Andy’s Arcana – The Blog

I’ve always been amazed by the amount of water a dying tree can drink, even weeks after it has been cut down.  This year I decided to do an experiment to find out exactly how much water my Christmas tree used over a 3-week period.  Now that New Year’s is over and I’ve finished putting my tree out at the curb to get recycled, it’s time to share the results.

In early December I picked out a Noble Fir at the finest of all tree lots — the local Home Depot.  I had them cut an inch off the bottom of the trunk before I brought it home.  The bottom of the trunk was 4 inches in diameter.  The tree measured 6’3″ tall (not counting the single branch that extended straight up a few more inches).  Shown here is a picture of the tree before decorating.

I put the tree in a stand and filled it with 1500ml of water.  Inside my house the temperature ranges from about 62 – 70 degrees so there weren’t any drastic fluctuations.  Each night I topped off the water in the stand at around the same time and measured how much I added.  I used lukewarm tap water and no special preservatives.  The chart below shows how much water the tree drank each day for 21 days.

For the first few days, the tree drank about 800ml of water per day (about 27 ounces, or almost half of a 2-liter soda bottle).  The amount it drank began to drop after that, and while there were some fluctuations you can see that the trend is fairly consistently downward.  Not too surprising considering that the tree was dying and probably saturated itself during the first few days.

By the end of the 21 days, the tree drank a total of 10.89 liters (2.88 gallons) of water.  Not bad for a tree with no roots that could only get water through its sawed-off trunk.  The tree still seemed relatively healthy — it didn’t feel too dried out and wasn’t losing much of its needles.

Next year I may try a different type of tree or a different size to see how it compares.

This morning my Kindle Fire arrived.  Since it’s a brand new product that has just become available today I wasn’t sure what to think of it, but for exactly $199 I was willing to make an investment to be an early adopter.  I’m hoping to be able to use it as a living room computer for checking email, light web browsing, reading books and magazines, and playing the occasional casual game.  Is it an iPad killer?  Probably not, but at less than half the cost of an iPad, no one should expect it to be.

Kindle Fire Unboxed

After powering on the Fire for the first time, I was immediately asked to connect to a wireless network.  The Fire supports all the current WiFi standards such as 802.11n, WPA, WPA2, etc., so connecting to almost any network shouldn’t be a problem.  Unfortunately the WiFi screen doesn’t show the device’s MAC address, so if you try to connect to a wireless network that uses MAC filtering, you’ll need to tap the “setup later” link and then get the MAC address (which can be found under the Settings > More > Device menus).  This won’t be an issue for most people, especially on home networks, but I was happy to see it’s easily solved.

Once I was on the wireless network the Fire led me through four or five introductory screens that highlight the basic controls, such as the Home button, where to adjust the settings, adding favorite apps to the “carousel” at the bottom of the screen, etc.

Next I wanted to see what apps were pre-installed, so from the Home screen I logically tapped the Apps icon.  A screen appeared showing all the apps on the device, which already included all the apps I previously purchased in the Amazon App store for my Android phone.  Really cool!  Since Amazon pre-registered the Kindle Fire to my Amazon account when I ordered it, I didn’t have to do anything to make these apps appear.  The Angry Birds were there waiting for me, along with Plants vs. Zombies, Facebook, ESPN, IMDB, Pandora, and more.

One of the main reasons I wanted this device was for email, so I tapped the email app.  I was taken to an email setup screen.  Account selections are available for Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and other.  I selected Gmail, entered my email address and password, and then was told to select between either POP3 or IMAP.  I’d prefer the full Google Sync capability, but until an official Gmail app is available I’ll have to settle for IMAP.  This means a few more settings have to be configured on the next screen for the incoming and outgoing mail servers.  A Google help page summarizes everything that’s needed.  Once that was done, my email immediately appeared in the inbox.  Viewing messages with in-line images worked fine, the read/unread indicator synced with the mail on my computer, and I could move messages to folders, but without the full Google Sync capability I can’t seem to do some Gmail specific actions like archiving messages.

