Holy Cow!
This video speaks for itself as being a close up shot of a lightning strike. I did not film this though the person that did film it said it was right here in Oklahoma City. I can believe it because we have some pretty scary lightning around here at times. Ironically I was searching for a specific Oklahoma City Thunder video when I stumbled on this. I am watching the Thunder playing the Hornets so I wanted to find a video on Youtube.
Why I Don’t Forward Chain Letters
We have heard that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. I would argue that chain letters would precede prostitution in terms of which came first. I learned something when I started my first email account in the early 1990’s and that is chain letters are the worst form of spam. It started with email, then it went to ICQ, and all sorts of Instant Messengers. Then it was Myspace, Facebook, and even Twitter. I have seen and heard so many of them that I cannot even remember them all. I am sure you have seen them. They usually have some sob story about how some child is dying of cancer and their family is so broke that they cannot even pay their bills. Others say that Haiti victims are homeless and starving. There are some that speak of Bill Gates giving a set amount of money for each person that participates. Some will tell quote a scripture in the Bible that says if you confess Jesus before men, then he will confess you before His Father. These are just a few examples of the infinite millions of various scenarios.
There is one common theme that is always a part of a chain letter. These chain messages always end with a challenge to the reader to forward the message to their contacts. They are sometimes challenged to do the right thing and in some cases they will even use guilt on the reader. I have seen them tell you that if you are not ashamed of Jesus then forward this message to your friends. I find this message particularly offensive and will delete them faster than any other. I do love Jesus and will not use him to forward chain letters. If I was ashamed of Jesus I would not be posting about Him on my blog.In some rare cases I will take the message and share it with a few people if I find it interesting. I will however remove the message at the end telling others to forward them. There are many theories as to why people forward these but I often feel the originator of these messages just want to see how wide spread their messages can become. It is sort of an ego thing in my opinion. I am not saying this of the person that forwards them but rather the person that creates them. Early on I use to forward them before I noticed they keep repeating themselves in different forms. Now I make a policy of not forwarding them at all.
If you are one of them that has sent me chain letters, do not take offense to my refusal to forward them but rather understand that I have been around this for a long time and do not want to be guilty of spreading spam. In my opinion, that is exactly what these are and I will not forward them no matter how moving the story is. Even if I completely agree with the story I will not forward, or repost the message in that form. Again, I may repost it but I will remove the statement asking others to forward. I use to reply to the person that sent it to me and tell them that I will not forward these messages but then I started to think how it would be received on the other end. Many times reading text can often be misunderstood as being hostile or offensive. For this reason I have changed my policy to deleting them and ignoring them. I know I am not the only person that feels this way about chain letters. I have no hostility to the people that forward them to me because many of them have positive motives. I think the participants are innocently guilt-ed, or emotionally coaxed into forwarding someone else’s spam. If you have forwarded these messages to me in the passed, do not take offense to this because it is not meant that way.
Thanks for listening to my speech 
Power Pole Gone!
Many of you may remember the horrible ice storm we had in December 2007 that put 250,000 people in the Oklahoma City metro and a million people statewide out of power. That storm really tore up my yard and house when the huge tree you see in the photo above dropped a few branches on the house, and power pole. You can barely see the power pole in the bottom right under the tree in the photo above. This was not the first time this tree had caused damage to our house by ice or thunderstorms. Finally a month later, in January 2008 I paid to have this tree cut down and it was not even in our yard. It was in the neighbor’s yard against the fence and they could not afford to cut it down. Below is a picture that was taken later when our power company installed a new pole and transformer.
As you can see in the photo above, the power company installed the new pole and cut the top half off the old pole and just left it there. They told me they were leaving it there because it had other utilities attached to it and they are not responsible for theirs. You may remember me posting about a month ago how my Internet was very undependable and that was upset about it. I started posting Twitter messages about it and some of their employees noticed my Twitter messages and called me directly. In that post I told about how they came out and worked for hours and got me working again. At that time they put in a work order to have their lines moved over to the new pole.
