Maine Is In The Eastern Time Zone.....Right?

For now, anyway. I heard a blurb on Maine Things Considered the other day and finally got around to posting this. Rep. Kevin Glynn (R-South Portland) is proposing a bill to move Maine from the Eastern Time Zone to the Atlantic Time Zone, citing increased economic and health benefits. (That's if I remember the quote from Maine Things Considered correctly. I also couldn't seem find a copy of the bill text, it's LR-518. Link to Kennebec Journal article.)

It would seem to me that changing time zones would cause more economic havoc than good. Sure, having an extra hour of daylight would be good for the Ski Companies and after-school activities, but being an hour different from the rest of the Eastern Seaboard could mess up commerce in general, travel, tourism, etc. Whatever.

I'm not sure what it would do for general health, either. Let people be out and about later, maybe. And keep kids a little safer in (and allow more time for) after-school activities. But on the other hand, right now the sun is just up when elementary school kids are out waiting for the bus at 7.30 or so. However, if we move an hour ahead, it will be as light at 7.30 as it is now at 6.30, which is not very.

I just don't really get it. The bill to make Moxie our state drink, that's one thing - but being the only state on Atlantic Time? (Ok - so it's not as weird as Maine Time.) Bragging rights, that's what we get. Why can't we just brag about Moxie?

The Pyrotechnic Qualities Of Capacitors

Ok kiddies, you know how your circuits lab instructor always said to make sure to put your electrolytic capacitors in the right way around so they don't pop? Well, if you connect a ~25Vdc cap to 140VAC (RMS) and hold the 15-amp breaker closed so it doesn't trip, the capacitor will not only pop, it will blow up.

Completely.

There is a loud bang (which naturally brings your instructor running, since you wouldn't think of doing this sort of thing when he's actually in the room), a cloud of white smoke (which smells really nice), and drifting fuzz from the stuff inside the cap. Probably some shrapnel, too, but I didn't actually see any of that. One should also note that your instructor will probably be rather put out, due to safety concerns and destruction of school property, however small and cheap the property.

Names have been withheld to protect the very guilty. And no, I didn't do it, although now I know why you shouldn't. And now I can say that yes, I have seen a capacitor blow up.

Happy Inauguration

I missed the inauguration fairly completely today, I was at lunch and the dining hall was too noisy to make watching it interesting. It doesn't have the same sort of appeal as a silent film, for some reason - but we digress. Here's to hoping Mr. Bush will do even better than he did with his first term. The BBC has an interesting take on it, with which I'm apt to agree, for the most part.

But tell me - is this just a little scary, or isn't it? Is there a good reason for the IAC to have this type of information? Is there a reason _anyone_ should have this information right now, aside from the law enforcement? The IAC?!? And then, from another corner, we have this tidbit about ABC, courtesy of Captain Ed.

Now, on a more positive note, it's a beautiful day, if still cold and (down here at school) windy. Three inces of fresh, white snowfall nicely augments the general sunnyness and blue skies.

Hurrah For The Media

...Those denizens of fine, unbiased reporting and comprehensive coverage. I'm growing increasingly disgusted about the state of this nation's news establishments, especially after reading this essay by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Ryan. I'm going to go vent by doing some Math homework, since anything I try to say at this moment will probably come out rather incoherently and who knows what else.

There's also an interesting new bit about the CBS memos over at RatherBiased.com on yet more evidence that the memos are fake. (For more info and background, which I am not going to elaborate on here, one would do well to take a look at the above site, Rathergate.com, Little Green Footballs, and probably a few others. Also an interesting post on Powerline about some details in the whole memo thing that are still blowing in the wind.)

A Little Tweak Here, A Little Tweak There...

Ok, so an entirely new template isn't exactly a little tweak, but not this little corner of the web is a little prettier. I'll also be bonking around on the plumbing in the next couple weeks to add a links sidebar and maybe other stuff, I haven't figured it all out yet. So stay tuned.

In other news, I spent way too much time last night on the High Altitude Glider Project (as linked to from Hackaday) instead of doing something productive. What could be cooler than dropping a glider from a weather balloon at 76,000 feet? Well, besides the plane having a computer & GPS on board for autopilot, cameras, other fun sensors, and the ability for manual control and monitoring/tracking from a laptop on the ground via a packet radio.

Weeee're Back! And Not Much Better Than Usual!

I _am_ going to try to post and keep this blog going, partly because I don't have any classes this semester which require writing in any shape or form other than class notes and physics/math equations. As such, this sort of thing is a good way to keep my writing skills in shape a little.

I'm also going to be keeping up a little more on the world in general, after getting in the habit for government class last semester and thinking awareness of current events and such to be a Good Thing In General. And, in writing about stuff like that, we excercise critical thinking and other such useful things.

And in addition to those noble and lofty aspirations, We, The Midget, will probably come at things from a natural point of view: techie. That is to say, as an EE student (well, ET (Electronics Technology), technically, for the Associates degree, but post that on to USM for rest of the EE degree...) and Mac/Linux geek, things in those fields will probably crop up here with some frequency. I'm trying to give this blog some semblance of purpose in order to make it more readable and interesting and...purposeful. Because however nice the thought of a genuine glimpse of someone else's life is, it 1) often isn't really an accurate portrayal, due to factors of subjectivity and such, and 2) does not really hold one's attention for long, regardless of whether you are the reader or the writer. Regurgitating a summary of your life onto the screen gets old pretty quickly, since you *have* just lived it, after all.

Anyhow. Since we've got all that out of the way, let's link to an interesting bit I saw on Whizbang earlier today on this article in the LA Times. Quite interesting, really. And, of course, the Slashdot discussion of this article has some insightful comments.