Enforcing the idiotic Ohio smoking ban has cost Montgomery County $70,000 in the past year.

$3800 in fines have been issued.

$450 in fines have been collected.

No word about how much complying with the law has cost private businesses in terms of facility rennovations and lost customers.

Meanwhile, the front page of the Dayton Daily News today moans about the millions of dollars schools are having to do without. Way to prioritize, idiots. 

I’ll state that, somewhat to my embarrassment, I’m mildly obsessed with the series and the main character for reasons related to a similar fascination I have with House and Richard Nixon: I’m drawn to characters and people that have genuinely useful intellect, people of accomplishment and contribution, but who emotionally struggle with common situations and people, especially themselves. I’ve read David McCullough’s book and I’ve known quite a bit about John Adams since I was young due to my personal interest in the American Revolution. To see a television series dedicated to the one founding father probably most responsible for our independence is scant compensation in place of any formal memorial for the man in our nation’s capitol. Of all the founding fathers who played major roles during the revolution and who were early Presidents, Adams is the only one without the formal recognition of a monument or a portrait on currency. Jefferson and Washington both get elaborate memorials and a bill and coin each featuring their portrait, and Adams gets nothing! That’s damn unfair, and damn unappreciative of the country and countrymen who owe him so much. (Sam Adams, a more minor player, still has a beer named after him, even though he ran a brewery into the ground two centuries ago.)

The series is full of moments that, with twenty-first century hindsight, I would have loved to have seen in person. Imagine walking with the Adamses during the night to the hill just outside their home overlooking Boston to see the British fleet shelling the fortifications around the city, knowing that this marks the beginning of the Revolutionary War. What must the feeling be like to watch teams of men drag captured cannons from Fort Ticonderoga through the mud, lead by Henry Knox, past the Adams home to the heights over Boston, knowing those cannons will force a British retreat? (Even though there wasn’t powder or a single cannon ball for any of them!) How thrilling and unforgettable would it have been to witness Washington’s inauguration, either from the street or behind him on the balcony, to hear the man’s voice speak the oath, and to be overtaken by the cheering of the crowd? (Adams’s acknowledgement as Vice President on the balcony with Washington is his finest moment in the series, in my opinion.) Surely it would be awe-inspiring, and maybe a little weird, to ride a wagon into Washington City, as they called it, which was a tree-filled swamp, and then come to a clearing with a half-finished White House constructed in the middle. The creative people associated with the production did an outstanding job of recreating these moments and scenes for the audience. Reading and imagining it are one thing, but to have it presented before you as reality is something else entirely.

To close this post, I want to write something about David Morse and Paul Giamatti. David Morse, who played George Washington, had quite a task set for him. He could easily have played the character too narrowly and made him out to be all hero and no human. Not so, thankfully. Washington certainly was a gentleman and a aristocrat of his time, but he also had a temper and ambition, and without going over the top, Morse plays Washington about as well as anyone ever may. And Paul Giamatti owns the character of John Adams. Although the series seems to primarily focus on the negatives and trials of Adams’s life, Giamatti manages to perfectly portray Adams’s self-deprication and dry humor when necessary, and I very much enjoyed that. The range of emotions necessary for playing the character, from disowning his own son and his grief at Abagail’s death, to the triumphant moment life was breathed into the Constitution as Washington was sworn in, has to be difficult for any actor. As much as some people may dismiss acting as a trivial skill, it must take stamina and fortitude to bring these emotions to the screen day after day. I’m sure both Mr. Morse and Mr. Giamatti will sleep better tonight knowing they have my approval and appreciation.

This evening, however, I discovered that the soundtrack to the series is available, and I promptly purchased it through iTunes. While waiting for the download, I perused some of the reviews at Amazon and came across this mind-numbing gem of colossal stupidity:

A terrific series with brilliant cinematography! I DO wish that the producers (Tom Hanks certainly had the say) had left out the use of the tobacco drug. We don’t need smoking or other use of tobacco in ANY movie. Otherwise, a memorable series that everyone over the age of 12 should see! I understand that the DVD extras as really supposed to be something. I’ve already got my order in for the set.

Emphasis added.

I responded with this comment, which I want to re-print here before Amazon takes it down:

Of all the unpleasant things depicted in the series that are historical factualities… tarring and feathering, inoculations with a rusty unsterile cutting implement, life-threatening disease of all kinds, graphic tooth decay, chronic alcoholism, amputation of a leg from a man still awake and the associated gore, a masectomy performed on a woman who could do little except bite down on a pencil, and whatever else I’ve forgotten to list… you’ve chosen to complain about John Adams *smoking cigars* as something inappropriate? This is exactly the kind of anti-tobacco zealotry that further reinforces the nanny state which founding fathers such as John Adams would have fought with every last fiber of his being. It seems that the point of John Adams’s life, and the series, are lost on you.

Freedom. The freedom to make mistakes and bad decisions (if you consider smoking such) included. Especially included. Having the personal preferences of others forced upon you by the law is not freedom.