Since it’s a Kindle, how does the book reading work?  I found out it works really well, as you might expect.  From the Home screen I tapped the Books tab at the top and was taken to a bookshelf, already showing the Kindle books I had been reading on my computer and Android smartphone.  I tapped on one of the books I was part of the way through reading and it downloaded it to the Fire (which took at most three seconds).  I then tapped the book again to open it and, thanks to Amazon’s WhisperSync technology, it took me directly to the page where I left off when I was last reading it on my phone.  Very slick.  The 7″ screen size seems very good for reading, because it’s about the same form factor as a paperback book.  Swiping to the left and right lets you flip between the pages, and tapping the screen brings up a scroll bar at the bottom that shows where you are in the book and lets you quickly jump to another section.  As with most Kindles you can change the size of the print, the line spacing, and margins.  You can also search through the entire book for words or phrases, bookmark pages, highlight passages, add notes, and look up definitions in the built-in dictionary.

The next thing I wanted to play with was the music.  From the Home screen I simply tapped the Music tab at the top.  I could then choose between the music stored on the device (there was none) or on the cloud.  Since I had previously uploaded almost 5GB of music to Amazon’s free cloud music service, all of my songs were there ready to be played, along with the cover art.  I chose an artist, tapped a song, and within a few seconds it started playing.  Because the songs are streamed over the Internet this only works when connected to a WiFi network, but from this screen I can also choose to download the songs or albums I want to make available for off-line listening.  At this point I also realized that there are no physical buttons for adjusting the volume, which would be nice, but I can tap the settings icon at the top of any screen and easily adjust the volume without leaving the screen I was on.  A pretty good compromise, I thought.  The sound comes from a pair of stereo speakers at the top of the device, or through a headphones jack on the bottom.

When I returned to the Home screen I discovered that the coverflow-style interface shows the album covers for the songs I just listened to, the book covers for the books I was last reading, and the icons for the apps I was just using.  Swiping from left to right lets me quickly flip between these and open them with a quick tap.  It’s like a “most recently used” list for everything I do on the Fire.

The Fire also has a tab at the top of the Home screen for videos, where Amazon Prime subscribers can choose from thousands of TV shows and movies to watch for free, as well as purchase relatively new movie releases for $2.99 each and TV shows for $1.99 each.  All the episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” are free, so I pulled up the “Best of Both Worlds: Part 1″ episode from season 3 (one of the best hours ever on TV) and was watching it in less than ten seconds.  As with any of these services, content is king, and I’ll have to spend some time exploring the available titles to determine how valuable this is, but between the Amazon Prime videos, Netflix, Hulu, and other apps that are all available on the Fire, there should be plenty of shows and movies to choose from.

Finally, I tried the web browsing.  I went to several sites, some with a lot of images on them, and they all displayed fine.  The experience is similar to the iPad, with the same pinch and stretch gestures to zoom in or out of pages.  It’s nice to have Adobe Flash built-in so web pages don’t show the annoying “missing plugin” icon.  I’ll need to do some side-by-side comparisons with my computer to see how the speed of Amazon’s Silk browser compares, especially with the caching of data being done on Amazon’s servers in the background, but so far it works well.

Overall, the Kindle Fire’s construction feels very solid.  It’s not plasticky like I feared a $199 device might be.  The glass front and rubberized back make it easy to read and hold, though I can tell that screen glare could be a problem in some situations (an issue that e-ink based Kindles don’t have to contend with).  The battery is supposed to be good for about 8 hours.  I’ll need to test that on my own to confirm it.  Best of all, I’ve been able to do everything without connecting the Fire to a computer even once.  Everything is done over wireless, so no computer tethering is necessary.

I’ve only had the Fire for a few hours now and so far I’m happy with it.  We’ll see if that changes after using it for a week or so.

If you’re like me, you’ve received several emails over the last few days from companies informing you that your name and email address has been stolen by hackers who gained accessed to Epsilon’s computer databases.  So far I’ve heard from one of my banks, a major electronics retailer, and a travel agency.  The gist of the messages from these companies usually includes something like this:

“We have been informed by Epsilon Interactive, a vendor based in Dallas, Texas, that files containing your email address were accessed by unauthorized entry into their computer system. Epsilon helps us send you emails about products and services that may be of interest to you.”

