Sunset – August 17th
Sunset – August 17th
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Tag Archives: Seattle
Rogue Internet Cop
Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet at Seattle’s EMP Museum
When cops go rogue it is a bad thing. It is also front page news. Fortunately for all of us that is a rare event. When there is a rogue Internet cop it is just a major pain in the ass. Let me set the scene for you. Late Wednesday night, like sometime after nine, when I went to bed, something happened to our computer. I woke up to this dreadful news on Thursday morning. I tried fixing the problem, mainly by repeatedly rebooting the machine, but to no avail and all too soon I toddled off to work. My parting wish was, “Maybe it will fix itself, while I’m at work.” “Fat chance”, I said to that wish and walked out the door.
I came home Thursday night, after spending all day bent over a hot keyboard at work. The last thing that I needed to deal with was computer problems. Maybe I should clarify what those problems were, because on the scale of such things my problems weren’t all that bad. The hardware seemed to be functioning just fine. All the software with the exception of Internet Explorer (IE) and McAfee seemed to be working just fine too. McAfee seemed to still be working, it just wasn’t very responsive, like at all. IE worked fine too, except with websites like our email, Facebook and this blog. Websites that had a login associated with them, websites that communicated securely. To make matters even more perplexing Google’s Chrome still worked with all of the offending sites.
I could have let things ride. I certainly have enough other things going on that I didn’t need to spend all night trouble shooting some esoteric PC problem. In fact, I had an easy workaround; I could just switch over to Chrome. But no, there was the principle of the matter. It was a case of man versus the machine, me versus it. Besides there could be some more sinister underlying issue.
My first attempt at fixing the problem was to engage my handy-dandy AT&T technician. I’ve had good luck with their tech support in the past. I figured a little old problem like this one would be a piece of cake. After spending the better part of an hour instant messaging with ‘Kurt’, he decided that my problem was not really an AT&T problem and told me to go bother Microsoft instead.
Police Car 995 – Blade Runner at Seattle’s EMP Museum
Left to fend for myself, I got to thinking that there had to be some connection between the secession of secure communications and the non-responsiveness of McAfee. I figured that if I just shut down McAfee, I could at least test this hypothesis. This was easier said then done. An Internet cop like McAfee doesn’t like to go quietly. I eventually figured out that I had to login to the McAfee website and deactivate my computer’s software there. Download their special uninstalling software and run that. That worked, but it took a while. Afterwards, I had to reactivate my computer’s account and then download and reinstall the McAfee software, which took even longer. In the end, I was successful, but it took all evening. I still wonder if it was really worth the effort. I guess that I should be happy that real life technological monsters are so mundane.
Chihuly Persian Ceiling #2
Chihuly Persian Ceiling Panel #2
With this photo, I hope to add a little color to another drab day. It was taken at the Chihuly Museum in Seattle. It is part of Chihuly’s famous Persian Ceiling piece. Suspended on posts are sheets of clear plate-glass. Arranged on these plates are a myriad of individual glass pieces that together make up this art work. The piece is segmented by steel cross bars into a series of panels. It is a fantastic art piece, but it also guaranteed to give the viewer a stiff neck if looked at too long, because one is force to look straight up at it.
It was fun visiting Seattle and also Lopez Island last fall. That was our last get away vacation. We plan on visiting Chicago, but today Storm Saturn dumped up to a foot of snow on it. This will be a chance to judge the effectiveness of Rahm Emanuel as mayor. In Chicago, clearing the snow is job one. One that will get you fired if you don’t do it well.
It is a good thing that we decided not to go to Washington DC. Not because of Saturn, but because of sequestration. Our plans there involved tours of the Capitol Building and the White House. It was announced today that because of sequestration, all of these tours are being cancelled.
We got a delivery from Lands End today. I got a pale green, long sleeve, button down shirt. Boring! Yes, I know, but I’ll wear it this week, when customers come a calling. When I told Anne my plans, she asked, if I was going to wear a sports jacket too. I had to explain to her the etiquette of engineering haûte couture. You cannot wear a sports coat unless you are presenting. I won’t be presenting, so I cannot wear a coat. There are fashion rules, don’t you know.
My explanation of the rules reminded her of a similar incident from her Corps of Engineers days. At a luncheon, on a non-uniform day, Anne noticed that the lieutenants wore Polo shirts, the captains wore dress shirts and a sweater and the majors wore a dress shirt and a jacket. All except for one captain, he was wearing a dress shirt, sweater and a jacket. His apparent fashion faux pas was made clear when his wife appeared and the colonel handed him his oak leaves, promoting him to major.
Seattle Sunshine
Seattle Skyline
With the photo for this post, I’m reaching back towards a sunnier, happier day. This photograph was taken last September, near the end of a summer long drought in Seattle. It was a brilliantly sunny and warm day. Was this week in Saint Louis sunny and warm too? Not so much.
