I went back to the Physicians Neck and Back Clinic today. I haven’t been there since early September. A feeling of wellness crept back into my spine immediately after I started the workout. I had to take a rest in the waiting room on the way out because I was so exhausted.
In my absence, they had replaced all their old computers with Windows PCs. And were they working? Nope!
We tried taking a train east from the midway Amtrak station early one morning last week. Amtrak informed us that the trains were stuck in snow drifts and that they would provide a bus to Chicago instead. They announced free lunch at Burger King in Wisconsin Dells plus donuts and coffee on the bus! Frank and I issued a war whoop when we heard this. We were still young then. The bus was actually pleasant because we all had our own seats and I slept most of the way. We got to Chicago, checked our bags and were immediately informed via cell phone that the 10:00 pm train to Springfield was canceled. The kids burst into tears as they slipped around the rush hour muck of Union station. The TVs were filled with images of stranded travelers and of a very naughty family gunned down by Santa. This is about when I began to doubt the existence of trains. Kate cracked her knuckles and marched off to the customer service desk and came back with a pocket full of spending money and a voucher for a hotel room. I always imagined that trains were impervious to snow, but apparently, the combination of snow and government ownership is lethal to train travel.
We had all this cash from Amtrak. I threw a huge handful of it over the band at the hotel and pumped my arm a few times and they kicked up a fast number and everyone started swinging. Or, maybe we just turned on the cable TV. The next morning, we were still in Chicago for some reason. I was all for avoiding this problem altogether and watching the Bourne Supremacy on HBO. Kate first tried to arrange a rental car and then a flight. I kept trying to tell her it was all useless but she eventually got a flight that afternoon… at LESS than the price of what the tickets were when we looked early this fall. I was sure it was another hoax and that we would be spending Christmas at the airport instead of the train station. Thankfully, the flight took off on time and we made it to Mass. earlier than initially planned. Amtrak refunded our tickets. So, we were left generally happy with how Amtrak took care of us with the exception of not actually getting any train service.
The trip was great. Got to spend time with my dad, Ellen, Bevin, Molly and Scott, as well as my cousins. All the little cousins really enjoyed each other: Joe, Ted, Mabel, Mo, Charlotte, Elizabeth, Justin, Frank, Maggie, Jack, Kyle, Jared, and of course, the Mama-Toto. My legs are stiff from playing soccer with all those kids.
You get… Blacklight Power.
I heard them mentioned on Talk of the Nation Science Friday yesterday afternoon and looked them up.
A sample of their awesomeness:
BlackLight Power Inc., is the pioneer of technology based on the patented process of releasing chemical energy from hydrogen called the “BlackLight Process.” More specifically, energy is released as the electrons of hydrogen atoms are induced by a catalyst to transition to lower-energy levels (i.e. drop to lower base orbits around each atom’s nucleus) corresponding to fractional quantum numbers. The lower-energy atomic hydrogen product called “hydrino” reacts with another reactant supplied to the reaction cell to form a hydride ion bound to the other reactant to constitute a novel proprietary compound, or two hydrinos react to form a very stable hydrogen-type molecule called a dihydrino molecule. As hydrogen atoms and catalyst atoms are normally found bound together as molecules or are bound in other compositions of matter, BlackLight has invented a solid fuel that uses conventional chemical reactions to generate the catalyst and atomic hydrogen at high reactant densities that in turn controllably achieves very high power densities. The catalyst causes the hydrogen atoms to transition to lower-energy states by allowing their electrons to fall to smaller radii around the nucleus with a release of energy that is intermediate between chemical and nuclear energies. BlackLight’s experimental results on its process and compositions of matter are published widely and have been replicated by independent groups.
This company has been around for a few years and wouldn’t really be notable, except for the fact that they have attracted $60 million in funding…. for extra tiny hydrogen molecules called “Hydrinos”!
Bob Parks is a physicist that likes to debunk mad scientists on his “What’s New” newsletter.
