Back in the Ring

Hey, so I scraped an HP-Compaq TC1100 tablet notebook off of eBay for a pittance. I have wanted a tablet PC since the UIUC let me play with one back in in that 200 Computer Science class. I may have learned something, but what I really did during class was doodle. The picture above has some wonky shading, but that is because I was on the phone at the time.

I finally got the spare room cleaned. It has gone from a chaotic pile of boxes to a usable workshop. To celebrate I built a tool rack out of the lumber and parts left over from the gift that I made for my father's birthday.

Frustration Finds Form

This is the workshop in which frustration finds form. All of the odd jobs, and the odd folk, have been pushed here. The tools and equipment required for those odd jobs are gathering dust here, myself included. After everything had irrevocably settled, the Administration deemed that it was not economical to call in outside specialists in the rare event of an unanticipated concern. The problems here are so deeply rooted in the history of the Facility, the paper trail so immense, that a staff of archeologists would be needed to support the work of any outside help. Our salaries are insurance, grudgingly paid, against the day when our arcane services may be needed. So the listless have been lodged here, and now they languish. All the interesting parts of my work are gone because everything has settled into a worn groove. Since replicators were invented, every single piece always suffers the same failure. So now the maintenance plan has been scheduled to fix those failures just before they occur. [1] Of course, there are those problems, those anomalous failures, which are the synergistic progeny of a myriad of unknown factors. They work on a cycle with a period of decades. Predicting them is like watching a glacier drop its leviathan splinters into the ocean, and attempting to predict the exact size, shape, and location of the next iceberg. We certainly know the mechanisms and the character of the fissures, but to predict them before they manifest themselves as the tiniest cracks would be to know the current state and full history of every ice crystal of the entire frozen landscape. Sometimes I stare at the logs and imagine that I see patterns. I close my eyes, and I see a gate valve close for the last time because the temperature controller for the room that valve is in does not compensate for the grease in the valve. The grease is sensitive to swings in temperature, and every time the ventilation louvers open or close I can just see the hydrocarbons experience the tiniest tug, leading to their downfall in the future. I was thinking about this when the memo concerning exploring unstudied avenues for error was sent. That was of course distributed out about two and a half years ago. I understand that you were hired as part of the project, and it only took them two and fifteen thirthy-seconds years to find someone. I have to say, and I don’t express this often, that I am impressed. You have no idea of the dreadful amount of paperwork that went into bringing you to our happy Facility. Did you know that four of our Employment Resource Generalists died during that span? Don’t look so alarmed, you are only a very small part of their problems. In fact everyone here is someone else’s problem here. That’s why I don’t worry where I go, it is someone else’s problem. Back to your project. I have constructed, during time most emphatically budgeted for the purpose and built from random objects most emphatically not reserved for other utterly insignificant purposes, a device that will test as many of those latent failures as possible. It will reveal weaknesses and chains of failures that will destroy the understanding of those sitting in the upper offices. It is a heartbreakingly rigorous battery of tests that, when executed in sequence, may produce results I am not entirely certain that the system can survive. I originally submitted my proposal as a joke. But here is the punch line: My proposal was approved with the blessing of the Facility Manager, possibly as a clerical error. I was told to execute the plan with all possible speed as soon as the project coordinator arrives, who now stands before me. I must apologize for embedding this technical briefing inside of a frightening soliloquy; it’s a problem I have had since I was a youngster and I really should see a doctor about it. At any rate I hope you are ready to unravel everything you see. Apparently the Facility Manager is, how did the form letter put it, “pleased with your proposal and/or success, and looks forward to seeing your results with the possibility of congratulating you where permitted by law.” He is eager to see us finish this work. So if you could step up to the machine and press this button, we will get the ball rolling in the most literal terms imaginable.

[1] An interesting part of the history of replicators should be noted here. The invention of Supermacro Atomwise Manufacturing processes, popularly and collectively referred to as “Replicators”, brought the capability to reproduce nearly any physical object with atom-for-atom fidelity [2], assuming both that the requisite ablative-scanning technology and a supply of atoms in the appropriate ratios of elements are available. This technique has recently become economic even to small businesses. The opportunities to improve the composition of material and correct defects at the atomic level are surely not lost on the reader. However, it is less known that this error-correction capability is prohibitively expensive, financially and computationally. Especially in the case of metals, it is not beneficial to render a material as a seamless, homogenous chunk of compounds. It is the small structural defects generated by conventional manufacturing processes that provide strength, as well as the origination points for cracks. Simple repeating patterns are also not sufficient. Full Atom Scale Utilization (FASU) results in a network of micro-scale regions within the finished product that provide strength, rigidity, impact absorption, and energy transfer between micro regions, all with respect to the macro-scale object as a whole. The FASU process all but guarantees reliability of the product on the order of centuries, but this kind of assurance is rarely needed in the private sector. In many cases where a cost effective material optimization is desired, scans of application-specific regions on actual, laboratory-tested parts are sold on the open market with prices depending on the proven reliability of the original part. Some firms choose to scan a presently installed part rather than deal with the varying quality of third-party vendors. The vast majority of firms still source conventionally manufactured goods for their needs.