In the photo above you can see how the lineman hooked up some sort of a wench to pull the line over to the new pole. Apparently the line was tight because it took two days to get it moved over to the new pole. The same day it was taken off the old pole, roughly two weeks ago, we called the power company and asked them to come out and take the old pole down. Well today they showed up to remove it.
This is a photo that I took as soon as they left. Now there is only one pole in the yard and it looks much better. It only took them about 20 minutes to take the pole down and be gone. They cut it above the ground with a chain saw and then cut it in five pieces. Then they cut the pole below ground level and covered the hole.
One of the things that you cannot see in the above pictures is how things have changed since the ice storm. When the storm arrived, you could not see the house behind because the back fence and the one to the right were filled with trees and bushes. It was grown up so thick that you could not get to the fence. That ice storm was a wake up call for us. Over the months after the ice storm, my wife and I were out there with an axe, hand saw, and pruning cutters cleaning out the brush. Then we started treating the fence line all the way around so that nothing else would grow in the fence. It looked horrible back there with all the brush growing into the power lines. The gas meter reader had to be estimating the readings because the meter was buried in shrubbery and trees. Since then we make a point to treat the fence line on a regular basis so this does not happen again.
It is hard to believe that it took two and a half years since the ice storm for them to finally take the pole down and not have two ugly poles in the yard. It made it very difficult to mow around. Now we can treat the grass and possibly have a decent lawn for once.
F-15 High Speed Fly By
After watching this video I miss being in the Air Force. I remember my first air show I ever went to was at Tinker AFB and the brand new F-15 was there. I do not remember the exact year but I do remember it was in the 1970’s. The plane did not do any special maneuvers other than just some high speed passes like the ones in this video. I never worked on them directly but when I was at Luke AFB, near Phoenix, Arizona I worked in an Armament Shop where there were some F-15E’s and F-16’s. The F-15’s left and went to Seymour Johnson AFB in North Carolina.
The Cloud
There is a phrase that is being used more and more these days with reference to remote data storage over the Internet called “Cloud Computing” or “The Cloud” for short. This phrase is often referring to images we have all seen when someone draws a computer network. They often draw this cloud in the corner where a person’s network connects. This cloud is the Internet. Why do they call it a cloud? This can be answered by the unknown quantity that the Internet represents. The Internet has matured to a point that people are looking for more innovative ways to use it. This just happens to coincide with the dramatic drop in the cost of data storage whether by hard drives or flash drives.
Today a person can buy a hard drive the size that no one could have imagined five years ago for less than $100.00 in some cases. I have seen two terabyte drives at Wal-Mart. For those that are unfamiliar with a terabyte, I will have to give you a bit of computer background so you can get some perspective. Most of us have heard the term “bit” or “bits”. This is a term referring to a binary digit. Binary is nothing more than a different numbering system that is based on two instead of ten. Most of us know that our decimal numbering system goes up to nine before carrying over to another digit making “10”. Well binary is the same way except it goes up to one before carrying over another digit. For example you would count. 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111 and so on. As you can see, it is based on two. Well a binary digit or bit is the means of measuring data. For each letter of the alphabet, or number to be expressed, it takes approximately eight binary digits of data, or a byte. One byte is eight binary digits and is the data required to store one letter of the alphabet, or ASCII character.
As you probably remember the metric system from high school a kilo is 1000 units of anything. A mega is 1,000,000 or one million. A Giga is 1,000,000,000 or one billion units. A tera is 1,000,000,000,000 or one trillion units of something. Since data storage is expressed in bytes, this storage of one terabyte is really approximately 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. This is an enormous number that is difficult visualize.