Most emails from these companies go on to say that they don’t share any of our financial information with Epsilon, but that we need to be diligent to avoid fraudulent emails we may receive as a result of the hackers getting our information.

Epsilon itself is saying very little about the breach. As of today, this is the extent of the explanation they’ve made available in a press release on their website:

“On March 30th, an incident was detected where a subset* of Epsilon clients’ customer data were exposed by an unauthorized entry into Epsilon’s email system. The information that was obtained was limited to email addresses and/or customer names only. A rigorous assessment determined that no other personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk. A full investigation is currently underway.”

One thing that concerns me about this is how little information Epsilon is sharing about the breach.  They aren’t indicating at all how the hackers got into their systems, who they might be, what types of systems were accessed, how Epsilon supposedly detected this breach, or what steps they’re taking to prevent this from happening again.  Epsilon isn’t very reassuring or doing anything to alleviate my fears.

If all the hackers got was a list of email addresses, that wouldn’t be the end of the world.  Most spammers already have my email address already.  But the press release indicates that “email addresses and/or customer names” were compromised.  I think it’s safe to assume that the “and/or” in their statement should be an “and”.  This means that criminals not only have our email addresses, but they also have a reliable source for our full names that goes with those email addresses.  This makes it a lot easier for them to send personalized spam to us by name.

Unfortunately, more spam is only a part of the problem.  If the hackers got our names and email addresses, it’s reasonable to believe they also got the sources of that information.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the hackers who got my information know which bank I use and what stores I shop at, because those companies gave that personal information to Epsilon in the first place.  Even if the hackers don’t know exactly which bank is used by a person in the email database, they can make some guesses.  The hackers know who Epsilon’s customers are.  Those banks have been identified on the eleven o’clock news.

If you have an account with Citibank, for instance, the bad guys can now send you an email, containing your real name, that appears to come from Citibank, encouraging you to click a link in the email.  Clicking that link can install spyware or viruses on your computer.  Or it can take you to a fake website that looks just like Citibank’s, complete with a username and password field.  When you type in your name and password on that site, the bad guys get it and they can do what they want with your finances.  This is called “phishing”.  When it’s this detailed and targeted specifically at you, it’s called “spear phishing”.

But wait — it gets even better.  Take a look for yourself at Epsilon’s web page about a service they call “Total Source Plus”.  It’s chilling to read about what kind of information they’re gathering about each of us.  Epsilon combines the information they get from all of their customers (the banks, stores, hotels, etc.) to build a profile about us so they can inundate us with targeted advertisements.  Their page also goes on to brag about the fact that they have information about us as a result of their acquisition last year of Equifax Marketing Services.  Equifax Marketing Services was a division of one of the big three credit reporting agencies.  The takeaway — Epsilon doesn’t need your financial information from your bank because they already got everything they need from Equifax.

Epsilon doesn’t stop there.  That same web page describes some of the other information they have in their database about all of us, including demographics (age, marital status, occupation, etc.), lifestyles (our interests), ailments and other lifestyle definers, and important life events (when you have a child, move, or get a new job).

Why does a single for-profit company have this much information about us?  Can they be trusted?

Is it likely that all the hackers got from Epsilon was our “names and/or email addresses”?  Why would Epsilon have a database containing just that limited information?  Epsilon exists to learn as much as they can about you so they can sell your personal information to the companies you work with, the hotels you stay at, the banks you go to for loans, and the insurance companies you try to get coverage from.  All of this information is combined into one gigantic database so Epsilon can do what they do.  This is why they’re in business.

Did the hackers get access to this master database?  Their incredibly terse press release doesn’t give me any confidence that my private information is safe.

Is this the “Enron” of data breaches?  We can sue Epsilon out of business, but that won’t get our personal information back out of the hands of criminals all around the world.

