Farewell Hermiston

Yesterday was (I think) our last trip to Hermiston Oregon.  We had to finish cleaning up the house we had rented, have the carpet professionally cleaned, and retrieve our 5th wheel trailer from a friend's house.

Additionally we had to close out our account at the credit union and turn in the PO Box keys.  We managed to take care of everything, then return home at 10:30 PM.  A long day, and 450 more miles on the body.  Today is for resting!

Almost time to ride again

It's getting about time to ride again. The old 2005 CBR1000 has been calling me lately, and every time I see someone else riding, I wish I were out there. I am going to find time - one of these days when it's not cold or rainy :)

When we moved recently, I started the bike in order to walk it up the ramp into the back of my truck. It cranked verrry slowly. I suppose it was the combination of a winter without a trickle charger, and the battery being about 7 yrs old.

Seven years is a pretty good lifespan for a lead-acid battery (my experience has been 5 years tops), so I decided to replace it, rather than to let it leave me stranded somewhere. I got on the internet, intending to replace it with a similar model, and found this website: http://www.atbatt.com/

I was surprised to learn that a company named Shorai manufactures a Lithium-ion battery for my bike. I was more surprised at the specifications of the battery - particularly the weight, capacity, and cycles.

According to the information available, the lithium battery is: "Up to 80% lighter than conventional lead-acid batteries, has up to 2000 cycles - up to 8 times longer cycle life, and stores up to 1 year without recharging." Impressive!!!

Here are the specs for a lead-acid replacement:
Chemistry Dry Charge AGM
Voltage 12
Capacity 2000 mAh / 2.00 Ah Rating 24 Whr
CCA 190
Length 6.00 inch / 15.24 cm
Width 3.43 inch / 8.71 cm
Height 3.69 inch / 9.37 cm
Color Gray
Weight 7 lb / 3.18 Kg
Here are the specs for a lithium-ion replacement:
Chemistry Lithium-Iron Phosphate
Voltage 12
Capacity 14000 mAh / 14.00 Ah Rating 168 Whr
CCA 210
Color Black
Weight 2 lb / 0.91 Kg
Putting the new battery in after removing the lead one, it actually felt hollow, like a battery with nothing inside it. But it cranked the bike really well.

I took the bike for a short ride down to the end of our road, to warm it up, then tried to get a wheelie out of it. I don't think it likes the altitude (2500ft)very much, cuz it really didn't want to wheelie. I guess the next thing to do is to have the Honda dealer do spring maintenance.



They look a bit lonely, don't they?

Gardening tips

My mother-in-law has been staying with us this past week. She is a dear lady, and one day while she and my wife were out shopping, she bought several plants to add color to the back yard.

Today she planted the a couple of dozen violas. By early evening, they had been eaten down to the ground! I suspect it was deer, but who knows... Looks like we will have to do hanging flower baskets!

Housing stuff...

I'm kinda wiped out right now. With the DuPont schedule, you flip-flop on and off nights for 3 weeks, then get a week off.

The last week I had "off", we moved my household, plus two storage units, from Hermiston, Oregon, to Northern Idaho. It took 3 trips with a 26 foot moving van. Most days I drove 3.5 hours, loaded the van, drove 3.5 hours back, and unloaded it. It was an exhausting week, and now I am back in the 3 week grind part of my work schedule.

I just had one day off, of which I spent 4 hours at work starting up the plant at midnight. On my one day off, however, I got some good stuff done around the house :)

A week ago, we ordered some custom sized pleated cellular shades. They aren't cheap: A set for all the windows in the house (except the master bathroom) cost $2700. But these suckers really trap the heat in, so they are worth it! I spent several hours installing the shades yesterday. It wasn't much fun, because it was overhead work, and my shoulders kept getting sore.

On the bright side, I have a really nice Ridgid drill that made it go pretty quickly. I love that sucker! The little work light comes on when you pull the trigger, and it's down by the battery, so you get nice side-lighting on what you are drilling/screwing. See picture.



I can already tell how well the shades are insuling the windows. The house is heated by a heat pump, and it has been running almost non-stop every night, starting at sundown when the chilly mountain air starts to come on strong. Yesterday after I installed the new blinds, the heater never came on at all, and I was up until 5:00 AM, getting ready for night shift.