And as a somewhat related stinger, I want to add this for those of you who have seen the series or have any meaningful understanding of John Adams: Think of Adams, his life, his principles, his accomplishments, his obstacles, and his integrity; and then take a good look at the three candidates we’re considering right now. If you don’t feel some sense of sadness, of regret, of apprehension for our republic, then I call into serious question your patriotism, your perspective, and the value you assign comfort at freedom’s expense.

Netgear’s FVS338 firewall (firmware 3.0.2-21) currently does not support UPnP. However, it does support port triggering. Without getting into too many technical details, in order to use the voice, video, and desktop sharing features of iChat with your FVS338, you need to configure some port triggering rules under Security -> Port Triggering in the web management interface. Below is a screen capture of the settings you’ll need. Click the thumbnail for a full-sized graphic.

If you find this helpful, or if this configuration isn’t quite correct and you have a suggestion for improving it, please feel free to leave a comment.

Here they are wrestling in the yard. Watch out for those flopping ears.

This is a really good shot of little dog, the youngest.

The oldest one, on the left, is attempting to chew a frozen tennis ball.

Little dog looks like she’s about to fly away.

These shots are of a growing snow shelf that’s protruding from our roof, probably about 12 inches or so.

Ok, that’s all from my mundane life today.

Temperature wasn’t the only difference. The rig we used to photograph the eclipse was also somewhat different this time around. Here’s a picture of me with our equipment.

And here’s Tim.

Now you know the cast of characters. The towels hanging over the scope were used to shield some parts from frost accumulation as the night progressed.

The last time we took eclipse pictures, we used a 35mm Nikon film camera, the model number of which escapes me, through our Meade LX200 12″ f/10 scope (the big telescope in the pictures) with an f/6.3 focal reducer. That particular combination of camera and scope worked out well for getting a frame-filling full moon projected onto the film. This time around, however, with the LX200 and focal reducer, the image of the moon was too large and we couldn’t fit in the whole thing. So instead we had to use the Celestron SP-C80 80mm f/11.4 mounted on the top of the LX200 to get pictures. The moon fit into the frame, although it was a tad smaller than we wanted, but still acceptable. The Celestron is mounted on the top of the LX200 because the LX200 has a tracking motor that allows both scopes to follow the moon without having to move it by hand.

So why did an f/10 and f/6.3 SCT not give us a full moon picture, but an f/11.4 refractor did? I dunno. I don’t understand what I need to in order to explain what happened. I’ll have to do some reading.

To mount the camera onto the Celestron, we used a T-ring adapter and an extension tube, as such.

Here it all is from the front, just for fun.

So how did pictures of the eclipse turn out? We took about 160 pictures over the course of the evening and I haven’t had a chance to inspect each one yet. However, I have chosen a handful that stand out, from different stages of the eclipse. These images have been scaled down to fit on this page, but they have not been processed in any way except for cropping. In the future when I have a little time to adjust these images I may post some that are cleaned up. All pictures are taken with a Canon D60 digital camera set at ISO 400. I’ve noted the exposure times below each picture.

1/750s

1s

3s

2s

1/350s

1/500s

I’m pretty proud of those.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

What’s the deal with cheesecake? Is it a cake or a pie? It has the shape and texture of a pie, but it’s named cake. Why isn’t it cream cheese pie? 

Mr. Aaron Adams
departed this life
July 27th, 1804.
Ætat 27
Uncertain life, how swift it flies
To day man lives tomorrow dies.
This hour in health & strength & bloom
& the very next he fills the tomb
Ask you for proof, Behold it here
And give your friend a ?? of ??.

When I was a kid, I pushed the power button on the TV and turned a dial or punched in a number to select a channel and watched. There was nothing more to it, and it worked 99.99999% of the time. The only troubleshooting my parents ever had to do with a TV was, “It’s dead. We need a new one,” and, “Call the cable company because the cable’s out.” Likewise, for the first 2/3+ of my life I could pick up a phone and dial a number, and within a few seconds I was speaking clearly to the person on the other end.

Now I deal with a TV that has a thousand different connectors and options and yet doesn’t perform simple functional things that I, as a new user, discovered should be present in 15 seconds. I deal with a cable box that takes several minutes to boot, and with a remote that has a good 1.5 second delay for every action, where the TV we had 20 years ago was instant. And then I need to set all the settings on the cable box in coordination with all the settings on the TV to make sure I don’t end up with squashed faces and muffled audio.

I have a cell phone signal that’s full strength when I hold the phone one way, and completely gone when I move the phone 1/4 inch to the left. Signal strength depends on moisture in the atmosphere and whether there are leaves on the trees. 3/5 of my calls are eventually dropped, regardless of my location, and 1/3 of incoming calls never ring my phone to begin with but are sent straight to voicemail.

This is not progress. All the advantages brought to us by HDTV and cell phones are more than negated by the technical difficulties and the constant struggle to make them work properly. For all the alleged geniuses with degrees and certifications in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, why has it turned out to be so difficult to replicate the level of reliability these devices had 20 years ago? Maintaining things that work well in that same state should be their first priority.