[2] The use of replication on living creatures, including sentient synthetics, (i.e. atomwise “teleportation”) has been banned in most systems on account of the process not reliably reproducing the electric state of parts of living brain tissue, resulting in brain death of the “end product”. And though it has been theorized that ablation-scanning is fast enough to record velocity information of fluids in transport at the time of scanning, such as blood, the reconstruction process does not allow material particles to be set in motion at the time of build. Thus, fluid transport would need to be manually restarted within the product. This is, of course, in addition to the ethically difficult fact that ablation-scanning destroys the original living subject. Educational institutions looking to reproduce tissues or entire living entities by this process must seek a permit.

Polenta Recipe

I had a polenta recipe on my previous blog. I erased the blog, but I made polenta again recently so I thought I would re-post the recipe.

Ingredients:
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Course-Ground Corn Meal (Grits) or Instant Polenta: 1-1/2 cups
Water: 4-1/2 cups
Green Onions: 3 to 4
Small Sweet Peppers: 3 (they are about 1/4 the size of a bell pepper)
Cilantro: 6 to 8 sprigs/sticks
Grated Cheese: 1 handful
(Medium) Salsa Verde: 1/2 cup
Ground Beef: 3/4 pound

Equipment:
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4 Qt. Pot
Stirring Spoon
[Optional] Whisk
Medium Mixing Bowl

Directions:
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Brown and drain the beef. Slice up the onions, including the greens. Chop the peppers into smallish pieces. Cut the long stems from the cilantro, and finely dice the remaining leaves and branches. Put the corn meal, vegetables, cilantro, beef, and cheese into the mixing bowl and mix it a little bit. Pour the salsa on top of the mixture. Bring the water to a rolling boil in the pot. Pour the mixing bowl into the boiling water, then immediately remove from heat and begin whisking. (Stirring is okay if you don't mind tiny lumps.) The mixture will begin thickening in 20 seconds or less. Stir with a spoon for a few minutes or until your arm is tired. Serve in a large plastic container, or a small casserole dish with a large spoon.

Makes a lot of servings.
Refrigerate leftovers.

Notes:
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* When scaling the ingredients, remember that a 3:1 ratio of water to corn meal makes soft polenta.
* Some may prefer to saute the vegetables first. The hot water will partially cook the raw vegetables, while leaving them just a bit crispy.
* Use whatever salsa you like, but I think that salsa verde goes well with the cilantro. Use hot salsa if this mix is too bland for you.
* After refrigerating, polenta will congeal completely. This makes it easy for you to slice it into servings, or fry it.

A Very Special Dirt

When Great Great Great Grandpa Hurscht emmigrated from Germany, the only thing he had to his name was a single cow. Having no land on which to graze it, Grandpapapa Hurscht would poach grass from the local graveyard at night. In order to do this, he had to muffle the cowbell with cotton blown from a nearby field. Now, at the time, this was considered base and immoral on two counts; suspending the natural course of a cowbell that was crafted with honest intentions, and using cotton to dishonor the dead. Dishonoring the dead was not such a big deal, because so few were even on speaking terms with the dead. It was the cotton that got Hurscht in trouble.

At the time, the sight of picked, unspun cotton was considered an omen of idleness. It was for this reason that ladies wore bonnets. Spinning cotton was naturally women's work, so ladies wore bonnets to shield their eyes from great, heaping piles of cotton at the side of their spinning wheels. Such a sight would undeniably send a lady into hysterics. Filthy orphans were employed to carry the cotton from the fields to the spinning floors. At the end of each day the orphans were whipped for such a callous display of idleness as carrying up to 4 tons of unspun cotton each day, paid their wage of 2 pennies, then flogged for being filthy. Hurscht was walking his cow from the graveyard to the town tree in the early dawn hours when a lady spied a spot of unspun cotton peeking from the cowbell. She immediately fell into a fainting fit. Grandpapapa would have helped, but he was fearful of letting go of his cow's lead rope (which he had braided from the hair of discarded bees) and letting his only earthly possession run away forever. He would pay dearly for this solitary act of selfishness. As it turned out, a passing throng of orphans saw the lady swoon, and they selflessly carried her to the town doctor. The orphans were burned for touching a lady, then flogged for being filthy. A week later she regained her wits, and reported that a backwards immigrant known as Hurscht had offended her with cotton.