It has been grey all week-long. Occasionally, the unrelenting grey was punctuated with falling precipitation, running the gambit in form. It has been a long dull week, with only a couple of events of note to report. The first one, was a good one, I received my bonus. Our bonuses are calculated as a function of our base pay, influenced by how well the company did last year. The company had a very good year lat year. The current hub-bub about the 787 will be reckoned with next February. So, consequently bonuses were very good too. Unfortunately for me, I had already effectively flushed my money down the toilet last fall, when I had a new sewer line put in. The money did a touch-and-go today in my bank account.
The other notable event for this week is the sequester. This event has no promise of goodness, but so far, it doesn’t look like it will have any immediate negative effects. We are still hiring. My boss was in Seattle today, to greet a new employee on his first day. Also, in his stead, one of my other co-workers interviewed another prospect.
The fact that both events occurred on a Friday is an artifact of our company’s culture. We are a company composed of and ruled by engineers. But it is the bean counters, the accountants, who really rule the roost. Our work week begins on a Friday and ends on a Thursday, all so the bean counters can balance the week’s books, without having to work Saturdays. Personally, I kind of like this arrangement. It makes Thursday feel like a faux end of the work week, speeding the arrival of the approaching weekend.
I was wondering how I would wrap up this post, when Anne called out a relevent factoid. In 1900 engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River. Prior to its reversal, hundreds of people were dying in the City of Broad Shoulders each year. At that time, sewage from the Chicago River was flowing into Lake Michigan and contaminating the city’s drinking water. The Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal preserved the city’s water and provided a route from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River basin. The relevance of this factoid comes with our planned trip to the Windy City. Of course there is just one little downside to this engineering feat, Chicago’s waste is now sent south to us in Saint Louis.
Engineers Week
Monorail Beam and the Exterior of the EMP Museum
OMG, I forgot all about Engineers Week last week. I should have been dancing in the streets! The one week out of the year, when me and my kind of people are honored. By my kind of people I mean, engineers. Yes, we are a subtype. If you ever had any doubts about this, come by the plant at quitting time and watch my folk as they exit the building. It is a geek show. When I say honored, I mean we recognized ourselves. This is pretty much like what Hollywood did with their Academy Awards last weekend, except in our case, no one else was watching.
“We built it”, was a campaign slogan last year. It is a tautology among the engineering community, because we really do build it all. Be it planes, trains or automobiles, or water, power and light, America could not function one day without its engineers.
Oh, when the engineers go marching in
Oh, when the engineers go marching in
I want to be in that number
when the engineers go marching in
I’ve worked thirty-three years as an engineer. I’ve done automotive and aerospace engineering. I’ve even dabbled in civil engineering, but all that please and thank you manners, was too much for me. I much prefer a technical conversation peppered with cuss words. Especially, when it is with the modern female engineer, like some of the people I work with now. They are as ably competent cussing you out over a slipped schedule, as any manager that I have known.
I am a third generation engineer, like my father before and like his father before him. My son, Dave, is now a fourth generation engineer and a Boiler Maker to boot. I wonder how long this line can go unbroken?
The photograph with this post is the perfect blend of art and engineering. Seattle’s monorail line, with its clear, crisp lines runs like a slash across the photo. Contrasting nicely, is the wavering exterior of the EMP Museum. Together they combine to become a metaphor for the complementary nature of art and science. My two sons, Dave the engineer and Dan the artist also complement each other well. They are almost like yin and yang to each other, in so many ways.
Yarn Bombing
Hello World – Yarn Bombed Seattle House
Last September, we flew to Seattle for Robyn and Teresa’s wedding. Our flights out were of that category from hell. One of my last memories of that night was of speeding up the five at 4 AM, in the backseat of a Prius cab. We finally crash landed at Jay & Carl’s and then knew no more.
The next morning dawned all too early and way too bright. Dawn was only slightly mitigated awaking in Seattle, while coming from the Midwest. Jay had gone to work already and Carl had a morning errand to attend, so our first steps back to consciousness thankfully did not have to also include sociability. Carl returned about the time that we had figured out how to make coffee. The morning paper had a picture of this yarn bombed house on its front page. Anne being interested in all things knitting expressed some interest in seeing this house. Carl thought he knew where it was and voilá, it was the first stop on the day’s itinerary. Afterwards, Carl eventually took us to many more wonders in this the great city of Seattle.
This house was the new storefront of Ada’s Technical Books. I assume that the Ada referenced here is Ada Lovelace, child of Lord Byron and one of the founders of computer science. This Capitol Hill store decided to announce itself with this knit cozy surrounding the front of the house. The artist, Luke Haynes created a unique art installation that is a bright mishmash of many different quilts sewn together with the words “Hello World” stitched across the front.