Now that data storage prices have dropped so much, there are companies offering data storage remotely over the Internet. In some cases they have services that back up your own data over the Internet in small increments while your Internet is idle. As we have seen with services like Google Docs, and Windows Live Sky Drive, these services are becoming mainstream. There are benefits to this because a person may have critical photos, music, or videos on their computer that would be a tragedy if lost. By storing things remotely, it helps keep them from being lost if a person’s house catches fire or hit by a tornado. I have been doing this for quite some time with my photos. I have more than 20,000 photos on my computer and currently over 7,000 of them are stored on Flickr.com.
They refer to this activity as cloud computing and has become a standard term. The problem is that I am not an ordinary person and have a difficult time seeing the Internet when people say “The Cloud”. I have two teenage sons that often do things like pass gas as they walk through the house and then tell you that you just walked through their cloud as you walk through the room. Since this has happened many times, I tend to think unpleasant things when people refer to the cloud. This is not a good thing because I am around computer enthusiasts on a regular basis. find myself reaching for the Febreeze every time they start talking about cloud computing. Am I too far gone? I still hold out hope that one day I will get passed the trauma. I would like to suggest changing the name so that I can engage in computer speak without thinking of toilets. How about calling it “The Internet”?
I know that most people from more refined backgrounds are thinking to themselves about a thunderstorm, or even a Spring day when someone refers to clouds. I guess I could use some more refinement but I am what I am. It was destined to happen when I was an aircraft maintenance person in the Air Force for many years. If you have ever been one you probably know what I am talking about. Being in the military requires you to have some thick skin and have a sense of humor to deal with the long hours of working on the flight line in less than ideal conditions. I guess I am doomed to being an unrefined Neanderthal incapable of rational thought. I need to accept who I am. Can I keep my computer though?
KOKC (Formerly KOMA) 1520
These three towers are an amazing source for a powerful 50,000 watt signal. The towers may reside at 35.333450° -97.505217°, 35.333276° -97.504729° and 35.333092° -97.504224° respectively but their signal can be heard well over 1,000 miles away. My dad use to work at this station back in the 1960’s when it was KOMA AM.
I remember on a freakish couple of days in 1996 when I was in Fairbanks, Alaska, or more specifically at the Moose Creek Apartments located… 64.715154° -147.166405° when I received KOMA. Me and my family were stationed at Eielson Air Force Base (AFB) at the time. It was dark as it usually is during the winter and I was sitting int he car scanning across the band when I jokingly tuned across 1520 KHz and heard some 1950’s music. I was intrigued and left it on there. To my surprise I heard them discussing a Sock Hop program on Oklahoma City’s 1520…K-O-M-A.
I was so excited that I ran into the house and got my wife to come out to the car. How unbelievable to think I was receiving a radio station more than 3,000 miles away AND it was a hometown station at that. I thought about contacting them and telling them that I was hearing them in Alaska but I did not think they would believe me. I have told many people about it and they nodded their heads in agreement but I am skeptical they believed me either.
The amazing thing about it is that not only was this more than 3,000 miles away but there is another 50,000 watt station in Portland, Oregon (KGDD). I use to live in Tucson, and Phoenix, Arizona when I was stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB, and Luke AFB respectively, and was able to receive KOMA/KOKC at night 365 days a year. Their signal was very strong and very dependable. KOKC is now a 24 hour news station and can heard nearly to the Canadian Border to the North and to the Pacific Coast to the West. They broadcast on the center tower during the day and then go on all three at night to produce their directional signal. As a designated clear channel station they are protected from other stations impeding on their signal. Just as their is a station in the Buffalo, New York station called WWKB on the same frequency that is protected from KOKC. This is why they require the directional signal at night.
The powerful signal is attenuated during the day by an invisible "D" layer of the ionosphere that is energized when the sun shines. This layer absorbs most signals below 10 MHz preventing them from reaching the "F" layer that causes famous radio "skip". The term skip means that radio signals are refracted or bent as they hit the "F" layer of the ionosphere causing the signal to be bent back to the earth and the signal is received at great distances. The 50,000 watt signal can easily reach this much desired "F" layer during the evening when the lower level "D" layer virtually disappears with the absence of the sun.
