Christmas montage

A fetching Christmas package from my younger sister's family.

Opening presents...

These creche figures look slightly Chinese. They are from China...

The kids love to decorate sugar cookies the day before Christmas.

" Bassenian said he doesn't take lightly the task of creating a built-in environment for people millions of miles away."

All I can say is, I hope Bassenian doesn't design anything requiring lots (or actually any) math.

The title quote is from an interesting story about suburbs in foreign countries.

Architects create American-style suburbs overseas

Dec 26 01:01 PM US/Eastern

By DAISY NGUYEN

Associated Press Writer

Roast Beef Sandwich Au Jus

I love the period between Christmas and New Year's Day.

There are lots of days off to have a relaxing lunch at home and there is an ingredient available for a really great classic sandwich.

We normally will have a prime rib roast of beef for Christmas dinner, this is the perfect cut for Roast Beef Sandwich Au Jus.

It is simple to make: Just slice beef and place between bread. The hardest part is making the broth. Instant bouillon is easy and plenty good, but it is best is to use actual drippings from the roast itself.

A meal of sandwich, broth and either a beer or hard cider is perfection on a cold Winter day. Especially if one has just spent time out of doors skiing or sledding or splitting firewood.

Massive shoe buy...

I like to purchase several pairs of running shoes per visit to the store. It saves me time and by wearing lots of different shoes, I hope to stave-off injury.

I got such a deal at Kohl's

I had a 30% off coupon that they sent me in the mail and that was all the motive I needed. The nice thing was that all the shoes were on sale.

The list price for all five was $309.96, but since they were all on sale it came to $211.91, then the 30% discount brought it to $148.33.

But it gets even better: I also got a $30 coupon good for anything in the store on my next visit, so effectively the total is $118.43 for one pair each of; Nike, newbalance, Fila, Avia and asics. I should be good right into the heart of Summer.

ADDED: I haven't been running much, what with ice storms, snow storms, broken-down dogs and broken-down cars. Maybe new shoes will get me out the door. Two pair will be for the office, two for runs originating from home and one held in reserve in case a pair doesn't work-out.

A nice salad

1. Layout romaine lettuce and red onion on each plate.

2. Sprinkle on some cranberry sauce, garnish the edges with some nice olives and dress with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

3. Add heated roast duck, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

4. Throw on a few candied walnuts and crumble Stilton cheese over the top.

5. Enjoy with some nice artisan bread.

Note: You may notice from the picture that there is another ingredient present but not listed. We like a bit of heat, so there are sliced cherry peppers in ours.

Science and distant relatives

Over the past weekend I had the pleasure of spending some time with relatives of my wife. A couple that I met for the first time, I had a lot to talk about: The husband is a scientist at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute and so it was a great chance for me to talk science. I have been out of research for 7 years, so he probably didn't get anything out of it, but I learned a lot and really enjoyed our conversations. The wife has a lot in common with me too. She just took up marathon running and is working on an MBA. I finished mine a while ago, but we still had lots of notes to compare.

Oh, also their twin girls are the same age as our youngest girl and my sister had twin girls; so there was lots of kid-stuff to talk about. So just what do I mean by distant relatives? Okay, here is how they are related...

Step 1. My wife's cousin: Me to my wife, then her to her mom, her mom to a sibling and then that sibling to her daughter (The Cousin).

Step 2. The cousin's husband.

Step 3. The husband's sister is the wife from above and of course, her husband is the scientist.

If you count it all up, there are 7 degrees of separation between me and the scientist. I am pretty sure there is a shorter path too: When I worked for Affymetrix I dealt with scientists at Roswell Park, so that would be only 2 or three degrees of separation.

In The Land of Coincidence

The other day I noted how I ran into my next-door neighbor at the hardware store. He was his usual cheery self and gave me some sound plumbing advice. Now, a few days later I met his ex-wife for the first time.

There were three of us in the vet's procedure room, plus the dog. While the doctor was off preparing a debridment solution of betadine and sucrose, the assistant and I were chatting. I was telling her how we were staying at our in-laws due to the power outage and their house is set very close to a busy road--which Meenah chose to dash across. Then I started-in with how our road is a dead-end and the houses are far back from the road. She said, "Oh yes, I know. My son lives next door to you." Given her apparent age, I figured she was the mom of the boy next door, not the man. So, I replied, "So, you must be xxx's ex-wife"? Yes.

