windows, he said, was no longer safe “due to the constant threat of malware.”

[ Read more about this blogger and his bad advice in the May 2, 2010 mailbag ]

I’m not saying that Windows isn’t under constant attack. Of course it is, as it’s the primary computing platform on the planet with over 93 percent usage share. But if my kids can use the Internet, every day, successfully and safely, I’m curious to know why this guy can’t. And while I’ve often said that basic security controls plus an iota of common sense should be enough for most people, my kids have no common sense at all. And their PCs, again, are completely clean, and have been for the past year.

I was pretty proud of my kids on Friday. Unfortunately, they are kids. So it only took another 48 hours for me to realize that my pride was misplaced. Checking my email on Sunday–like many of you, my schedule has no understanding of weekends or pseudo-holidays like Father’s Day–I was surprised to see a number of emails from Apple’s iTunes Store. Uh-oh.

The first one was a receipt for a bill totaling $159.36. Then one for $180.57. $159.36, twice more. $172.08. And $53.11. All told, over $880 had been charged to my debit card, the money directly removed from our checking account.

Looking over the charges, I discovered that they were all due to in-app purchases from some iPhone/iPod touch game I had never heard of. My kids, upstairs tapping away on an iPod touch, had somehow managed to rack up these charges “buying” in-game trinkets that they assumed were free, using pretend money. (The game itself was free.)

Long story short, Apple, amazingly, reversed all of the charges after a frantic phone call. (In fact, they were notably gracious about this.) My kids were given the Fear Of God ™ speech. And the iPod was locked down using some built-in Restrictions controls I had never really paid much attention to before. Yes, the barn door was finally closed.

via winsupersite.com

Posted via web from richc’s posterous

Category: Computer, Humor, Technology | 2 Comments »
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BP Oil Spill: Two months after the disaster

Posted By on June 22, 2010

 mapbonsecoursal1 The BP Oil Disaster is bound to be the story to remember 2010 by as historians archive this year. Like most Americans who’ve travelled and enjoy the gulf coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, I’m disgusted and saddened by the damage that is being done to the economy, coastline and ecosystem. As we pass the 2 month mark, few can defend the response from BP and our own government when it comes to stopping the gushing leak, preventing the oil from reaching the shore and making a coordinated effort in clean up the mess. All we see and hear from the Obama administration is the pointing of fingers, a BP tongue lashing and focus on extracting dollars. I don’t question that blame for the explosion and spill is squarely on BP, but our country’s policy of demanding more domestic oil and approving mile deep offshore sites when there are far safer locations, leaves much to be desired.  It is hard to believe that the well is still spewing oil and that it continues to spread.

mybuffettcds Alabama site AL.com posted an interesting video off Fort Morgan Alabama, Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, which highlights differing fish behaviors as well as the difference between the tarballs being talked about and the sticking stringy orangeish oil mess that is coating wildlife and killing shellfish. I’ll include the video below.

Also, it was good to hear that the hugely popular entertainer and concert performer (and singer, songwriter & author) Jimmy Buffett is performing a free concert on the beach in Gulf Shores Alabama on July 1st. I’m sure the free tickets will go fast and hope the crowd responses with an outpouring of help for those economically impacted by the spill. Way to go JB, I’m proud to have purchase your albums, attended my share of concerts and been a fan for more years than I care to count (FYI, I go back to “Before the Salt” … mid-70s believe it or not!)

 

Submerged oil at Bon Secour shoreline

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Beautiful sunny morning then rain on this first day of summer

Posted By on June 21, 2010

storms010621_3609We are enjoying the changing weather as a thunderstorm rolls through over my  lunchtime break here in Cincinnati. Since I’m at the house today, I had a chance to snap a few “first day of summer” photos. It is awe inspiring to see and hear storms arrive from the west and feel the cooling rain blowing on one’s skin.

It’s also great to see my 21 year old still enjoying being a kid, and having many of his high school friends over as in years past. I’m impressed at how respectful all of them are and that they are still comfortable hanging out a “parent’s” house. (yes … that includes you Mike and Aaron)

t_pooljumping3601  t_pooljumping3602  t_pooljumpging3603

Below is a 20 second Palm Pre video clip of the storms rolling in on Monday, June 21, 2010 using the upload directly to YouTube feature. (we just lost power, but I’m posting on my notebook and uploading via MyTether.)
🙂

Category: Personal, Photos, Video, Weather | No Comments »
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Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee

  1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
  2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.
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