2. PATENT NONSENSE: COURT DENIES BLACKLIGHT POWER APPEAL.
The status of BlackLight Power’s intellectual property is fuzzier than ever. BLP was awarded Patent 6,024,935 for “Lower-Energy Hydrogen Methods and Structures,” a process for getting hydrogen atoms into a “state below the ground state” You might expect these shrunken hydrogen atoms, called “hydrinos,” to have a pretty special chemistry. Do they ever! Indeed, a second patent application titled “Hydride Compounds” had been assigned a number and BLP had paid the fee. Several other patents were in the works. That’s when things started heading South. Prompted by an outside inquiry (who would do such a thing?), the patent director became concerned that this hydrino stuff required the orbital electron to behave “contrary to the known laws of physics and chemistry.” The Hydride Compounds application was withdrawn for further review and the other patent applications were rejected. Since the one patent already issued involves the same violations of basic laws of physics, there is a cloud over its status as well. BLP filed suit in federal court arguing that it was too late for the Patent Office to change its mind. The court was not impressed, so BLP appealed the decision. In denying the appeal, the court said the Patent Office has a responsibility to take “extraordinary action” to withdraw a questionable patent. The long-awaited IPO may have to wait a little longer.
How do his backers have money for things like this? Shouldn’t they have been fleeced long ago?
The Mardas Gap was coined by Sam Jacobs to refer to the gap between an inventor’s promises and what is actually produced. “Mardas” refers to Magic Alex, the fascinating T.V. repairman who sold an invisible sonic force field to the Beatles.
My new hero:
Ellis started out as a psychoanalyst, in 1947, but soon decided that exploring his patients’ childhood traumas had “nothing to do with the price of spinach.” By the mid-fifties, he had devised his own method, based on the premise, set forth by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, that people are disturbed not by what happens to them but by their view of what happens to them, and also on his personal observation that, as he said the other day, “all humans are out of their fucking minds—every single one of them.”
“people are disturbed not by what happens to them but by their view of what happens to them” That sums up Buddhism quite succinctly.
How was the exploding sledgehammer convention?
What??
I said, “How was the exploding sledgehammer convention?”
What???
I SAID, HOW WAS THE EXPLODING SLEDGEHAMMER CONVENTION!!???
via arbroath.
When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Even Norman Mailer’s head.
I set it up to start 90 seconds into it. Here is a page with all kinds of parameters you can use when embedding videos.
because Carrot Top has been mentioned:
I was trying insanely complicated things to make this happen. In reality, the process is dead simple and nothing to be feared:
Step One: Grow the size of the vm from the point of vmware workstation (i.e. from the host’s point of view). This only tells vmware how much room to give the vm. It does nothing about the actual disk drive size of the vm from the perspective of the guest operating system.
$ vmware-vdiskmanager –x [new size] [virtual disk file]
for example, I did
$ vmware-vdiskmanager -x 10GB MyOS-Base-cl1-000001-cl2-000001-cl1-000003-cl1-s007.vmdk
where MyOS-Base-cl1-000001-cl2-000001-cl1-000003-cl1-s007.vmdk is the vmdk file used in the .vmx file.
type
$ vmware-vdiskmanager -help to see all the options to use with the command.
Step Two: Download the gparted iso from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=271779
Step Three: In your vmware workstation –> VM –> Settings –> Hardware –> CD/DVD –> select the radio button “Use ISO image” and use the browse button to select the iso you downloaded.
Step Four: Reboot your VM and during boot, hit the ESC key (assuming Linux OS) - for windows, the same thing is accomplished using F8.
You will get to select your boot device.
Choose the CD/DVD device. What you are doing, with the help of VMWare workstation, is fooling your vm into treating that ISO file as a real CD/DVD player and trying to boot from there.
Your VM will boot to GPARTED and after selecting all the defaults of the options presented to you, you should see:
Obviously, there is some new free space to the right that your vm is not using. You can click “Resize/move” and change the size either by dragging the border or editing the value of “New Size”.
After you click “Apply”, you will see the new partition size:
And yer done. It is that stinkin simple.
[UPDATE: you might, upon running the vmware-vdiskmanager command, get an error about your vm being married to some snapshots. There are several ways to solve this. One, is to create a full clone of the vm. Another is to use VM–> Snapshot manager –> delete snapshot and children ]
mighty efforts to fix leaks in NYC water system:
The city has enlisted six deep-sea divers who are living for more than a month in a sealed 24-foot tubular pressurized tank complete with showers, a television and a Nerf basketball hoop, breathing air that is 97.5 percent helium and 2.5 percent oxygen, so their high-pitched squeals are all but unintelligible to visitors. They leave the tank only to transfer to a diving bell that is lowered to the bottom of the oval-shaped shaft, where they work 12-hour shifts, with each man taking a four-hour turn hacking away at concrete to expose the valve.
from Pruned
