Category Archives: General Comments

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.

I was wondering why my Firefox 2.0.0.6 was running slow (the past few versions have been a little slow too) and I figured it must be an add-on.  Turns out I was right.  After I removed AddBlock+ my surfing has been much faster.
I think having to check every image on a page to see if it should be blocked was just slowing everything down.
I get a few more adds, but a much faster experience.
I still use Flashblock to make sure I don’t get the annoying moving picture/sound ads, and that is good enough for me.

The children in this neighborhood play what I like to call “rule ball”.
It seems to be game like sandlot baseball, but with a few key differences.
The game still has a bat and a ball, and I think bases.
How the game is played a pitcher throws a ball at a batter. The batter hits the ball and then they argue over the rules for 8 to 12 minutes. This goes on for a few hits, but by then, the arguing gets to the point one of the parents comes out and yells at the kids for yelling at each other.
Kids, it’s just a game. There are enough rules when you are an adult.
When Glenn gets older I will make sure he has at least a few care free years before life crushes his spirit.

I created a new page with all of Glenn’s Photos, you can link to it above.
I also changed all the videos on the video page to YouTube videos.

Small changes, but I hope it makes it easier to navigate.