There isn’t much doubt left — Privacy is dead.

On a regular basis I manage to do some pretty dumb stuff.  I recount these events so other people don’t make the same mistakes I do, though in most cases, anyone with a little common sense can easily avoid these pitfalls.

I’m not a coffee aficionado.  Requiring coffee every morning is one vice I’ve managed to avoid.  I don’t dislike coffee — a caramel frappuccino and Peet’s caffe mocha are both quite tasty.  Heck, I’ve even been known to drink church coffee.  But boiling water to make coffee is stretching my cooking skills, and I usually don’t have time to stop and pick it up on my way to work.  Those last seven minutes of sleep after hitting the snooze button for the fifth time are the most valuable, and I won’t trade that time in for a quick stop at the local coffee shop.

On those rare days when traffic on the 605 is unusually light and I arrive in the greater Commerce, CA area sooner than usual, I may stop at a Starbucks near the office if I have an extra $4 burning a hole in my pocket.  The problem is, with all the truck traffic on Slauson Avenue, the roads are in pretty bad shape (even after repaving them a year or two ago).  As a result, when the stars align and I actually stop for a cup of coffee, it splashes all over the car as I drive the last couple of miles to the office.  Yes, I get a lid for the cup (I’m not quite that dumb).  But the coffee still splashes out the little sipping hole in the top, and I certainly don’t want to deal with that while I’m still trying to wake up.

My solution for a while was to put the cup in the cupholder in my center console and hold my thumb over the hole in the lid while I drove.  This prevented the splashing, but meant I could have only one hand on the steering wheel while navigating the various potholes, railroad tracks, and other ruts in the road.  Keep in mind, this needs to be done at around 55 miles per hour with 18-wheelers on both sides in very narrow lanes.  I’d be really disappointed if I died in a car crash because of a stupid cup of coffee.

Recently, after spending countless hours studying this situation and engineering several possible solutions, I made another trip to Starbucks.  This time, after picking up the coffee, I asked for a second lid.  The girl behind the counter look at me confused, trying to figure out why anyone would need two lids for one cup.  My brilliant solution was to put the second lid on top of the first, and twist it slightly so the second lid would cover the sipping hole on the first.  When it was time to drink I would simply rotate the top lid to align the two sipping holes, and then turn it back again to close it.  Genius!  Or so I thought…

The girl patiently listened to my entire explanation without changing the expression on her face.  She seemed to be harried and dumbfounded, with just a bit of pity for me thrown in.  Finally she broke her silence, pointed at small clear plastic box on the counter, and said, “Why don’t you use a splash stick?”

I’m not a coffee aficionado.  I don’t know what most of the stuff on the menu is.  And I certainly didn’t know what a splash stick was, but once I figured it out it was as if the clouds opened up and the most ingenious of all inventions was handed to me from above.  It’s a simple green plastic stopper that fits in the sipping hole to keep the coffee from splashing out.  That’s it, but it does the job.  Some people will complain that this is another waste of plastic, but it saves me from wasting cleaning products on my car’s interior.  Others claim that a sticker over the hole works fine, but you need two hands to easily remove the sticker while driving.

I don’t know if the other big coffee chains have a similar device available, but as far as I’m concerned they all should.  That little piece of plastic is enough for me to choose one establishment over another.  But then again, I’m not a coffee aficionado.

Every January, NAMM (the National Association of Music Merchants, but now officially called the “International Music Products Association”) has a big trade show in Anaheim.  This is an opportunity for all the musical instrument manufacturers to show off their latest products and the best technology available for making music.

The Anaheim Convention Center is a short drive down the I-5 freeway from Roland‘s headquarters, so it is an especially convenient opportunity for us to showcase our latest toys.  This year we moved our booth (the largest of all the exhibitors at the show) from Hall D to the convention center’s Arena.  I think it worked well because we had the Arena all to ourselves so people could check out the latest gear without the distractions from people banging on drums or wailing on guitars in neighboring booths.

I haven’t had a chance to check out the rest of the show yet, but here are a few pictures I took of the Roland booth before the show started and after it opened yesterday (January 14th) for the first day.

