DISQUS

Back when fiber optic lines were a rare thing, some electric utilities began installing them to facilitate meter reading (no more guys/gals in trucks!) and prepare for a 2-way active power management world. Or so I've heard. I never thought such a thing happened here in sleepy NH. But the great December ice storm opened my eyes. On our road, we lost power and cable due to 3 cracked utility poles -- one signficant (the pine tree that split it in half stayed in the road for 7 days , two trivial (patched, then replaced about a month after the storm). Despite a phone line laying across the road for days, we never lost phone service. So here's the thing... the nice crew from Baltimore came and replaced the broken pole, reattached the wires, and hey presto, we have power and cable back, along with our trusty unfailing phone service. Yet there's a wire left over... ripped off the next pole in line, hanging over a branch, bare end dangling right at eye level just on the shoulder of the road. It dangled for about 2 weeks after we were all fixed. Clearly not essential to any service, I stopped to look at it, and it was fiber. My, my. But who's? Eventually, a PSNH pickup truck came along, tied it back from the road, and it was reattached to the pole(and presumably spliced) the next day. My little road isn't between anything and anywhere... this isn't a long-haul cable passing through. And clearly it's not in mission-critical use today. But PSNH has fiber running down the most minor of half-paved, half-dirt roads... why?

I looked at the FCC Contour map for Channel 7 digital, and they think you should see it. But it ignores terrain, so I'm inclined to believe your experimental evidence! Here's a more precise tool... enter your exact address + height of antenna, and see what channels you *should" be able to see, including directionality and strength. Channel 7 is weak for me by this tool, and since you're farther away, it might be invisble to you... but I don't know where you live, so terrain and antenna height make your result un-extrapolatable (did I just make up a word?) from mine.

http://www.tvfool.com/index.php?option=com_cont...

I heard Mish Michaels, the WBZ meteorologist, explain this a few days after the big storm (which was also big in Mass, although you wouldn't know it from the NH media, except for the "pile on Unitil" stories). A "normal" ice storm, like today's, has rain falling through a temperature gradient that's coldest (and just at/below 0C) at ground level, so higher elevations like rooftops and treetops are above 0C and stay wet. A bad ice storm has the gradient hitting 0C higher up, so when the rain hits the cold limbs or wires, it freezes up there. The December storm had a temperature inversion, so cold air at "higher altitudes" (like treetop/powerline level) was below 0C, while surface air was above 0C. She spoke about driving up to Londonderry during the storm, and standing outside and being rained on while the trees and wires above her accumulated ice.

I have used a similar gauge for many years... 5 inch capacity, good enough for daily readings. This year I installed a high capacity gauge as well (how high? don't know really... probably 12 inches when all is said and done), just because. Mostly it caused pain (when you only have one measurement, you're happy... when you have two, and they don't agree, you're unhappy... particularly when the disagreement is random and shows no consistency), but this weekend it also provided clarity. In greater Amherst (OK, more towards Mont Vernon fringe Amherst) I measured 6.3 inches from midnight Friday through cessation of hostilities Sunday. That includes about 0.2 inches that arrived Saturday in the early morning. The gauge actually offers 0.01 inch resolution, but I round.

Is there a way to get an RSS feed for just GraniteGeek? The Web Feed button on the site seems to be very broad... there's no way I want to sift through all the Telegraph columnists in a single feed!

As a graduate of West Point, he SHOULD have also received a BS, but I'm having trouble confirming that was true back in 1915. (The class of 1915 at West Point is best known as "The Class the Stars Fell On", for the number of generals who came out of that class.)

Footnote: reading blogs DOES kill productivity!

A quick Google of Hoover shows not only did he have a degree in geology, his wife did as well. His first jobs were as a mining engineer.

I googled... BS, USNA. That would be the traditional Bachelor of Science degree, not a political BS :-).

The Java app worked for me (under Vista). The results are...
Promised Downstream Speeds: NA

Actual Downstream Speeds: 1.62296 Mbps

Promised Upstream Speeds: NA

Actual Upstream Speeds: 1.038 Mbps

I can never remember what the Comcast promise is, so I skipped it. Your performance should be the same... a mile or two difference in cable length shouldn't make a huge difference, and we should have the same electronics between us and the other end of the test no matter where in the Amherst/Mont Vernon/Milford net you are. Speeds look pretty pathetic for the time of day... 3AM.

"any flavor of DSL is too slow for the 21st century" is a bit harsh. In South Korea, with a tremendous population density and broadband penetration, DSL is frequently used for the last meter or so... fiber to an apartment building, then DSL from the fiber termination to the individual apts. Over very short runs, DSL can hit extremely high data rates, so it works just fine within the building. DSL from the curb is sometimes considered for here as well... fiber backbone runs down the street, and the connection from the pole to home is DSL, obviating the need for replacing the copper run to the house. If the pole is close enough, one of the short-run very-high-speed DSL (VDSL/VHDSL) options can work as well.

PS... did you see the news report a few days ago that some common CAPTCHAs (lke Microsoft's and Google's)can be machine-broken in a second or so?

Yo, Dave... the link to the Herald story is incorrect. It takes me off to area603.com

A qick check shows that Maryland is still 2 years away from issuing Real IDs... I expect that will be a problem in the DC area fast. HEre's an interesting scenario...a resident of a non-Real State (there's a marketing slogsn!) is subpoenaed to testify before a Congressional committee. Oh oh -- security won't let him in the building to testify. Here's another scenario... the Governor of a unReal state attempts to visit the Senator from his state while in DC... oh oh, better do it in a smoke-filled bar (do they still exist?), 'cause he sure can't get in to a Senate office building! DHS is going to hear a lot from this, and not in a good way.

MY favorite... a young college graduate approaches a Federal Dept. to interview for a job... oops, no ID, no interview, no job. Suddenly a whole bunch of residents from a whole bunch of states can't get through an elementary hurdle to get a job with the US government, in DC OR their home state. It's like catch-22... get a job and we'll give you a federal ID so you don't need a Real ID, but no Real ID and you can't get a Feferal ID.

Steve C

I believe it was 20 shillings to the pound, and the pound was fixed at $4.80, so I say 3 shillings in 1903 was $0.72. I found an online currency deflator (cool!) which provides some options as to the current equivalence.

In 2006, $0.72 from 1903 is worth: $17.02 using the Consumer Price Index
$13.80 using the GDP deflator
$74.70 using the unskilled wage
$98.22 using the nominal GDP per capita
$364.69 using the relative share of GDP

A little DLL hell here. The old laptop died, and the new one came with Vista... fine and dandy. But I installed my old Onenote 2003, then tried to add in my indispensible powertoys (IE to Onenote), and the install dies, saying I need .NET Framework 1.1.4322. But Vista seems to have arrived with Framework V2 installed, so what's a user to do? Am I out of luck on this incredibly useful tool?