David Gessel
Pleasant Post Apocalyptic Sunday
On the Road in Iraq
We took a very nice tour from Baghdad to Basrah by car. The countryside is pretty amazing, from the relative lushness of the fertile crescent to the desert sands of the south to the marshes of the deep south and the distant flare gas fires on the horizon.
Normal flare gas
Ut oh, blow out…
Stupidest Dialog Box Evar
This is the dialog you get in thunderbird if you end up with multiple operations running – such as if you “download all mail” twice without realizing that a previous iteration is still running.
I could not possibly care that a background operation failed (and should be patiently and silently waiting until the other operation finishes, then try again itself; maybe, just maybe letting me know if I’m going to quit or shut down how many operations are pending in a single dialog).
But not only could no user ever care about the information provided by this dialog, it is done so as a modal dialog that steals focus. ZOMG, that’s the sort of user-hating bad design that makes people abandon a package.
Cordless Mice?
Apparently the FAA has decided that cordless mice with their nanowatts of transmit power represent a risk to airplanes. Discussion forums contemplate that the FAA is concerned they could be used to trigger explosives in the hold (when they outlaw cordless mice, only outlaws will have cordless mice). Perhaps they found a cordless mouse that used a spark gap transmitter and so banned the whole class.
BTW, this is being posted via gogo inflight, the wireless radio on my laptop also uses 2.4ghz unregulated and could be 200mw and who knows who made it (same frequency band, 3 or 4 orders of magnitude more RF power).
While I’ve dealt with worse, I am on occasion reminded of just how awesome the air bureaucracy in this country really is.
Science Experiments
Home from Afghanistan to find some very interesting science experiments waiting for me.
Yogurt residue grew into a lovely pattern of furriness. Almost makes you want to pet it.
Coffee beans should have been fairly sterile after making coffee, so perhaps the mold there was donor from the yogurt cup.
Whatever was left over in the plastic container seemed to seed a variety of mold types.
A strong dose of bleach and some scrubbing got everything sterile again.
Kandahar
KAF would be very nice base, quite photogenic. Aircraft take off night and day, the fighters taking off on afterburner are like a free fireworks show every night. The A10s are some of the coolest planes ever and there aren’t that many places to see them any more.
The downside to the base is the Poo Pond. It is, perhaps the most famous feature of the base. It was built by the Russians, a gigantic open cesspool.
The smell… the smell is truly incredible. Imagine being locked in an overfull outhouse on a hot, windless day, but spreading downwind for miles and inescapable. It is one of those things that is better experienced vicariously.
But at sunset, aside from the retching stink, it is quite photogenic – the black, viscous liquid is mirror like, still and reflects the sunset just beyond the bio hazard signs.
A few more pictures from Kabul
