Nevada encourages employees to have kids

March 25, 2005

The state of Nevada's Public Employee Benefit Program released the rate chart for our next year's benefits. In the past a couple with a $500 deductible paid about $18 less a year for coverage than the same couple with a child. Now, however, the scales have tipped, the family of three, five or a dozen will pay $63 dollars less a year than the couple without children. I'm not sure how this will be explained but it should be interesting.

Mini setup

March 25, 2005

The folks over at macminicolo.com have a good guide on setting up a mini to go to a colocation facility. In fact it is good for any mac going to a colocation facility. There are a few additional preferences I think are worth noting.

  • Energy Saver - Set the machine to automatically start after a power outage.
  • Expose - Set all corners to do nothing (this is the default but if you've changed it it can be bothersome over a remote connection
  • CD & DVD - Set all the preferences to ignore. If you have to have a CD inserted remotely you don't want it doing something automatically
  • Menu Bar Icons - Remove as much from the menu bar as possible
  • Screen Saver - Turn it off. No point in wasting cycles drawing graphics on a non-existent screen

Schiavo and the Senate

March 24, 2005

This article suggests both sides of the fight over judicial nominations may gain arguments from the Schiavo case. On the liberal side of the isle the case serves to support the idea that we need strong non-political judges to stand up to Congress. On the conservative side of the isle arguments come that the judiciary has overstepped their role. One important point in all of this is that the courts did what a strong majority of Americans want. Across the board, including evangelical Christians a majority of Americans support the right of a family to make family decisions in private and not have the Congress step in.

Republicans in the Senate are pushing to drop filibusters on judicial nominations so that controversial nominees can be more easily appointed. It is important to remember, however, that the Bush Administration has named judges who can't keep their licenses current for these positions.

A litte worse than none

March 24, 2005


Nevada Power has managed to do it to us again. Tuesday night we endured about an eight hour outage as a result of a thunderstorm. Not terribly unusual and something that is to be expected in the rural portions of Nevada or anywhere. Last night about 3 AM we awoke to the sound of the UPS's chirping throughout the house. It seems the power had once again gone out.

ALSE Update

March 24, 2005

Well, I am entering the last few weeks of the ALSE course. We have learned about flotation equipment, first aid and survival kits, body armor and restraint harnesses. Today we talked about helmets and protective eyewear. I am attaching a photo of the class inspecting life rafts and another of me looking goofy with some very expensive laser protective eye glasses.

I have made most of my plans for leave when I get done here. I will be going to New York, Washington DC, Seattle, and Colorado during my time off. I'll be in Colorado from April 13th through the 15th. Hopefully I'll get to do some Skiing. I'll probably also stop by a search and rescue meeting for old times sake.

Life is so easy here right now that I am no longer in any big hurry to leave. On the other hand, I am looking forward to getting to Campbell and getting back in the air.

Apple Hardware Test

March 23, 2005

We spent much too much time this week tracking down a problem with a 15-inch PowerBook. The problem, which initially seemed to be a disk problem, turned out to be a disk problem. After several attempts to copy information, reinstall the operating system and get the machine working again I finally stooped to running Apple Hardware Test. It is not quite as low on the ladder as actually reading the manual but the proximity makes many geekish folk uncomfortable. Of course it took about 3 minutes to diagnose the disk as being bad. Not the hours of frustration and false starts provided by choosing to "do it my way". Lesson learned. At least until next time.

New flute

March 20, 2005

While visiting Red Rocks yesterday I added a new flute to my collection. It is a beautiful Double Eaglet fro Great Bald Eagle Creations. The Tiger Maple construction is beautiful and the higher range of the flute is a beautiful compliment to the alto flutes in my collection. The Double Eaglet is similar in construction to the Together Forever Eagle Vision flute pictured with eaglet fetishes instead of the pair of eagles.

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