I can't say it strongly enough; these shades are pretty amazing. When you lift them in the morning, you can feel the cold air pour out of the windowsill. Best of all, the new design has no cords. Here is a side view of one of these blinds.


Front View:


Another thing I did was repair the water system/ice maker on the refrigerator. When we were living in the rentals the past couple of years, the fridge was out in the garage. The first rental didn't have room for our big fridge, and the other rental had its own fridge. In any event, since it never occured to me to drain the fridge, the charcoal filter cartridge froze and exploded, as did the plastic solenoid valve assembly that sends water to the ice maker and the water dispenser. We now have ice!

Water under the bridge...

March 13, 2007. Oh. My. God.
The last entry in this blog. It seems like a lifetime ago. So much has happened in the interrim.

I have changed jobs twice, moved three times, and my daughter has grown from age 4 to age 9. My father-in-law passed away, and our dog Gertie had to be put down.

Happy Easter, By the way!!!



We moved from Bakersfield in the spring of 2010 to Hermiston, Oregon. The goal was to get away from the smog and crime. Hermiston seemed nice at first, but we gradually began to realize that it wasn't for us, due to the poor public education system. We moved to Northern Idaho two weeks ago.

So far it seems a great deal better than what we have experienced in Hermiston. For one thing we were able to buy our dream house (an REO) for a reasonable price. We are now the proud owners of a 3700 sqft house on 5 wooded acres. I finally have the shop I always wanted, and Corie has her craft room. We had deer grazing in the back yard yesterday evening.




Even though it's only a couple hundred miles North of Hermiston, the weather is drastically cooler and wetter. We had snow flurries here yesterday, although by afternoon it was motorbike weather.

We have a new puppy named Bridget. She is another dachshund, all full of life and energy.

The new job is going quite well. I enjoy most of the people that I work with, and this is one of the better-running facilities I have worked at.

I am preparing to start home-brewing as a hobby, after a fellow at the previous job got me interested. This is really quite counter-productive to my other hobby, weightlifting. It will be interesting to see which prevails. Probably the less painful one!

Grace has grown into a highly intelligent, intellectual young lady, and a voracious reader, which is part of the reason we re-located. The schools in Hermiston were failing "No Child Left Behind", which I consider to be a very low hurdle. Grace had tested and passed the Oregon "Talented and Gifted" (TAG) program, but the schools had no money available for that resource. Grace was stagnating, since the school was focusing all their efforts on getting the mediocre students to pass the test.

Below is a photo of Grace playing miniature golf while we were at Oktoberfest in Leavenworth, Washington.

I will go on a rant about the socio-economic situation in Hermiston (and probably most agricultural areas) in a later post. Suffice to say we are in a happier place now.

Life begins at 140

This morning on the way to work I went as fast as I have ever traveled, without being in an aircraft. It was 5:00 AM and pitch black... I may have been over-driving the headlights a little, hahaha. Funny how competent this motorcycle is... no drama, shaking or noise, just brutal acceleration off the start and a lot of wind noise at the top end.

Yesterday on the way home, Daniel and I got trapped behind a pickup truck that was following a big rig. The big rig was going through the gears after pulling away from an intersection, and we were all stacked up behind it. The pickup truck driver waved us motorbikes to pass them both. Daniel took off first, so he missed this :(((

I whacked open the throttle 100% - something I don't often do. As I got next to the pickup, the engine hit its sweet spot and the front wheel lifted off. The low wheelie lasted until I was about even with the cab of the big rig. Cool feeling! I wonder what the guy in the pickup thought :)

I was on travel for a couple of weeks back east. I'll post about that trip in the next day or so.

Finally! A post in 2007!

Ok it's been a while since I posted anything on the blog. In reality there hasn't been a great deal I've felt like discussing. Of interest locally, we had a natural gas pipeline rupture and explode into flames across the street from my power plant. We are currently (surprise) shut down for lack of fuel. Below are a couple of pictures taken by a co-worker a couple of minutes after the initial blast:





Later in the evening after the natural gas sources feeding the fire had, for the most part, been stopped, a second gas line melted and burst (note the smoke coming off the wood power pole to the right of the fire. The radiant heat was fierce):

Where the satellites are...