The Town Assembly unanimously agreed to run Grandpapapa Hurscht out of town. It was decided to strap him to a cart pulled by his own cow for the greatest humiliating effect, and chase the cow away, leaving them both to be devoured by gypsies. The town had no cart, for there was no wood to build one with, save for the town tree, which could not be cut down for the sake of town pride. One would have to be purchased from the city at great expense. The Town Assembly reckoned that it would take over a year of saving and scraping profits from their crops of skinbeans to buy a cart. This was because skinbeans made for a pitifully poor crop, as they contained no actual bean, but the skin of a bean only. The fact that skinbeans were not seeds, like normal beans are, presented a problem at planting time. The skinbeans had no way of germinating on their own and required a great deal of shouting to get them going. The healthy-lunged farmers of the town did a bang-up job of shouting at skinbeans, but eventually even they became horse, and orphans were brought in to shout at the skinbeans through the night so the farmers could rest their voices. Every morning at dawn the orphans were beaten for speaking without being spoken to (for skinbeans had not the power of speech), then flogged for being filthy.

Now as a matter of town pride, landowners in the town could not be run out of it. Instead, landowners who committed moral tresspasses were lashed to a gypsie and rolled down a hill as punishment. In short, Hurscht had one year to become a landowner if he were to remain in the relative safety of the town. The members of the Town Assembly all smiled to themselves, for they knew that all the land within a mile of the Town Tree had been claimed, and it was considered immoral to build a homestead further from it. Hurscht was undaunted, and quickly concocted a plan. First, he wove reeds from a nearby pond into a berm that circled his cow's back. Next, he set about getting soil to place in the berm, thus creating his own land. For twenty hours each day he rubbed together rocks he found at the pond, eroding and liberating particles from the rocks' surfaces, letting the debris fall onto the cow's back. In the remaining four hours, he spent his time snatching specks of dust from the air, licking them, and sticking them to the back of his cow. He conducted himself so for 8 months. There was very little topsoil on his cow to speak of, and certainly not enough to impress the Town Assembly.

Inspiration struck as Hurscht passed by orphans shouting in the field on his nightly walks to the graveyard. He had learned to walk by the skinbean fields at night, so that the shouting would drown out the sound of a cowbell un-muffled by unspun cotton. Tying his cow off to one orphan, he snuck up on a second orphan that was on the verge of collapse from shouting. He gripped the orphan by the ankles, swung it over his head, and smacked the orphan against the back of his cow with such a blow as to rattle the little orphan's bones. All the filth was shaken loose from the orphan, and behold, a tiny pile of dirt was orphaned from its orphan. He released the dazed urchin back to its shouting and repeated the process well into the night. When morning came, confused orphans walked home to their mud pit with concussions but not with floggings (but obviously still beaten for their noise). Confused floggers gazed in wonderment, for they saw that the orphans were unfilthed.

Hurscht made great progress in this fashion, and the orphans, though still suffering beatings and burnings, were all too happy to assist in his dirtmaking in exchange for relief from their continual flogging. In three months' time a healthy layer of soil was now on the cow, and Huscht planted grass, skinbeans, and flowers on it. In the last month before Hurscht's sentence was to be carried out, the orphans shouted for his cow rather than for the fields of their cruel employers. The cow-bourne crop flourished into a bounty far greater than any of the townspeople. When the smirking Town Assembly strolled up to Hurscht, smirking smugly, he moved to the side and showed showed them his plot of land. He offered to buy the cart from them, for he was now far wealthier than those gathered. His neighbors were so shamed that they forgot all about tying Hurscht to carts or gypsies. Grandpapapa Hurscht took the cart for his home, and he sat down for the first time in three years.

Doctors like blood.

Doctors like blood. They must, otherwise they would not always have their hands in it, regretting that hygiene protocols place a latex barrier between it an their expectant skin. Doctors like blood so much that they keep collections of stale and otherwise unused blood. The accumulation of some of this treasure is a natural consequence of the craft of doctoring. However, discerning doctors seek out rare and antique bloods to impress their colleagues as much as to satisfy the sanguine hoarding urge that wells up inside. "Look at this sample," one beams, "It is O-Positive and laced with an infection of Whooping Fever from the 1978 outbreak. Just sniff it and see." The IV bag passes from nose to nose, and each nose in turn bobs up and down in a nod of agreement. "That's nothing," boasts another, "I've got a whole gallon of A-Negative, absolutely filthy with the Rhinoceros Flu; vintage NINETEEN-TWEN-TY-THREE." All those gathered drop jaws in awe, as if made ready to receive tongue depressors. Their friend with the jars of Rhino Flu will get referrals from all his peers now, regardless of how many dozens of patients he has lost.