Monthly Archives: August 2007

Finally Friday, and I am beat.
Glenn is almost certainly teething now.  He was up from 1:00 A.M to **shudder** 4:00 A.M. last night.  That was not fun.  I have learned something.  Before I could rock him to sleep and he would be okay.  Now I have to just leave him there to scream it out for 3 to 5 minutes, then he goes to sleep just fine.
It is hard to listen to him scream and do nothing, but that’s what you have to do now so he will get back to sleep.
But, at 4:00 A.M., you just don’t care anymore, and it’s not that hard to let him scream it out.

Glenn, July 2007 is up.
657 photos for your viewing pleasure.

In other news, really raining here. It is good to get a nice soaking. The grass and trees will appreciate it.

Special thanks to the people at http://liggydee.cdfreaks.com/ for the DVD writer firmware updates for my DVD burner. Without them, I would not be able to burn to the new generation of DVD 16x disks.

There is an article in today’s Chicago Tribune about how the cell phone network failed when that bridge collapsed.
Back in College (I am an electronics engineer) we were taught about how cellular and regular phone lines work.

Did you know the phone networks are only designed to carry, at best, 10% of its subscribers at any given time?  This means if they have 100,000,000 users, only 10,000,000 can make a call at the same time.  This is true for land lines and cell phones equally.  The problem with cells is exacerbated because each cell tower can handle so many calls.  If too many people call from one cell, which covers about 1 square mile, the system can take no more calls. 

Why is the system designed that way?  For one, it would be insanely expensive to build that has 100% coverage.  Secondly, you would have to have a cell tower on virtually every corner and you would have to run 10 times as many wires and build 10 times as many central offices to run it all.  Pus, at any give time, only 3 or 4% of your network is being used.  96% of your infrastructure is standing idle.  We could do it, but your cell phone bill would be $600 a month and your home phone bill would be about $450, even if you made no calls.  So, if an emergency strikes, don’t always expect your phone to work, be it a cell or land line.  At least you are not paying out a grand a month to make sure your calls go through.

I am sure you all now that a bridge collapsed in Minnesota. Sadly, this will probably not be the last bridge collapse in the country. To me it highlights the benign neglect this nation has shown towards our nation’s infrastructure.
The United States decided in the 1950’s to rely heavily, or almost exclusively on a national highway system to provide land transport. I won’t go into the long term problems with this system, lets just say there are many.
The real problem is in the early 80’s many infrastructure programs were canceled to save money for the fiscally ‘conservative’ Republicans in power. This attitude of only fix it if it falling down didn’t change with Bush, Clinton, or Bush Jr. The economic recessions of the late 80’s and the post 9/11 didn’t help either.

The shifting of more money to fighting ‘terrorists’ and Iraq deflected money that would of been spent on roads and bridges. We are now left in our current state of affairs. Many of the bridges we cross every day are 30, 40, 50 or more years old. Many are far past their original design lifetimes. We keep using them because people don’t want high taxes. People seem to forget taxes are there for a reason, to pay for things individuals can’t afford. Like roads, bridges, schools, teachers, etc. Time to suck it up. Cancel the war in Iraq, raise taxes to previous levels, fix our country (roads, bridges, schools, Social Security, Health Care) and become a country that we are proud to live in again.

If we don’t, expect to see more deaths due to benign neglect, and just deal with those costs when they arise.