Interesting Stuff

Lets see… what have I been meaning to put up here…

On Tuesday, in honor of my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, my family got to take a hot air balloon ride! It was amazing. The balloon was surprisingly sturdy, and I never once felt unsafe. We went up about 4,000 feet, though at one point we were mere inches above the St Croix River (a river separating Minnesota from Wisconsin). It was absolutely amazing. Next time you see me, ask to see the pictures. I even got to hold open the envelope while it was being inflated! The whole contraption is pretty neat – the envelope is teflon, and the burners use propane. There are two of them – use one to move about normally, but use both if you really have to rise fast. There were all sorts of sensors to help the driver – temperature probes at various points on the envelope, altitude gauges. Although the driver had these flaps that could rotate the balloon so that he could always face the direction he wanted, there is no steering mechanism. Consequently, there was a chase truck that followed us, ready to pack up the balloon and bring us back to the starting point at the end. The truck and the balloonist were in constant contact using their walkie-talkies, though they picked up many other signals as well (my favorite: “Manager to register 3 please, manager to register 3”). We landed in Wisconsin, about 15 miles from where we started. We bumped down in an empty field, though the weeds were so tall that we had to be pushed by the truck’s crew to a nearby yard (we floated a foot off the ground as they pushed). There, we all got out and they folded the envelope back up. Because our only way to control the balloon is the burners to make it go up, we had very little control over whose yard we landed in, and the chase truck had to get there a few minutes before and ask permission to use the yard. I think that would be a pretty neat surprise – “Hi. Would you mind if we landed our balloon in your yard? It’ll be here about… now.” Looking at the whole thing, it really can’t be that hard to build one. Maybe after I retire… maybe not. I’ve been meaning to build a lifter for a while now, and haven’t even started on the power supply (a lifter is a really crappy ion drive). Still, one of these days…

Before today, I had not heard about the Allais effect, which is a pretty neat, though puzzling thing. I’d like to summarize it by saying that during solar eclipses, gravity becomes slightly stronger, but it also works on torsional pendula, so I don’t quite know how to describe it. The Economist also mentions one of my favorite unexplained phenomena, the Pioneer Effect (space probes Pioneer 10 and 11 are heading in opposite directions from Earth, and both are experiencing an acceleration towards the Sun that is unaccounted for). Just for a little more background on MOND (the MOdified Newtonian Dynamics thery), the idea behind it is to take all the data we have, and say “this is how the universe behaves.” Very pragmatic, but not very fulfilling because there is little to no math to make calculations easier. Indeed, it cannot really predict anything, though it explains all unusual phenomena we have already observed.

In world news, communist rebels are threatening to blockade Kathmandu. The Nepalese government has agreed to talk to them again, though I can’t forsee anything different happening – the communists have been trying to overthrow the monarchy for 8 years, and nearly 10,000 people have died in the conflict so far. The more I learn about the world, the less civilized it seems. On the other hand, this makes things like Iraq, where a mere 900 Americans have died, seem much less significant.

On a happier note, last week there was a deer in our backyard eating from the birdfeeder (less than 15 feet from the house)! It was scared away by a fox, which I saw again several days later at Cornelia Elementary School. However, the deer came back and ate from the birdfeeder some more. It was pretty neat. There was also a flock of several hundred grackles that came through our yard. It was surreal, in a Hitchcockesque way – the entire yard was covered in birds (for those not familiar with them, grackles are black birds slightly smaller than crows with dark green heads). Around our neighbor’s birdfeeder, there were so many grackles you couldn’t see the ground – it was just one big black mass of feathers! I went to get my camera, but they had flown on before I could get a good shot. In California, we get some pretty neat wildlife too – about once a week, I see a hummingbird, and there are about 15 rabbits that live around my dorm and the soccer field. Lizards are a common occurrence, and though I haven’t looked for them yet I am told that around dusk I can find tarantulas and scorpions in the botanical gardens near campus.

I’ve been working a bit at Temporary VIP Suites (the place where my mom works; they find temporary housing for people moving between cities), which is OK. The hours are perfect – I come in when I feel like it and work for as long as I want, with no warning at all. The people are pretty great, but the work itself is kinda crappy. Mostly, I’m stuck in the back room by myself going through the archives. No one has emptied the archives since the company was started in 1995, and I’m supposed to throw out the old, unimportant parts. I feel honored that they trust me with such an important job (I’ve gone through tax returns, documentation on fired employees, bank accounts, and mortgage applications, among other things), but it gets a bit boring. For half the time, the radio is my only companion, and the other half there is someone else there, but doing something unrelated, like packing the truck for an appartment cleaning. And it’s a huge task – I’ve spent roughly 40 hours on this, and I’m about half done (as I said, no one has cleaned out the archives in 9 years). I’ve filled 3 dumpsters of recycling (the small dumpsters that take the place of trash cans, not those huge industrial sized ones). Still, the pay is pretty good, and I do, on occasion, get other things to do. I code bills, pick up lunch, run errands. When I worked there in January, I was out cleaning apartments, so I guess this is a step up from that.

That’s about it for now. Sorry this was so long – when I get back to school I’ll update more often so entries will be shorter.