The Entrance to the Arena (and the Roland display)

Before the display opened

Digital pianos display

TD-12KX V-Drums

People checking out the latest keyboards

Outside the Presentation Theater

The stage inside the Presentation Theater

The Info Counter

View of the Roland Display from Above

The sales area

After seeing this commercial on TV a few times, I’m convinced it’s one of the lamest ever.  The first ten seconds have to be some of the worst dialog I’ve heard in a long time.  And the actors do nothing to help either.  I seriously doubt they intended to make the guy seem like a creepy serial killer, and the woman the most paranoid/clingy (literally!) girlfriend in history.

I don’t know much about jewelry, so what they’re selling may be great, but I’m certainly not motivated to buy it after watching the ad.  Since I like to give credit where credit is due, we have Stern Advertising to thank for this commercial.

Kay Jewelers has thrown down the gauntlet on bad TV spots.  Are you out there, Carl’s Jr?  I expect you to rise to the challenge and respond with something even worse.  I know you have it in you.

If you’ve been a fan of the Angels since the 1980′s you probably already know this story.  If not, this should give you an idea why today’s Angels win is especially significant.

1986 is probably the first “bad year” I can remember.  Among other things, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded a few minutes after liftoff, the first of my grandparents died, and the Angels were one pitch away from going to their first ever World Series — but they didn’t make it.

The California Angels won the AL West and the Boston Red Sox won the AL East.  They were playing in the American League Championship Series, where the team to win four out of seven games moves on to the World Series.  On October 12th, the Angels had already won 3 games and were winning 5-2 in the ninth inning with one out.  The Red Sox hit a home run to close the gap to 5-4.  The Angels got the second out and then brought in their closer, Donnie Moore, to get the final out of the game.  He had two strikes on Dave Henderson.  Stadium security and Anaheim police on horseback stretched up and down the foul lines to prevent the 64,000+ fans from rushing the field when their team won.

But Donnie Moore couldn’t get the third strike, a fly ball, or a grounder to an infielder.  Instead, Henderson hit a two run homer that gave the Red Sox a 6-5 lead.  The Angels came back to tie up the game in the bottom of the ninth, but the Red Sox eventually won in extra innings.

I was in high school at the time, less than ten miles from Anaheim Stadium.  I remember how stunned the other students were the day after that loss.  Even the school’s principal, during the morning announcements over the PA system, urged everyone to hold their heads up high and cheer the team onto victory in the games that followed.  But it wasn’t to be.  The Red Sox won the next two games to eliminate the Angels.

The dark ages followed as the Angels wouldn’t be in the postseason for another 16 years.  Donnie Moore was routinely booed by fans and he killed himself a couple of years later.  Disney made Angels in the Outfield in 1994, capitalizing on the team’s losing reputation.  And in 1995 the Angels had a 10 game lead in the middle of August but they lost that lead in an incredible meltdown.

Much was redeemed when the Angels finally won the World Series in 2002, but the rivalry with the Red Sox was reignited when the Angels faced them in the American League Division Series in 2004.  Boston won all three of those games (though we now know that several Red Sox players were on steroids).  Again in 2007, the Angels lost three straight to the Red Sox.

The two teams faced each other in the playoffs yet again in 2008.  The Angels had won 100 games during the regular season that year and they beat the Red Sox eight out of nine times, so they surely could beat them in the postseason.  But the Angels lost the first two games of the playoffs at home.  They won the third game in Boston in extra innings, making it their first win against Boston in the postseason since that fateful 1986 matchup, but they couldn’t win another game and the Red Sox eliminated the Angels once more.

At the end of the 2009 season, the Angels won the AL West, and the Red Sox got to the postseason by winning the wild card spot.  For the third straight year (and the fourth year in the past six) the Angels would have to face the Red Sox in the ALDS.  But this year was different as the Angels won the first game at home, marking their first postseason home victory over the Red Sox since 1986.  The Angels proved it wasn’t a fluke by also winning game two.

