Mike Pelley's Musings

From: The Washington Post 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_296w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/08/23/Editorial-Opinion/Graphics/handelsman08242013.jpg

My first weather station was an old National Geographic-branded station. I was okay – it provided the temperature, wind direction and speed, and rainfall information. But then I thought wouldn’t it be nice to be able to see this on a computer? Of course, the inexpensive weather station didn’t have any data output capabilities. So, what to do….

After checking out various weather sites around the ‘Net two companies stood out: Oregon Scientific and Davis Instruments. Of course, Davis Instruments was the Mercedes-Benz and I had a Volkswagon Golf budget. Oregon Scientific it was and the WMR-928. This was a nice little weather station: wireless to the base station, individual sensors (mostly) with solar, rechargeable and backup batteries. This system lasted about six years before the sensors started failing and, of course, you could not really replace them without spending what was adding up to a whole new station.

The hunt was on again for a weather station. Of course, Davis Instruments was the choice but I was still stuck on a Volkswagon – albeit a Jetta instead of a Golf – budget. Since Oregon Scientific worked well the first time I decided to go back to them. I bought a  WMR-200. I have to say I was a little disappointed with the WMR-928’s replacement – the base station didn’t seem to be up to the quality of the 928’s, the sensors now only had one solar panel with the rain sensor using only batteries. The 200 had USB which was nice as I had a USB-to-Ethernet adapter (and since the weather station workstation was by now a VMware vSphere virtual machine using the serial port wouldn’t work – but that is another story). Unfortunately my Jetta is falling apart after only two-and-a-half years – the anemometer is squeaking and reading low and the rain sensor just up-and-died.

This time I am going for the Mercedes-Benz. I think that it will be the Vantage Pro2 as some it has some features of the Vantage Vue don’t have. Plus, the Pro2’s base station seems a little higher quality. The only thing that I do not like with Davis is the need to purchase an additional – and relatively costly – adapter to connect to the computer. The choices are nice – USB or IP or serial – but you have to buy their WeatherLink software – and I’m not going to use it. Sandaysoft Cumulus is my choice.

I heard this on the radio this morning and it made me smile being Friday the 13th. There is a scheduled flight from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Helsinki, Finland, operated by Finnair. The three-letter designation for Helsinki is HEL. The Finnair flight number is… Wait for it… 666.

So, on this Friday the 13th a lucky few will be able to take flight 666 to HEL(L).

From Ars Technica it looks like there is another use for copyright way; or at least an attempt to use it. When Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed earlier in July the station used some “confirmed” names of the flight crew as listed in the graphic from KTVU in Oakland, California. Obviously the person contact at the NTSB had a sick sense of humor and was apparently fired. However trying to C.Y.A. using copyright seems to be a desperate attempt. Read the full article TV station tries—and fails—to use copyright to hide its racist news blunder on Ars

I keep hearing this “silly” commercial on TV whereby the announcer talks about “no one else has” followed by “class exclusive”. This is just plain silly and redundant – if “no one else has” it then by definition is this not “class exclusive”? At one time commercial copy writers would jump with both feet on such redundancy.

It looks like the CIA/NSA, MI6, DGSE, BND, MSS, etc. (that is the United States, British, French, German and Chinese) intelligence services will have to break out their old intelligence methods. Or, drag back staff retired a few decades ago (unless they are dead – both the Russians (Soviet Union) and the United States tried psychic measures – see Project Stargate (Wikipedia)),

Anyway, it seems that Russia in reports on CBCNews.com, BBCNews.com are buying typewriters to reduce the potential of Edward Snowden-like leaks. The Federal Guard Service of the Russian Federation (Федеральная служба охраны, ФСО – Federalnaya Sluzhba Okhrany) is buying German typewriters at over $700 each.

As a note to my I.T. colleagues: Comments on the need for I.T…..

Again from Ars Technica today…

At least it isn’t just me who puts things together backwards… In the Ars article of 2013 July 9 entitles Parts installed “upside down” caused Russian rocket to explode last week on July 4 a Russian rocket, carrying a GLONASS navigation satellite (Russia’s answer to GPS – for some reason Russia doesn’t trust the U.S. system…) because, get this: Because various sensors were installed upside down!

Each sensors had an arrow that was suppose to point toward the top of the rocket, but multiple sensors were pointing downward instead. Anatoly Zak reports on RussianSpaceWeb.com that:

Each of those sensors had an arrow that was suppose to point toward the top of the vehicle, however multiple sensors on the failed rocket were pointing downward instead. As a result, the flight control system was receiving wrong information about the position of the rocket and tried to “correct” it, causing the vehicle to swing wildly and, ultimately, crash.

Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed…

When I read the article US agency baffled by modern technology, destroys mice to get rid of viruses in  Ars Technica today I couldn’t believe it… Is this April 1st – a/l/a April Fools’ Day? From the article:

EDA’s CIO, fearing that the agency was under attack from a nation-state, insisted instead on a policy of physical destruction. The EDA destroyed not only (uninfected) desktop computers but also printers, cameras, keyboards, and even mice. The destruction only stopped—sparing $3 million of equipment—because the agency had run out of money to pay for destroying the hardware.

The total cost to the taxpayer of this incident was $2.7 million: $823,000 went to the security contractor for its investigation and advice, $1,061,000 for the acquisition of temporary infrastructure (requisitioned from the Census Bureau), $4,300 to destroy $170,500 in IT equipment, and $688,000 paid to contractors to assist in development a long-term response. Full recovery took close to a year.

Like… WOW!!!!

P.S. I wonder if they are looking for a new CIO?

I saw this in the Washington Post (link):

Just received this 404 (page not found) error on CNet when I clicked on an article. I think that this response has to be one of the funniest messages…