This is a phenomenon that ham radio operators enjoy on high frequency (HF) operation. Since the HF band is in the 2 MHz to 30 MHz shortwave spectrum it is ideal for this skip. These three towers are very prominent if you approach Oklahoma City from the South on Interstate 35 (I-35). The towers are actually in the city limits of Moore, Oklahoma but when they were built many years ago this area was rural. Now the towers are in a densely populated area with houses all around them. The above photo was taken from a cemetery on the East side as the sun was rising behind me.
The station’s studios are in North Oklahoma City and their audio is transmitted to these towers and transmitter via a studio to transmission link (STL) using microwave.
Devon Tower Crane Part II
Another cool video of the big Devon Crane going up over a several day period. This time lapse video is pretty cool to watch. Sorry for the redundancy but I found this over at my dad’s house and thought it was worth a share.
Red Neck Car Alarm
UPDATE NUMBER 2:It looks as though my son has spoken with the neighbor because they now have dog houses for these dogs. I am proud of them for doing the right thing.
UPDATE: It looks like this photo is not being allowed to be posted on a third party web site. If you want to see the picture I am referring to, click here
Last week I was posting my frustration on Twitter about how I am fed up with how my neighborhood is full of people getting large dogs and chaining them up to barbells, fence posts, tires, etc. and then ignoring them. This neighborhood is just full of these scenarios. Well I did not think anyone was even paying attention until I noticed that Brian Bates, famous for filming hookers and their Johns around the Oklahoma City area noticed my post. He responded to my post with this picture above with the caption “The funny? This is a pretty standard Red Neck car alarm in South OKC. The sad? Sorta speaks for itself. (photo by Brian Bates)” You may have heard this guy referred to as the “Video Vigilante” and his web site is here… http://johntv.com/.
My post was a result of the fact that I cannot even go into my backyard without a ton of dogs barking non stop. When you look around you see all these guard dogs and no place to take refuge from the weather. None of them have dog houses and are left alone with no attention. I recently posted a photo of one of them. 
As you can see in this photo the dog is chained through the rails of the back porch to a dumb bell weight. The dog is forced to drag this thing around the yard and is never given any attention. This is just one example of the many that are on my street. It really gets old because these dogs bark non stop when you go outside and all the neighbors peek out to see what the dogs are barking at. You cannot even go sit out in a lawn chair because of these dogs. I sure wish that people would not get dogs or cats if they are just going to leave them abandoned outside. It is sad to see because even though these dogs are pretty mean, you can see that they are lonely being left out there.
It seems like people get these dogs for the sole purpose to make noise so that they are warned whenever anyone comes close so that their illegal activities are not exposed. I have noticed a trend that many people that get these dogs and tie them up are also drug users if not dealers. Our neighborhood has more than its share of drug outlets. The dogs are just alarms so that the owners are alerted that someone is coming. In fact, I have gone out in the front yard many times to smell Marijuana smoke. It is so obvious what is going on and everyone knows it. If they want to smoke their pot, then so be it but don’t leave the barking dogs out in the snow and ice. I did take a picture of this dog one day while it was freezing rain. and then snow later the same day while it was chained to a fence with a six foot long chain. Well I guess I have ranted long enough about this but it is such a sad sight to see every day.
Devon Tower’s Crane Going Up in Oklahoma City
This is a time lapse video of the new crane going up on February 21, 2010 for the construction of Devon Energy’s new World Headquarters in Oklahoma City. If you look on the left, you can see the foot print of the tower with pillars protruding from the ground. This new tower is going to be 50 floors at 850 feet at a cost of $750 million. Construction began October 6, 2009 and is expected to be complete in 2012. It is great to see this type of development going on while we hear about our economy being so bad. We have been pretty fortunate here in Oklahoma City as our economy has not been hit as bad as other places, at least not yet. Our housing market is still booming with new homes being built all over the city. I am very thankful that things have not been as bad as they could be. I thought this video was pretty cool and I wanted to share it.