Small world.

Night and day

Actually, flash and no flash...

This year, with everything going on; we just decided to find a likely-looking victim in our own yard. I think it was actually once a shrub, which went feral since the foliage is identical to some shrubs in the front of our house.

Meenah The Gimp

Getting geared-up for Christmas

A day of chores around houses...

The first part of the day started out well: I went to my in-laws to put together a couple of chairs they had ordered. It went fine since we had put together the first two over the weekend, so we already knew how. I had thought to save time by bringing my drill and a hacksaw. The chairs are held together by a bunch of Allen bolts, so I planned to sacrifice one wrench to make a bit for the drill. The hacksaw wouldn't make a dent in the wrench though.

After this I helped my Father-in-law put in a new light switch. This was very easy since he had all the tools ready, had purchased the right replacement part and knew which breaker to shut off.

The whole trip was kind of a two-fer since they live right by the hardware store and I needed to go there for a pail of plaster and a new kitchen faucet.

It was once I got home that things started to go South. I have installed new faucets before and am aware of what a pain it is. The main problem is that all the connections are up behind the sink which means that you have hardly any space to work between the wall and the back of the sink--everything is in this dark narrow crevice. The only way to reach it is to lay on your back inside of the cabinet. This is uncomfortable and every bit of rust, debris and water that comes from the work lands right in your face. All of the above was the routine and expected kind of hardship which goes with the job.

The next part was special bonus hardship. The existing couplings were an old fashioned copper compression fit and would have to be bent into the shape of a capitol N to meet with the faucet inlets. A really good plumber could have probably made this work and I tried even though I knew what the outcome would be. So, back to the hardware store for retrofit items. The guys in the store were helpful in that they spent some time trying to line-up the right parts for me, but they really didn't have a clue. After about 30 minutes of poking around, I was pretty sure that I knew what I needed to get. Just then my next-door neighbor (a former plumber) came in, and offered to help. I described the problem and he led me right to the parts I had figured would work. Having a concurring 2nd opinion filled me with confidence and I went home with my parts.

I always face a soldering job with trepidation, but this time it all went easily and quick. The faucet is in and an annoying leak is gone.

Bernie Madoff and the 50 Billion Dollars

Poof! 50 Billion Dollars have disappeared. Where did they go?

I think it is safe to say that Bernie Madoff does not have a secret vault with 50 Billion in gold, so where is it?

1. The idea of a Ponzi scheme is that early investors make great returns and this encourages more investors to put money in. The problem is that the "gains" of the early investors are paid by the contributions of the latter investors. So some of the loss is just a function of a zero-sum-game: Some people lost money and others gained money.

2. The news stories lack sufficient detail to really know, but I suspect that the 50 Billion amount is not based upon what was payed-in, but rather on the values claimed on investor's statements. This value was always just a fiction, but if you pulled your money out a few months ago they would have payed-out the full statement value.

3. Trading losses: Madoff's company had to put the money somewhere and given the market conditions, they probably did loose whatever money they actually had in real financial markets.

Other thoughts:

Did Bernie Madoff think he could just keep this scam going forever? He did keep it going for decades, so maybe that was in fact his plan. I would have trouble sleeping at night with a plan like that.

Five days without power--how about some pretty ice-storm pictures?

A big oak branch crashed to the ground in the back corner of the yard, just as I left for work. The icy coating is very pretty. It looks just like glass. This branch shattered when it hit the ground. It happened just as my wife was trying to get the dog to go out for her morning "rounds".

Another ice storm--oh no!

A few years back, when we lived in Vermont, we endured an ice storm. We had no electricity for about 5 days. That house had a wood stove, so we could cook and keep the house warm. The main problems were related to water: We had well-water, so no water pressure for the duration and we had water leaking into the basement with no power for the sump-pumps.

This time we faced different problems. We have city water and the hot water heater is gas, so we have hot & cold running water. The basement is dry and we don't even own a sump-pump. The only way to heat the house is by the gas range (which works, but you have to light it manually) and the fireplace (which doesn't help much for the whole house, but makes that one room very nice).

My wife stayed home with the kids on Friday and she took a bunch of pictures which I will post once we have power back.

