Polar bears listed as threatened!

It took three years, a LOT of work, and a lawsuit to finally make the U.S. Department of the Interior make a decision on whether polar bears are at risk due to climate change. One day before they HAD to make a decision, polar bears have been listed as THREATENED, which is the first step before becoming endangered. Read the official release from the U.S. DOI.
I hope that history will look back and see this as the turning point that the US recognized climate change and global warming due to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emisions. Bush has messed up badly. He will be leaving office as the least popular President in decades, that delievered a horrible response to one of the greatest natural disaters in US history - hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the dismissal of U.S. Attorneys controversy, rising inflation, agreeing to use of "harsh interrogation techniques", continuing the second longest US war, misleading the US in regards to climate change and not acting on it, leaving when fuel prices are at record highs, food prices are going up, the economy is essentially in a recession, and the US popularity is at an all time low with governements around the world. Someone has to serve as the bad example.
I really hope the next President of the United States of America takes climate change as his top priority. Change is good, and necessary at times. It may be painful at first, but good things will happen.
Greenpeace has a 96 page document that they've defined as a blueprint to a sustainable energy future. I'm about to read it now. I'm pretty sure that for the $1.5 TRILLION dollars we spent on trying to wage an oil war in Iraq (Iraq has the second biggest oil reserved in the world), we could have secured an independant, renewable energy future for the US, which would also lead to better national security because we wouldn't be dependant on foreign oil.
No, I'm not really happy that my tax dollars will be going to pay for a messy war for many, many years into the future.

One year already

Wow, time flies by when you're working your ass off. It's almost hard to believe that Dena and I have been in Scotland for a year now. We spent the first 3 months in temporary housing and numerous rental cars. Then, we bought a couple of motorcycles, happily moved into a great house in a nice neighborhood, and picked up our BWM. I started travelling for work, and Dena spent time making our house into a home. We flew home for Decemeber to visit friends and family, and to have surgery on my back. Dena spent the next couple of months updating Marine Turbine's website. I've spent the last couple of months working longer and longer hours on various projects.
Because time is flying by, we have made a commitment to see and experience more things while we are here. I'm looking forward to taking a motorcycle trip over to Lock Ness. Dena and I plan to go down to Glasgow. We're also making plans to go visit Frederique in France and spend a couple of days on the beach in Nice.

Internet TV is finally here!

OK, internet TV has been around for a while in some form or another, but at least from my perspective there hasn't been any well know and organized software to watch TV on your computer while connected to the internet. Now there is. Adobe has just released, what else Adobe TV on their new Adobe Media Player software, and just like the PDF viewer, the software is free for Windows and Mac OS!

The Adobe Media Player has a surprising number of channels available considering that this is now going to challenge major cable companies and satelite TV providers. I've only been checking the software and available programs for about the last 45 minutes. I've checked out some Paula Deen on Food Network (Dena misses watching Paula), watched today's Houston Weather Channel, and CSI: Miami. I've also noticed what looks to be the entire original Star Trek TV series. There are commercials, but it appears that there is only one where the normal commercial break would be. The CSI: Miami episode is only 45 minutes long, so that's a noticable reduction in commercials. There aren't a lot of well known programs yet, but I'd bet there will be.

How's the quality? I'm at a Quality Inn in Stavanger, Norway and the downloads are fast and the quality is plenty acceptable for watching on a 17" widescreen laptop. I'm watching on a HP 8710w which has a really nice Nvidia Quadro graphics card. I'm really looking forward to watching episodes on our projector when I get home.

Overall, Adobe Media Player rocks!!! It's going to be a big hit, and likely adopted very quickly. The difficult part may be how to organize everything so programs or channels can be found quickly. I'll try to do a follow up to this in a few weeks, and maybe Adobe will have posted how many downloads they've had.

Dan's 25 hour birthday

Dan's cake - Step 4
Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

Yep, I'm now 33. I'd like to thank my lovely wife for the yummy birthday cake.

My birthday celebration started on the 12th of Feb while I was in Holland. I went to a Chinese restaurant with some co-workers. The dishes seemed to take a while to come out, but when they did, the explaination may have been due to the elaborately carved giant carrot sculptures. None of us had the heart to eat the art.

So, leaving Holland on the day of my birthday and flying back to Aberdeen gave me an extra hour to enjoy my birthday. And enjoy it I did! There was a pile of presents waiting for me when I got back home. I scored some Technic lego sets, "Long Way Round" book, some interesting trivia cards, and a disturbing but funny book annimated book on bunny deaths.

For all the pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeasmechanicaldan/sets/72157604130925653/

The Lego brick is 50

What a fun surprise to go to my favorite search engine and see the Google logo made of Lego bricks! The mouseover said "50th Anniversary of LEGO brick", so I had to do a little surfing. It's actually 50 years since the patent was filed, so I looked up the LEGO patent.

I was a huge Legomaniac when I was younger. More of a Legomaniac than Zach. I started with just a few bricks when I was around 6, and then for almost every birthday, Christmas, Easter, and any other special occasion I got a new Lego set. My big facination was with the Space sets, and then eventually got interested in the Technic sets. I'd play with them for hours. I think I had 40-50 sets when I sold them to raise some money for my first car. Looking back, it would have been nice to still have them, but I've been windowshopping on Ebay, and one can get used Legos in bulk pretty cheap. In fact, a Technic Lego set (or Technic blocks) is on my wish list for my birthday, which is February 13.

Even better is that you can download building instructions for new sets directly from the Lego website here and there is a website that collects and posts Lego set building instructions after the set is 3 years old here. A quick Google search shows there are likely a few others that have old scanned instructions. Just more reasons for me to love the internet.

Books I've Read

I've added a section regarding the books I've read over the last few months. I'm not a fast reader, as you can see by the length of the list. Our library is finally set up, and I have plenty of books to read now that Dena's and my book collections are together.

An Inconvenient Truth really helped bring some light to the ongoing global warming issue. Being an engineer, I wish there was more data, but the pictures do speak for themselves.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a heavy philisophical journey about a man, his inner craziness, his son, and a motorcycle trip.

Long Way Round I enjoyed a lot! It's Ewan and Charlie on a couple of BMW motorcycles as they ride around the world. What all happens? Lots. I'm eager to read the follow up journey called Long Way Down where they ride from the UK to the tip of South Africa.

Freakonomics was another book I enjoyed. It's Economics, but very interesting. How do big topic items in the world relate to other completely different objects. I highly recommend the book.

The Party's Over is about Peak Oil and what will the world do after the oil is all gone. My personal feeling is that we've hit Peak Oil right now. Another recommended read if you're interested in how energy effects the human race, but it will leave you feeling very depressed for a few days.

If you have any books that you'd recommend, feel free to post in the comments or send me an email.

Back Surgery Update: End of Week 6

This weekend was the end of week 6 after my back surgery, and I didn't need to take any Ibuprofen during the waking hours of both days. There was still a little pain in my back and my right calf, but very mild. I did take some Ibuprofen so I could sleep comfortably. I'm finally starting to see the benefits of the surgery! It's so nice to finally get a taste of normalcy.

It was 55 F today in Aberdeen. The sun was out, so I vaccummed and washed the BMW. I'm slowly getting some additional lights up in the garage so I can work on the Kawasaki. I hit a car with it just before Christmas and need to fix the front nose fairing. The days have been so short here, and thus dark, hench the need for lights in the garage. As of January 26, we now have 8 hours of daylight, curtesy of TimeandDate.com.

I have a bunch of pictures from our trip back to the US that I still need to get posted on my Flickr album. It's on my To-Do List.