fcheblog

aopa letter

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:55:00 -0400

My humble brag(*) responding to AOPA’s airplane/car naming coincidence article(*) refers to this pair of beasts.
Now you know.

(*): AOPA member-only links. So you know.

bright solar idea

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:17:00 -0400

Here in Ontario, the provincial government last year started our own super subsidized solar microgeneration program – $0.81/kWh “earned”, if generated from a rooftop photovoltaic panel, which is about ten times the value of that same electricity flowing the other way, purchased from the grid. I’ve been tempted to jump into it, just on the charming theory of personal backup power in case the grid goes down. (I will leave aside whether such a subsidy makes any economic or environmental sense.)

But for the scruple-free, it provides an opportunity to maximize profit using this European technique:

A German aristocrat of my acquaintance has figured out that the price he will be paid for the output of a solar panel is so high compared with the price he will pay for his input of normal electricity, that he is thinking of rigging up powerful arc lamps to shine on solar panels on his extensive roof.

bleat me daddy

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:17:00 -0400

OK. I’m stumped.
What the heck are the sheep talking about at the end of this sesame street classic?
UPDATE. Ah, this Andrews Sisters song.

advice to salesmen

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:16:00 -0400

A broken piece of the household forced us to entertain a visiting salesperson. It went avoidably badly.

While naming names would be unkind, I’ll leave it with a list of to-do and not-to-do’s for the consideration of future sales folks we encounter. Not that they’d read this ahead of time, but let’s
just imagine.

If your company is currently too busy to take on new business, under no circumstances ignore a new client’s interest. Make contact, apologize, and perhaps next time it will work out.
Do be sensitive to a prospective client not wanting to sit through a thirty-minute multimedia presentation on how great the company thinks it is.
If offering an instant price quote, offer more than three days of thinking time to shop around.
If offering a price quote, offer to print it so that there is a legal offer on the table, rather than on a fleeting computer screen.
If refusing to print estimate dollars/terms, don’t “explain” that this is because the quote generation software is proprietary, and the “IT Department” does not let it leave the custody of the sales folks. As if that were requested.
If a customer says that they will need a little while to gather extra information to evaluate a quote/project, do not harass them by repeatedly interrogating them about where exactly they intend to get that information.
If there is a possibility of perception of conflict of interest, such as if presenting oneself as a fair sole reviewer of the entire market, acknowledge the conflict outright, do not pretend it does not exist.

Do not say goodbyes with “I hope to hear from you soon. But I’m pretty sure I won’t.” That is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Just thinkin’. Duh.

topical speech

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:25:00 -0400

30 minutes of Reagan from 1964. No teleprompter. Multiply his numbers by 5-10, and he’d be right on today.

not one word

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:38:00 -0400

The family went on a brief swimming outing this afternoon to shake our fist at winter. One of the boys and I took a moment to look at the renovation in progress at the recreation centre. Two dozen steel columns have been erected and bolted to the concrete foundations for the new hockey arena. The sight of the mighty machines lifting those parts always swells the heart of a technical person.

As we were watching, two middle-aged ladies came out of the open part of the building. One took a big puff of her cigarette, and said aloud: “Wow, look at all those long columns, standing up so straight. It makes me so excited just looking at them.”

I said only “There’s a joke there, but I’m not saying a single word.” with as straight a face as possible, and headed into the building.

Behind me, the lady cracked up. She was still laughing out loud when we got out of aural range.

how to find a lens cap

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:35:00 -0400

Consider a prized camera, being borrowed by a 3 year-old for some unsupervised roving photography all around the house. (Like his brother, he’s been self-sufficient on computers and cameras since about age 2.5, so this is not unusual here.) Listen for the shutter clicks all around as the brat roams. Relax and get back to work. An hour later, notice the camera, its job now finished, sitting someplace. Note with horror how its lens cap has gone missing.

What would you do?

1) Interrogate offspring for the whereabouts of the little plastic thingie.
2) Look for it yourself.
3) Review the saved photos on the camera.

The winning option was #3 in the case of this morning. During his expedition, Stuart recorded the following picture, showing a black circle lying near some rags. The rags were distinctive enough for me to walk straight there and find the lens cap.

passport privacy

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:11:00 -0400

I am a recent customer of Flashpass, a little software package to partially automate the US Customs data reporting necessary to fly to/from the USA in private aircraft. Flashpass is basically an XML editor that assembles all the personal information required by the USA government: passport numbers, full names, birthdates, home and away addresses, trip dates.

Now comes from the same outfit an online version of the tool, where a web browser is the client. The application and the all above data is presumably stored elsewhere. On the lobo-labs computers. In Mexico.

What could possibly go wrong?