The series moved to Boston for game three, one day short of the 23rd anniversary of the 1986 game.  Boston brought Dave Henderson on the field to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.  The Red Sox scored first, led the Angels the entire game, and were ahead 6-4 going into the ninth inning.  Boston closer (and arrogant a-hole) Jonathan Papelbon was pitching and got the first two Angels out.  With no one on base he was one strike away from finishing the game when the Angels’ Erik Aybar hit a single.  Papelbon was again one strike away from a Red Sox victory when he walked Chone Figgins.  He then had two strikes on Bobby Abreu, who hit a double off the left field wall to score Aybar from second, cutting the Red Sox lead to one run.  With first base open, the Red Sox intentionally walked Torri Hunter.  Vladimir Guerrero showed that was a mistake by lining Papelbon’s first pitch into center field, scoring two runs for the Angels and giving them a 7-6 lead.  The Red Sox weren’t able to score in the bottom of the ninth inning and they were eliminated by the Angels in a three-game sweep!

The ghosts of 1986 have finally been vanquished.  With a World Series victory in 2002, and an ALDS victory over the Red Sox in 2009, there are no curses or hexes or any other sort of baseball voodoo left to haunt the Angels.  The sportswriters and media, with their east coast bias, have to acknowledge that the Angels are for real and can’t be dismissed.

Angels fans everywhere can sleep well tonight.

Over the last few weeks I’ve spent a good amount of time at Long Beach Memorial Hospital with my dad.  My experiences at Long Beach have always been good, and this time has not been an exception.  But during my time visiting this hospital I’ve learned a few tips and tricks that all patients (and their visiting family) should know.

• All the fast food restaurants within walking distance are towards the southwest, on the corner of Willow and Long Beach Boulevard.  There you’ll find, among others, Subway, Burger King, McDonald’s, El Pollo Loco, Carl’s Jr., Pollo Campero, Taco Bell, Papa John’s pizza, a couple of drug stores, and an Albertsons.
• If it’s fine dining you’re looking for, Bob’s Big Boy is 1.4 miles away to the east on Willow.
• The 20 ounce bottles of soda in the vending machines throughout the hospital cost $1.75.  The same bottles inside the cafeteria on the first floor cost only $1.50.
• The cafeteria, which is open until 3AM, accepts cash and debit cards, but not credit cards.
• The TV’s in the rooms get their feeds from DirecTV, so a variety of channels are available, including Discovery, AMC, CNN, Cartoon Network, TNT, and Fox Sports West.  Here’s a chart suitable for posting on the patient’s wall showing the channel numbers.
• The TV remote controls in most of the rooms are lame.  They have a single button you press to go to the next channel, so if you accidentally go past your channel, you have to keep pushing the button until you cycle all the way around to it again.  This can be solved by bringing in an inexpensive universal remote so you can go forward and back in the channels, enter a channel number directly, and do other things you can’t with the hospital remote like mute the sound and access the TV menu to turn the closed captioning on and off.  Radio Shack has a Philips model for $15 that works well (two AAA batteries not included).
• The phones in the rooms only allow local calls to the 562 area code, which sucks if you live just across the border in the OC’s 714 area code.  If you’re nice to the nurses, however, they can tell you a special 4-digit sequence you can enter in the phone before you dial that will let you call outside the 562 area code for free.
• Parking is $5 per day, but you can get a 5-day pass for $20 and a 10-day pass for $30 which allow you to enter and exit the lot as many times as you like per day.  Don’t try exiting the parking lot with one of these passes, and then give it to someone else to exit for free.  Their system can detect if you try to use the pass to leave the parking lot twice without using the pass to enter the second time.
• Seniors can get a parking pass for $25 that’s good for an entire year, so like a teenager finding an adult to buy him beer, you need to find a senior to buy you a parking pass.
• Patients can order food off the children’s menu, which is often better than the selections on the adult menu.
• There is free WiFi available throughout the hospital.  The wireless network is called “Hotspot”, but it is unencrypted so be sure to use the secure (https) versions of websites if you want to access anything private, such as your E-mail or banking.  They use a SonicWall NSA firewall and block a few sites, but most sites and web services are available, including company VPNs.
• If there are certain nurses you really like, you can talk to the nursing coordinator to request them.
• There are computers available for patients to use in some parts of the hospital (such as the rehab wing) for checking E-mail or just killing time on the Internet.
• Ask a nurse or doctor that you want your chart to indicate you have “hospital privileges” so the patient is free to roam wherever they like, including to the cafeteria.
• Want a private room but don’t want to pay for it?  Just claim that you’re infected with MRSA and you’ll get an isolation room all to yourself at no additional charge.

