Winter comes to the Swamp

For the last two days or so we have been having what passes for 'cold' weather in these parts. Temps in the low 20's for the High and single digits for the Low., plus lots of wind. Here is a screen cap of what Weather.com showed a few moments ago.
My Pond froze up pretty much overnight; I had to turn off the water pump leaving the fish on their own for the rest of the winter. Except for the air pump or bubbler I won't worry about them till it gets warm enough for them to start moving again and then I'll have to run the water pump.

The twice daily weekend walks with the neighbor have been tough, not so much the time in the cold but the process of bundling up. I go with layers and it takes me 10 minutes to get everything on. I was actually sweating upon my return tonight so; I am getting the exercise without all the skin damage that goes with the cold.

Since we are pretty much trapped indoors I have had the time to finish the move of the Cable and Network gear into the new equipment closet. Here is the finished product.

On the top shelf is my Belkin combination Wired/Wireless Router. I still have several rooms that have are wired, a printer and my office are wired as well. The kids when they are home use the wireless and so does the Good Mrs. T, here computer is wireless. The Belkin gives exceptional coverage not only within our house but our general neighborhood as well. I have several pieces of gear that are in my neighbors house across the street that connect to my system because the throughput is better than in their home. I don't mind.

The bottom shelf is the actual Phone and Cable modem from Comcast. I have it powered on a UPS so we will always have phone service and network capability as well.

On the left wall is the Cable service for the entire house. I ran each cable to each room without breaks and I bring the main feed from the cable company directly from the box on the outside of the house. The old system, installed by the house builder had splitters installed and mounted in our attic. We had poor Signal to Noise Ratio input to the Cable Modem and of course we were having pixilation issues to the many TV's in the house.

That's an Electroline EDA-FT08300 8 port Cable TV Amplifier that distributes the one feed to all the rooms in the house. I noticed an immediate improvement in TV video quality with this installed.

I will eventually add a PC to this closet that will serve as a Print Server and a Backup Storage device for the network. I am not in a hurry for that however, it will happen sooner if the cold weather keeps up!!

BT: Jimmy T sends.

Secret Life of Space Shuttles

There is a great article here by the magazine Air&Space regarding the long history of the Space Shuttle carrying classified cargo into space. It is a fascinating read, quite long but filled with a bunch of anecdotes from the actual participants, NASA Astronauts and Air Force personnel specifically recruited and trained to conduct classified operations in space.

I love this kind of stuff, most of this is coming out now because programs are being de-classified and the true story can now be told. This differs from the policy over at the New York Times of compromising National Security to help lose a war and thereby throw an election.

BT: Jimmy T sends.

Throwing Protons at Protons

I love tech stuff. This kind of research is fascinating but I really wonder how practical this is going to be to the world. Humanity may not need to know how the Big Bang happened, we know how it turned out. Maybe they will find out how to beam whole matter around and eventually bring us the Transporter Beam. Any way, what ever, there was a huge amount of money sunk into this facility which was supposed to go here in the U.S. but federal money could not be had so it went overseas.

This video does a really good job of describing what is going on inside the several underground rings. Really fascinating to me.


On my last flight out west I flew through Chicago's Midway airport which is not anything special but on the flight out heading west the plane flew low for many miles instead of the immediate climb to cruising altitude. As we flew southwest over the Illinois prairie I could easily make out the ring of the buried Fermi National Accelerator which is no where near the size of the Hadron Collider (6.28km versus 27,m). Just as impressive however for what they use them for, almost nothing. Fermi Labs being famous for the first controlled nuclear pile (hand calculations provided by Enrico Fermi himself).

Interesting. Not sure of the benefit except for winning at Trivia.

BT: Jimmy T sends.