I Should Sleep Well Tonight
This morning I was awaken to some very loud thunder and heavy rain around 4:00 AM after going to bed at 1:00 AM. To most people they can just cover their heads with a pillow and then go back to sleep. I have been fascinated with thunderstorms since I was very young. I have a hard time ignoring something that I have not seen in a while. It makes it even harder to ignore since it is the weekend and I do not have to go to work in the morning. It is great to see some thunderstorms this morning. I hope we will have an active storm season this year because the last few have been pretty slow.
I took the opportunity to check a few social networking sites and it really troubles me to see what it has become. As you can see in the photo below, there are people bragging about how many followers they have on Google Buzz. It seems to be the same culprits that you see on Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook. The post below seems innocuous because this guy is making a joke about it like I am. I have run into many posts like this ranking those that have the most followers. They are usually followed by a deep discussion of 100 to 200 comments about how to increase your follower ship to be like these guys. Honestly it is embarrassing to see so many people desperate to make their mark in the world that they will go out and follow total strangers just so they can brag about how many friends they have.
This same discussion can be seen on each new social networking site that comes online. Listening to these people tell the world how it only took them this long to get __________ followers. My question is “How many of them are your friends?” I mean how many of them do you even know? I have 900 followers on Twitter and I can tell you that 75% of them are marketing companies while another 20% are spammers. About 5% of them are people that I actually know. It is laughable that anyone would really get excited by having more followers when most of them are spammers and marketers. I have seen a few posts about a person’s online influence rankings.
These are a little more interesting because they take a similar argument those before have taken though in their case they argue that the more people that follow you whether they know you or not will give you more influence in the online world. I am not sure why a person would want more online influence unless they are trying to run for President or starting a movement. Their point is that if you have 10,000 followers, then when you say something, then all 10,000 will read it along with all of their followers. While this may seem like a legitimate point, the reality is not so. I can say first hand that when I read through these posts, I just scan through them and see about one out of a hundred or so. It has to be a topic that interests me for me to remember it for even five minutes. This would suggest that if you are interested in having a greater influence in the world, a bigger factor would be the content of your post than how many people saw it.
If the content of what you say is still the most important thing for those seeking online influence, then it would be true that a person with people skills and a large amount of knowledge would be more influential than one with a large crowd around them. If this is true then people would naturally gravitate to them. A charismatic person with great ideas would not have a need to seek followers because they would come on their own through word of mouth. This truth is the same in real life whether online or in person. Some people naturally have this skill while others learn it over time. In either case, no one becomes influential simply by adding thousands of people online. There is one individual that I see online that is a photographer in the San Francisco area that has many followers. People are attracted by his photography skills and so they follow him. His people skills are terrible like my own and people get tired and leave so his follower ship has a high turnover rate like my own . Needless to say the online influence that a person has can be ruined if the person is not a charismatic, knowledgeable person.
I know that people could easily say that I am doing exactly the same thing. Online influence is not my goal in this blog. I use my blog as therapy to vent my stress and it gets very little readership. Because I use it to vent, I read it later and find myself laughing at my rants. It works as a good historical record of things that were going on at specific times. Since I do lack those people skills, a blog is great for me to get things off my chest. If I were trying to obtain online influence, I would be doing a terrible job since many of my posts are of frustration about the topic of the day. Many people do not want to hear that sort of thing so online influence is not something that I am likely to see with this blog.
Just a note to clarify things. I am actually posting this on my Posterous account that also posts on my blog at http://paulmccord.net. For those of you that have stumbled on the Posterous site scratching your head with confusion, most of my posts are only on my blog. There is not much of a historical record on Posterous because I have not had that account for very long. So the moral of the story is that if influence is what you are seeking then please do not follow my example. Also I never understood the desire to have influence anyway. I guess this is something that is important to some people. I see it at work as well with some that are constantly trying to check boxes on their career for the purposes of going up the chain. Someone has to do those jobs so I say more power to them.