Four Border Crossings in Four Hours

A new personal record -- four border crossings in just four hours.

First a little geography. It starts with The Louisiana Purchase, The Treaty of Paris, The Oregon Treaty and The Mexican American War.

The net is that a not quite straight line is drawn at not quite the 49th parallel from Boundary Bay Washington to Lake of the Woods Minnesota.  This leaves two interesting artifacts: Point Roberts WA and The Northwest Angle MN - both parts of the United States but disjoint and more properly Canadian.

OK, how do cross four times in an afternoon?

1) Bellingham to Point Roberts - 2 crossings.

2) Point Roberts to Bellingham - 2 crossings,

My next challenge is to visit the Northwest Angle.

drk

CREDIT: A Not-So-Straight Story, NYT. November 28, 2011 

The Miracle of Patch Magic

So, I'm a Boy Scout leader.  Actually I love it.  More later.  Maybe

As a scout you have to affix patches to your uniform.  They sell this miracle glue stuff called Patch Magic at scout stores.  God know whats in it, but it sure is sticky and badges really stay on well.

So this summer it was time for scout camp and I got every badge I could on my uniform and in the right place.  It really was sharp.

At scout camp you wear this shirt at least twice a day every day and maybe the whole day long.  It came back a bit ripe and with quite a lot of Idaho.

I figured that scout camp only happens once a year so I might as well send it with the next load to the dry cleaners.  After the dry cleaners I just "filed" the shirt in the closet until the first meeting in September.

Imagine my surprise when I'm 15-minutes from a scout meeting and there are no, NONE, badges on my uniform.  Yes, it was my shirt.  No badges not even a mark.

Realize that this Badge Magic stuff is serious.  If you tear off a badge there is a sticky patch left over that works better than fly paper.  Not a mark.

A couple of weeks later I was at the Scout Store and the lady there said she had heard of people having problems at dry cleaners but had no first-hand knowledge.

Still more weeks later I'm putting new badges on my old shirt.  I look at the back of the Patch Magic and it says in bold: DO NOT DRY CLEAN unless you want to remove all the badges at once.

I guess it was a classic RTFM.

/drk

The Man Who Ran the Moon

The Man Who Ran the Moon / 

James Webb, JFK and the Secret History of Project Apollo by Priers Bizony

Picked this up at Half Price Books recently.  It look me a while to get started but what an awesome story about a person who you don't hear much about.

James Webb was the first administrator of NASA.  This guy had the ear of presidents and the captains of industry.  NASA was created in his image.

Well worth the time if you are a space junkie.

Dan

In Run-Up To Kindle Lending Program, Libraries Beef Up E-Book Offerings

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-in-run-up-to-kindle-lending-program-libraries-beef-up-e-book-offerings/

Good read.

Steve Jobs to Cupertino... I pay taxes

Quoting from Apple Insider:

When one councilwoman asked if free Wi-Fi for the city was a possibility, Jobs replied, "I'm a simpleton, I've always had this view that we pay taxes and the city pays to do this kind of thing. Now if we can get out of taxes, I'd be happy to put up Wi-Fi."

Awesome.

The video is here on YouTube.

Dan

Chromebooks

Chromebooks are very cool.  What do I like best?  I think it's the pricing.  The lease idea is very innovative as it the bundling with Verizon data.

$429 wifi, $499 with 3g.  The 3g version comes with 100Mb/mo of verizon wireless data — FOREVER!  No contract, no extra charge.

The leased versions are $20 to $28/mo and the EDU pricing includes google apps for my school.

Seems like a very hot ticket to me…

Endeavour last flight launch photo's

These photos from NPR are most awesome:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/05/16/136363560/amazing-shots-of-shuttle-endeavour-thanks-to-nasatweetup

Dan