Check this out.

http://science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html/

A window will pop up and ask you if you want to run it. Click yes. You will get a real-time display of all the satellites orbiting the earth. The ring of satellites is the ones in geosynchronous orbit - they stay in the same place in the sky so that you can aim your DirectTV dish once and then forget about it.

You can zoom in and out on the earth and roll it around to find where you are at. Of greater interest is that you can click on a satellite and see its orbit. If you happen to be out shortly after sundown or just before sunup, you can look to see if you can watch a flyover. This is when the sky will be dark, but the satellite will still be illuminated by direct sunlight. It's very cool to watch.

Anyway, it's a cute program and I like to fire it up from time to time.

UPDATE:

 Well crap - that's another great website that's gone for good.  Anyone know of another one?

Polonium 210

I've been meaning to post about the fascinating poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

The political ramifications are a bit beyond my understanding, other than the obvious consideration that someone was bold enough to assassinate a political enemy on foreign soil.

Why instead of radioactive poison didn't they just shoot him, disappear him, or run him over? Curious stuff...

What I find fascinating about this case is the technical challenges and genius at the nature of the poisoning, as well as the choice of the radionuclide, Polonium 210 (or Po-210 for those in the nuclear biz).

I've done a bit of reading on Po-210 since the news of Litvinenko's poisoning hit the wires. It's quite an interesting and quirky nuclide.

Let me start by sharing a little about radioactive decay. There are four basic decay mechanisms for radioactive nuclei, each with distinct mechanisms for releasing the energy of decay. As the mechanisms are distinct, so must be the means for detecting them.

Gamma rays are ubiquitous. These are elecromagnetic waves with very short wavelengths, somewhat shorter than hard x-rays. Gamma rays are usually associated with a neutron decaying to a proton and an electron, or just being fired out of an unstable nucleus. 90-95% of all decays release a gamma ray, and it's probably responsible for most of the background radiation everyone is exposed to, either indirectly from cosmic rays, or naturally occurring radioactive elements.

Biological damage due to gamma rays is not bad, as these things go. They create ions by photoelectric effect, pair production, or by compton scattering. The upshot is that charged electrons (or positrons) are knocked loose and are available to ionize (damage) internal tissues. I think of these as little BB gun shots. A few are not so bad, but a shotgun blast of them is quite harmful. Gamma rays have a biological damage factor of x 1

Sheilding: High density metals are best at absorbing gamma rays. The greater density of the metal increases the likelihood of the above interactions attenuating the gamma ray before it reaches you. The amount of sheilding required depends on the intensity (decays per second), and incident energy of the gamma rays.

Detection: Exept for the weakest gamma rays, which are rare, gamma is easily detected. A simple geiger detector can identify an energetic gamma emitter 10-20 feet away.

Beta particles (also known as electron emission) are also ubiquitous. Most of the known decay mechanisms are beta decays, and are usually accompanied by a gamma ray. Beta emissions are mostly associated with the two highly unstable nuclei remaining after a heavy nucleus is split (fissioned).

ASIDE: The highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear plants undergoes a phenomenal amount of beta/gamma activity. In fact these unstable fission products generate about 7% of the heat of a reactor at full power immediately after it has been shut down. This heat tapers off over the course of several weeks, but without cooling, this decay heat can melt the a reactor core long after it's been shut down.

Back to beta particles. They are basically exceedingly fast-moving electrons, and because gamma rays cause damage by creating these particles, their biological damage mechanism and severity are the same, x 1.

Sheilding: Beta particles have quite a bit of penetrating power, though nowhere near the power of gamma rays. A 1/4 inch sheet of aluminum is the textbook example of what will stop beta particles from reaching you. Obviously this approach will not work if the beta emitter has entered your body.

Detection: Beta particles are easier to detect than gamma. A gamma ray can pass right through a geiger detector without interacting with a molecule of the gas. A charged beta particle is quite likely to have several interactions as it passes through the gas.

Neutrons: These particles are rare, except within the confines of a nuclear reactor, so I won't go into them in depth. I did want to mention them, as they are what cause atoms to become radioactive, (e.g. emit alpha, beta, and gamma radiation) and cause them to fission. This is important, because this part of what makes the Polonium 210 story so interesting.

