Brian’s Crazy Talk

I’m 42 years old, and I’ve flown dozens of times all over the U.S., to Mexico, and Ireland.  Even though air travel can sometimes be a patience-testing experience, I still think it is a very cool way to travel.  Airplanes are simply amazing machines - monumental feats of engineering and an impressive application of physics for a desired goal.  I am what you would call an aviation enthusiast.

Fortunately for me, Baltimore-Washington International Airport is just fifteen minutes away, and there is a great little observation park just south of one of the main runways.  I took my kids to this park many times when they were toddlers…the look on their faces when a large jet flew by was priceless.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, so my wife and I packed up the kids and drove over to the park, and this time I brought my recently acquired (over the summer) Olympus e510 DSLR.  This is my first DSLR, and I did a lot of research before buying it.  I’ll write another post about that later, but I had the chance to really play with the camera while photographing some planes on final approach.  Granted, my pictures are not up to the standards of the ‘professional’ plane spotters over on Airliners.net, but we all have to start somewhere!

As you can see, I also took a picture of the crescent moon last night…it was a very clear night and again, this was just a chance for me to play with the features of the camera.  Although a touch grainy - I expected that - I think it’s a fairly decent shot.

Let me know what you think!

There are some crazy news stories that surpass the best fiction for pure entertainment value.  This is one of them.  In a nutshell, ex-con gets out of jail and tries to scam some money by forming a private volunteer fire department out in a remote Arizona town.  The guy poses as a female chief of said department, buys a beat up old fire truck, tries to solicit donations of more firefighting equipment on fire service forums, scams some eBay buyers and sellers, harasses the real volunteer firefighters in town, tries to convince the 911 center to route calls to his personal phone, finally gets caught / charged with committing felony fraud and forgery, and is run out of town.  It’s a funny but fascinating story, and the best account appears on a great fire service blog called Firegeezer.com.  Follow this link to the story, which is actually page two of the story, but since it’s in a blog, the first post is at the bottom. Read up the page, then go back down to the bottom and click on the ‘previous page’ tab for the continuation and conclusion.

I just dropped $1500 on a new mattress, sight unseen and untouched, from Sleep Ez Factory on the web.  Am I crazy? It’s a lot of coin to be sure and comparable to what one might spend on a top of the line store-bought standard innerspring.  But this is a 100% natural all-latex, assemble-it-yourself mattress.  This should be interesting.

My wife and I have been thinking about replacing our aging innerspring for a while - it’s over 10 years old now.  I have been reading about latex mattresses on the web, researching the different types of latex, processes, and prices.  Note that I am talking about natural latex from a rubber tree, processed and formed into ~3″ layers of varying firmness, that when stacked three high and covered with a cotton casing make a mattress.  This is not the same as the synthetic memory foam products like Tempur-pedic.

Again, the most interesting thing about this type of mattress is not necessarily what it is made out of, but that it comes as a kit.  Each mattress layer comes in a box, rolled up and shrink wrapped.  To assemble it, you lay the casing (which zips closed around the latex layers) on the platform, foundation, or box spring, and then stack each layer of latex, one on top of the other.  Then the casing is zipped up and voila - a mattress!  The beauty of this system is that you can create a totally different feel for each side of the bed, by simply selecting different firmness layers.  In our case, we are going with a single ’soft’ layer that will be on top, then individual ‘medium’ layers  in the middle, and individual ‘firm’ layers on the bottom.  With this configuration, we can try out soft-med-firm, or soft-firm-firm, or soft-med-med.  We can then easily exchange the layers with the factory to create a completely custom mattress.  To me, this seems like a much more effective way of customizing the sleep surface, compared to the inflatable air-based systems like the Sleep Number.   It’s also worth noting that pure latex mattresses last upwards of 20 years, and again unlike the air bladder systems, there is nothing to break.

Update:  I received and assembled our new mattress.  I created a separate page dedicated to this product, with lots of pictures and more detailed information.  Click here to go there now!

