Todd Bradley’s Galaxy

I just got back from Denver. I figured I should take advantage of Beth being gone this weekend, and so I went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. I got there around 9:10 and stayed until noon, taking in the new Space Odyssey exhibit, watching a show in the newly remodelled Gates Planetarium, and watching an IMAX film called Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees.

I think I liked the chimp movie the best. I was disappointed by both Space Odyssey and the planetarium show. I enjoyed them, but had higher expectations for both. I think the Space Odyssey exhibit would probably be great for an 8 to 10 year old, or maybe even someone in the early teens. But I didn’t think it held much for an adult. About 1/4 to 1/3 of the exhibits were shut down with “Out of Order” signs. As if to make up for it, they had a swarm of volunteers there to answer questions about various stuff. After the big remodelling effort, the planetarium is now very different than the old style planetarium. It’s more like a regular theater with a hemispherical screen. You look forward and up at about a 45 degree angle, instead of straight up. Sadly, the picture quality wasn’t great (the stars were blurry), the show felt thrown together (it was a tour of the solar system from the outside in, but stopped at Earth, neglecting Venus, Mercury and the sun), and the seams in the ceiling/screen are distractingly visible. Plus, the visuals need more contrast; the space between the stars, which you’d expect to be very dark weren’t black but just dark grey. Everything they showed in this presentation appeared to be computer graphics, with no real photography built in like they used to do at the old planetarium. So anyhow, it was a nice visit, and I’m glad I got to see the new stuff, but the only thing that really impressed me was the IMAX show.

OK, I’m now back to start the 2nd blog entry of the day. Here goes:

I snore. Not too much, just a little. But it’s annoying, because I’m also a light sleeper. When I start to snore, I wake myself up. Then I start to fall back asleep, and often, when I get relaxed, I start to snore again. Which wakes me up again, for the cycle to repeat. I especially snore a lot when sleeping on my back. In fact, I haven’t been able to sleep on my back for about 10 or 15 years. I always sleep on my side. By morning, this causes my back to hurt, so I wake up early. So between the snoring and back ache, I just don’t get the quality of sleep I used to 15 years ago.

I’ve tried two snoring cures, neither of which has worked. I thought I’d share those with you today. About 2 years ago, I tried one of these natural anti-snoring products. I can’t remember the exact name, but it was something like Snoreless. There are a few products that work on the same principle. They basically lubricate the back of the mouth, the palate, and the throat. And they’re made of good stuff like oils and vitamins. I tried the product as directed. It didn’t do squat.

More recently, I took a different approach and bought a SleepAngel. It’s pretty strange. It’s basically a strap that goes over your head and holds your chin up while you sleep. This is supposed to prevent snoring and sleep apnea. I used the product as directed, and immediately found that I started snoring more! Well, the instructions for the thing said there’s an adjustment period of a few days, but I tried it for most of a month and found that it still makes me snore more than before. So this one’s a failure, too.

Earlier this month, as I was driving home from Bluff, Utah, my earthship fantasy finally came together for me. You see, I’ve been thinking for a few years how it would be nice to have a 2nd home in the southwest somewhere. It would be out in the middle of nowhere. I’d design and build this home to use solar power (photovoltaic for electricity needs and passive solar for heating), a well, a cistern, septic system, and it would be largely underground for insulation purposes. I originally started down this path a few years ago when my parents updated their will. In doing so, they decided to give me partial ownership of a small piece of property south of Albuquerque, to make some legal issue with the will simpler.

But I visited that land when Beth and I took a road trip through New Mexico and Utah 2 or 3 years ago, and it’s not very scenic. Well, I think I found the place I’d rather build this custom home – somewhere in the vicinity around Monticello, Utah or maybe as far south as Blanding. I’ve always thought the drive between Bluff and Moab was pretty, though Beth disagrees. But driving through there back and forth for the San Juan river trip, I think that would be the place to build my “getaway” home.

As part of this fantasy, I imagined also owning a small airplane so I could fly to and from the area more regularly, without having to drive 9 hours each way. If I learned mountain flying, I could also visit my parents this way, since there’s a landing strip not too far from their house. Well, yesterday I went to the annual Rocky Mountain Fly-In of the Experimental Aircraft Association in Longmont. I walked around and looked at all the cool airplanes on display and watched most of the aerobatics airshow they put on. Walking through the field of planes, I found there are several aircraft in the experimental category that seem like they’d be suitable for vacation flying. The cost would be low, compared to buying a regular general aviation plane. But it would require a lot of time investment, too – between 500 and 1000 hours of build time. A couple models I liked there were the Sonex (for the price) and the Velocity (for the speed and looks).