Warning: This post contains geek content.  If such material makes you uncomfortable, please avert your eyes now.  You have been warned.

This blog and the entire biolchino.com website is hosted on a server that resides in a corner of a spare bedroom in my house.  As such, the computer is running around the clock.  Since the traffic to this site is slightly below what Google gets on a daily basis, the server sits idle a lot of the time.

A couple years ago I looked for something this server could do when it’s not serving up web pages, delivering E-mail, or watching for changes in my cable modem’s IP address.  I considered looking for aliens or trying to discover the largest known prime number, but finally chose the Folding@home project being run out of Stanford University.  This is a distributed computing project where the spare computing cycles from computers around the world are used to simulate the folding of proteins to find potential cures for many common diseases and cancers.  There is so much data to analyze and the computations are so complex that no one computer can do it all, so the project relies on hundreds of thousands of volunteered computers to work on pieces at a time.

My server downloads a chunk of data (called a “work unit”) from Folding@home and crunches the numbers for about 21 hours before sending the results back and requesting another work unit.  This server has a dual core Pentium CPU, so it can process two work units at a time. As of this writing, I have completed 784 work units, which easily puts me in the top 5% of more than 1.2 million other contributors.  You can see my latest statistics on the Folding web site.

Hopefully this simple contribution of some electricity and wear-and-tear on the server will someday lead to a medical discovery that helps in the fight against disease.  I’ll probably never know, but I can sleep just a minuscule bit better at night knowing the computer I have humming away in the other room may be doing some good beyond publishing my random thoughts and musings.  I’ve wondered what it costs to keep this server running 24/7, but that will have to be the subject of another blog post.

My regular rotation of lunch destinations took me to Subway today in Bell Gardens, just a few miles from the office.  Since Subway no longer offers the Tuscan Chicken sandwich, I’ve had to go back to the standard 6″ roast beef.  But that’s not really what this is about.  While there, a family of four came in, ordered their food, and sat down at a table to eat.  Not unusual, but this wasn’t the typical family from East LA.  It was a mom, dad, and two teenage boys.  They were white and I think I overheard them talking in German so I guessed that’s where they were from, but I’m bad at guessing nationalities, so they could have been Cambodian for all I know.

They clearly didn’t live around here.  They were dressed in shorts and T-shirts like they were on vacation.  At one point, the mom stood up and took a picture of the other three eating lunch at the table.  I began to wonder, if they were on vacation, what were they doing here?  Bell Gardens isn’t all bad, but it doesn’t seem like a vacation mecca either.  If they were looking for Disneyland or Universal Studios, they made a seriously wrong turn somewhere along the way.

I was trying to think why a family of four would fly all the way from Europe to visit East LA.  If they did it to visit the Citadel shopping center (you know, the old Firestone factory off the 5 freeway) they could have eaten lunch there.  If they were staying at the Crown Plaza Hotel at the Commerce Casino, they could eat lunch at the sports bar (with their excellent extra-thick potato chips).  If they were hoping to have lunch at the world’s oldest operating McDonald’s, they drove a few miles too far west on Florence Ave.  If they were searching for an authentic Mexican meal, they were in the right neighborhood, but at the wrong restaurant (they should have tried my Italian restaurant across the street).  As far as I know, there are no major parks, historical sites, or other tourist attractions in the area.

I’m at a loss for why someone would travel to Bell Gardens to spend their summer vacation.  If you can think of a reason why, I’d like to know.