With much ambivalence, we took a ride to the local outlet mall.  The parking lot, as expected, was beyond capacity with drivers slowly following shoppers out of the mall and down the parking lot aisles.  Way down at the end of one of the lanes, we found someone backing out with no one waiting.  We quickly saw why - the spot was kind of narrow because the driver one spot over to the left out had parked over the line separating the spaces.  Additionally, the car to the right of the space I wanted was also parked very close to our space, so I would be forced to park almost on the line to my left. So we were going to pull into a spot that would have  a very small spot vacant to the left - no one would be able to fit there, or so I thought.  We were only in the mall about 20 minutes and returned to find this:

First, let me state that I have no idea why the parking line is blue, as this was near the end of the row and was certainly not a handicapped space.  My car (on the right) was close to the line, as I mentioned, because the car to my right (not shown) was also way to the left in their space.  The end result: the Sienna driver folded in both side view mirrors and wedged into the oh-so-narrow open space next to me, and made it almost impossible for me to open my driver side doors.  Thanks a lot, buddy.

(In hindsight, I have to say that the driver did a heck of job threading that needle of a space…backing in no less!)

I checked the calendar - yep, December.  I checked the temperature outside - a chilly 38 degrees.  Yet there I was, staring at what was clearly a tick, engorged and securely attached to my son’s scalp about an inch above the hairline on the back of his head.  He has been playing outside a lot lately, running through yards and hiding near shrubs and trees during games of tag with his friends.  I could accept some scrapes, bumps, bruises, etc., but a tick bite?  In late December?  This was not on my radar.  During the warmer months, my wife and I make a point of inspecting our kids’ scalps for little critters like this - we’re not exactly paranoid about it, but we try to be vigilant.  Which is why we were caught off-guard by this.  We weren’t looking for it.

Alas, there it was.  The next step of course, was removing the little bugger.  I know the technique; I grabbed my tweezers and started to pull straight back but it was painful for my son; the tick’s head was really buried under his skin, and it was hard to pull on the tick without grabbing a couple of hair follicles.  After a few minutes of trying, I decided to get some professional help.  We drove over to the local MinuteClinic (a truly great invention in health care delivery, in my opinion), where the nurse practitioner applied a topical anesthetic - and was able to gently but firmly extract the tick in one piece.  She took a good look at it, consulted a large binder with lots of juicy medical pictures, and informed us that it was not a deer tick, but we might consider an antibiotic as a precaution.  The patient was cleaned up, and we were sent on our way.

Lesson learned: It may be cold outside, but the ticks can still get ya’!

In a previous post I described a perplexing problem with my wireless network.  I thought the issue might have been inteference with a new neighbor’s cordless phone.  However, it turns out they have a 5.8Ghz phone, which would not interfere with wireless networks that operate at 2.4Ghz.

I re- installed a new router that Verizon had sent me over the summer.  The problem was that the new router would not connect to the Internet.  When I logged into the router, the status showed that it was waiting on a DHCP lease; this is the mechanism where the router acquires a public IP address from Verizon.  I finally caved in and called FiOS tech support.  They had to clear the old lease from their DHCP server - once that simple step was taken care of, the new router received an IP address and Internet connectivity was working.  Then I needed to check to see if the wireless issue was resolved.   In the new router, I created a new network name and WEP key; I booted up my Windows laptop in my bedroom (which is about as far from the router in the garage as I can get)…and SUCCESS!!  Signal strength is ‘very good’, and in fact I am typing this post from this wireless connection.  Ah…it feels good to have this fixed.

It’s too bad GM is teetering on the abyss.  Contrary to popular opinion, they have some very cool products in the pipeline.  Case in point, the Pontiac Solstice GXP Coupe.  

It’s really a targa, since the hard top roof panel is removable to provide a convertible-like  driving experience.  Regardless of how it’s categorized, I love it, and would park one in my garage without a second thought.  Let’s see, 260hp, 0-60 in about 5.5 seconds…oh yes, indeed.

If you haven’t heard of this amazing a Capella group, watch this:

(Sent to me in an e-mail)

Please accept,with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday,
practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all….and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great, (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only “AMERICA” in the western hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishes.

(By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/him or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.)

Imagine my excitement when I learned that one of  my all-time favorite childhood TV shows, “Emergency!”,  is broadcast every afternoon on one of the digital channels I receive through FiOS.  I grew up watching Paramedics John Gage, Roy DeSoto, and the rest of LA County Fire Station 51 respond to all manner of unlikely rescues and medical calls.   When I was in elementary school,  me and my best friend used to play our own version of “Emergency!”, racing around the neighborhood on our bicycles.

Squad 51

In 1990, I was 24 years old and it was about 16 years after the TV series ended, when I decided to live out a dream; I signed up for an EMT class.  I had purchased the text book and studied the material the entire summer before the class even started!  Eighty students started the class, and by the end, only about half remained.

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