I just put an ad in Westword (printed and online) and on www.musicmates.com for a bass player for 404 Not Found. I put up ads at Guitar Center and Musician’s Superstore and to a couple newsgroups a couple weeks ago, but nothing promising yet. Hopefully we’ll get some interest from the Westword ad, but the 404 Not Found thing is so atypical, it’s rare to find people who are into it. Most bass players want to play rock and metal cover tunes in bars, it would appear.

I just don’t get it. After several weeks of getting lousy internet performance from my ISP, I got home today and suddenly it’s near perfect. You see, I’ve been paying for 1 megabit of bandwidth for the past 2 years, but sometime this summer it suddenly dropped way down and I started getting huge packet loss. Packet loss for a wireless connection like mine is typically in the 2% range, but mine skyrocketed to a consistent 20% to 40%, with occasional periods of around a minute where NO packets would get through. That’s right, 100% packet loss for 60 seconds at a time. I’ve gone around and around with MHO Networks, and they even sent a technician to check it out. Essentially, they told me there’s nothing they can do. There’s a tree between me and the tower, plus there’s interference from the north metro emergency district’s access points.

So I’ve been stuck paying for 1000 kbps and getting between 100 and 200 kbps, with around 30% packet loss on average. They finally agreed to change my billing so I’d only be paying for the next level down, which seems fair. But I noticed on my Visa statement they were still charging me the original full price. So I emailed them. Then I got a phone call and a message from someone in accounting.

When I got home from work today, I went to call MHO Networks back to explain the deal, and I found that all of a sudden I’m getting around 500 kbps and 2% packet loss. So after two months of consistent, frustrating problems, the day I call to get them to lower my monthly fee, the problems have suddenly disappeared! What a coincidence!

Three years after I posted my advice to avoid Advance Design of Kentucky, I still continue to get email from people who read the warning on my website and appreciate the advice. Unfortunately, this guy read it too late:

Saw your comments on ADK today. Wish I'd seen them before I plonked down $2500 for a hotted up (RAID, 4 hard discs, etc.) Leoni 2002 model. I got a doorstop good for playing solitaire. Examples:

Supposed to be built with quiet parts, sounds like a wind tunnel. Louder than my 2 SCSI servers together.Supposed to have Plextor CD-RW, came with LG. Brings down XP Pro every time I try to burn a CD.Promises of replacements, never happened.

I share your opinion. Stay away from ADK.

You can add this to your website if you wish.

Larry Bellinger

Hi, folks. I realize it’s been since May 19th that I wrote anything here. It’s now June 14th, and quite a bit’s happened in the past month.

For starters, I went on a week long rafting trip on the San Juan River in southern Utah. I wrote up my travel journal here. It’s a little dry, and unfortunately it doesn’t contain any photos, for reasons explained in the journal. But it was an awesome trip and I had a good, relaxing time.

When I got back from my vacation, I started a new job at Voyant. I’m not managing all of software quality assurance, and no longer managing hardware quality or SCM. So far, I’ve had a lot to learn, but it’s been fun.

The band has had a long vacation, too. I think our last show we played was the final Broomfield Poetry Jam gig, but we’re playing the Lion’s Lair on Sunday night. I haven’t made any progress on the new CD, but hope to this weekend.

I did spend some time experimenting with soft synths, to see if a vision I had was possible. I had this idea that for live performance I could replace my Karma keyboard and my Boss sampler and my Alesis mixer with my notebook PC, a smaller MIDI keyboard controller, and my Layla24 interface. This would make my life kit much smaller and easier to lug around. It would also cut down on the number of wires I have to deal with when we play live. So far the experiment hasn’t gone great. I’ve played with this setup twice with very different results, and I fear the notebook PC may be my weakest link.

Meanwhile, here are a couple things you might find interesting:

Cannot find Weapons of Mass Destruction – Someone passed this error message on to me today. I think it’s very funny. I hope you will, too.

The Dog Ate My WMD – An article from TOMPAINE.com that sums up where we are with the missing evidence for WMD, which was our justification for invading Iraq.