Alpha particles are most often associated with heavy nuclei (think Radium, Thorium, Uranium, Radon). An unstable heavy nucleus usually kicks out an Alpha particle and a gamma ray as it seeks a lower (more stable) energy level. The alpha particle is actually just a helium nucleus (two neutrons and two protons), that dropped the electrons as it was blasted out of the nucleus.

Here's what's bad about alpha particles biologically: They have a large +2 electrical charge, and compared to the other decay particles, they are massive. Due to their mass and charge, they ionize tissue quite readily, doing a great deal of damage. In many respects, they are like little nuclear hollow-point bullets. They do not penetrate very far in skin tissue or in air, but are lethal when taken internally.

Sheilding: In general an alpha particle can be blocked by a piece of paper. Taken internally, there is nothing to prevent an alpha-emitter from doing truly massive damage. Alpha particles have a biological damage factor of x 20.

Detection of alpha emitters is not normally difficult. Since most nuclides emit a high energy gamma ray at the same time as the alpha particle, the gamma ray gives away the presence of a radionuclide. Interetingly Po-210 is one of the few alpha-emitters that does not emit a gamma ray during decay. Direct detection of alpha particles is more difficult; due to their large charge, they tend to come to have very short flight paths, even in air. Detectors must have thin windows (mylar) and be very close to the source. Geiger detectors and scintillation counters in close proximity to the source are your best bet for detection of alpha particles

Now that we have the primer on radiation, sheilding, biological damage, and detection taken care of, lets look at how Litvinenko was poisoned:

1) Polonium-210 is an alpha emitter that has a half-life of about 138 days. That means that 138 days after you take it from a reactor, only half will remain, after another 138 days you'll only have 1/4 of it, then 1/8, 1/16, etc, etc. There is no gamma ray associated with this decay.

2) Polonium is exceedingly chemically toxic. Weight-for-weight, polonium is around 5 million times more toxic than hydrogen cyanide, the gas used in state's gas chambers. 50 nanograms will kill 50% of those exposed to it. It accumulates in the liver and spleen where it chemically attacks them.

So what can we deduce about the poisoners' technological infrastructure from the above information?

They have a nuclear reactor (or access to freshly spent nuclear fuel) to even produce Po-210.

They have access to a hot cell which gives them the ability to remotely handle and chemically process highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel to separate the Polonium.

They realize that once the Polonium 210 is ingested, the victim's body will act as a shield to prevent alpha particles from reaching external radiation detectors. No gamma rays will give away the existence of the Polonium.

They understand that the dose of Polonium 210 will kill Litvinenko either chemically or due to the the alpha radiation effects.

Which leaves us with the question of who did it... all I can say for certain is that they have highly developed nuclear technology: Nuclear reactor, fuel handling, and isotope separation. There are a handful of countries and companies that could do this, but only one that had all of that plus a grudge ;)

Yahoo Searches

OK, now I know why I've never fit in socially...

From Yahoo:

Top Searches of 2006
By Mike Krumboltz
Fri, December 08, 2006, 3:40 pm PST

"Yahoo! users searched on all sorts of stories this year, but Britney was the biggest of them all. Despite (or perhaps thanks to) her trainwreck of a personal life, Ms. Spears took home the title of Yahoo's top search of 2006.

While the former Mrs. Federline may have been the most popular, she was far from Search's only story. "American Idol" dominated as expected, the untimely death of Steve Irwin shocked us all, and the Iraq war remained on the minds of many."

I've never really given a damn about celebrities - I don't attach any more importance to their lives than anyone else's. Perhaps less so in in the case of "Idol", Britney and Irwin. Idol and Britney are without substance, and Irwin spent a lot of time provoking wild animals to further his career. It finally caught up with him. His crocs likely would have been happier and better off in their natural surroundings.

That the Iraq war is #4 on the list behind these others isn't surprising. What is surprising is that this horrific event made the top 5. Amazing how ill-informed we are as a nation. With all the information of the world available on a PC, we use it to see what the tabloids are saying in real-time about Britney... and so I'm happy to say I'm not a well-adjusted member of this society ;)