Oregon’s Fault(s)

I think a number of people were surprised by the earthquakes in the Portland area recently. I remember someone commenting on “a new fault” that was found running through Portland. I don’t think people really realize how many faults there are, and those who have even taken an introductory Geology class may only think of the biggies, like the Juan De Fuca plate.

Well, there are lots of faults. This ought to help you sleep better.

It may not be directly related, but if there is a big earthquake, you may want to know about the Tsunami Innundation Line. Do you still want that coast cabin?

The Saga Continues

Barley has developed a growth on his lip, and has been throwing up a bit. Two separate events that “conveniently” coincided so we only had to make one trip to the vet. The growth appears to be a wart, but we should keep watching it. The stomach, well, who knows. It doesn’t feel like he’s got a blockage, but no food for 24 hours.

In other news, Michelle finished her second year of law school. Barley sure knows how to celebrate.

Solar White House

I was surprised when the National Park Service announced that it had installed PV and Solar water heaters on the roof of the White House. Why was I surprised? A little something called history.

President Carter installed the first solar panel on the White House while he was in office. It was more of a symbolic gesture as it wasn’t nearly enough to contribute to the actual energy uses at 1600 Pennsylvania Drive. It was also a symbolic gesture when President Reagan promply removed the panel and killed funding for solar research when he took office. It surprised me to hear that President Bush would install such a symbol of “personal virtue.”

Well, it surprised Richard Perez of Home Power Magazine as well, and he did some research to find out about the equipment. Its still offers a trifling fraction of 1% of the daily energy consumption of the White House. But here’s the real gem: The PV and Solar Heating system was initated by the Clinton Administration, and has simply took this long to muddle through bureaucracy. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. At least the sun is starting to shine in Portland again.

Barley’s Last Physical Therapy

Yesterday Barley had his last physical therapy session. It was a good session for him too, because he got to lunge at the squeaky frog in the tank as much as he wanted. Aside from having symmetric muscle mass in both thighs (good), he can now go on longer walks with some jogging, and eventually jumping mixed in. Its nice to know we don’t have to keep him sedated and control him with an iron fist. Now he can roam around the house with some freedom, and if he “accidently” gets away from us, the world won’t end. Whew.

BarleySaurus Rex

Comic Sans

One of the best things you can do to not look like a lemur is to delete the font Comic Sans from your computer. The second is to go through old documentation and replace any instance of it with some respectable font. Arial is probably my favorite, partly because it looks so good in OS X and PDF. What’s your favorite/least favorite font?

MP3, iTunes, Quality

From Steve Job’s Time Magazine interview:

TIME: Do you think you’ll be able to sway the tens of millions who use the unauthorized services?

Jobs: I don’t know. We’ll find out. But this is really a far better experience. Not only do the downloads not crap out half way through; and not only is it perfectly encoded instead of having the last four seconds cut off …

Although I’m very skeptical about the service overall, I like where its going. All those lemurs who encoded their music so poorly. Stupid Xing, Stupid Real Jukebox. Why I remember the days when Sound Edit 16 was the best encoder…ah…

Really though. I’ve been going through my iTunes library updating tags (still) and I’ve just been deleting shoddily encoded and cut up songs. You get what you pay for.