Update:

Sunday 6:00 PM--still no power. Houses which are tantalizingly close, do have power. I have seen hardly any utility crews, but they are out there making progress.

Update 2:

Tuesday morning--Still no power. The morning news said there are still around 70,000homes and businesses without power. This is down from the more than 200,000 in our state without power at the end of the storm. So they have fixed 2/3 of the problem and all resources are concentrated in 1/3 of the original area.

High speed approach technique

I have flown a lot over the years and I have noticed that pilots do not all handle the final bit of a flight in the same way.

What it seems like some do is they cruise at altitude until pretty close to the end and then they throttle-back and let the plane loose altitude as they approach the destination airport.

Other pilots start their descent from further out. They keep the engines on roughly cruising power (based on the sound) and the descent is more gradual in terms of lost altitude (based on ear-pressure) and the air-speed is kept high.

To me, the second method seems better. They are using altitude gained at great expense in the start of the trip to get something back: Speed at the end of the trip.

It could be deceptive though. The sound of the wind rushing past the fuselage makes me think we are going faster on the high speed descent. But the air is thicker as you descend, so that could be the source of the added sound. It is easy to think of ways of testing which method is superior: Just set the engines to burn at the same rate and fly both profiles. If they use the same fuel, but one gets there faster, then it is a better method.

I haven't kept good (or any) records, but anecdotaly it seems as if the high speed approach is used more when the flight is running late and the slow approach when the flight is ahead of schedule.

Hmmm?

You cannot exceed C, but you can feel like you are...

Actually you can't even do that.

The technology is a long, long way off to be able to accelerate at one G for more than a few minutes. Let's just say though that in the distant future there will be energy sources sufficient to accelerate at one G for months at a time.

If you could maintain this kind of acceleration for around one year, you would be going around 99% of the speed of light.

If you were going on a journey of 20 light-years' distance, in the first year you would cover about 0.5 light-years. Due to Lorentz contraction, over the period of acceleration, the distance will appear to shrink to only one tenth the original distance. So, the destination will now appear to be only 1.95 light years away.

If the destination looked 20 light years away at the start of the trip, but only looks 1.95 after one year, then it will appear to the passengers on this ship that they have covered some 18 light years in one year. Actually, less than a year for them since by the end of it, time will be moving only one tenth as fast as at the beginning.

It would all be spoiled if they looked back at their starting point: That 1/2 light year will have also contracted to 1/20th of a light year and so it will seem to them that they are making woefully slow progress getting away from the starting point.

What would be really odd is if they decided to decelerate over the course of the next year: The whole time they would be moving toward the destination and yet it would look as if it went from 1.95 LY distant to 19 LY distant over the one year period. The starting point too would go from looking .05 LY to 1.0 LY. Both would appear to be getting more distant! Odd stuff.

Why not see how far you can go too.

This profile is like that of Virgin Galactic's: It just goes up and then glides down back to the starting point. My bet is that more people would pay for the experience if they could go from L.A to N.Y.C. in 40 minutes, in addition to all the going into space stuff.

Seasonal Rolls

6 year old, Jemma was asking for Chinese food tonight and my wife was trying to ascertain what she likes...

You like noodles? Yeah.

Egg rolls? No. I like those um Winter..

Ah, yes.

Spring Rolls!

Later, we are watching a cooking show and she asks to watch, "Boy". We don't know what she means by that and so ask her to describe it. He goes to different places and tries their food.

Acha! Guy Fieri

Final update: My wife tells me that Jemma actually said "Summer" not Winter. You see how memory works? Or rather kind of fails to.

Home Made

Beef Curry with some left-over steak from the other night. Saffron Basmahti rice. The saffron came from flowers grown in our garden and collected with tweezers. A dozen bulbs-worth of crocuses made enough for one pot of rice. At least the flowers are pretty too.

Unpictured, since it was already on the table--a green salad.

Visitor from out-of-town

I haven't seen this friend for around 24 years. He was in the area for business and so it was great to get together.

There have been a lot of changes since then and this is to be expected. What was a happy surprise is how much he seems just like he did from back in the days when we were in school together. Even though our lives are filled with much more responsibility now, he is still the same easy-going guy.

Lots of coincidences too: We were both runners, but we both just ran marathons in the last couple of months after not running one since the 1980's. We each have three children, and each got a dog after never having one or growing-up with one.