Safety reminder

While I was waiting for the train this morning, I observed a situation which could easily have resulted in someone being killed.

The Northbound #231 train was approaching the Santa Clara station. Because of its design, passengers for Northbound trains must cross the Southbound track in order to board the train. To mitigate this, Caltrain has a "hold-out" rule that forbids more than one train from passing through the station at one time, plus they tell the passengers to always wait on the far platform until the train they intend to board has arrived.

There is a southbound express train that rolls through Santa Clara shortly before the 231 is scheduled to arrive. This morning, it was running late.

So looking to the right from the platform, everyone could plainly see the 231 train approaching to arrival. If you didn't also look to the left, you would not, however, have seen that Southbound express also approaching.

Now, only one train can come through at a time, so the two trains get on the radio and decide who's going to go first. This morning, the 231 decided they would hold-out, probably because the other train was late and wasn't going to stop in any event.

So if you weren't careful, you'd have looked to the right, seen the 231 train approaching, not noticed it was actually stopping short of the station. You then might have stepped onto the Southbound track to cross over to the other platform and disappeared in a puff of pink fog as the Southbound express roared through at 79 mi/hr.

Now, to be fair, CalTrain is actually as we speak retrofitting the station with a tunnel so that no passenger will ever need to set foot on an active railroad track ever again. And 6 or so months from now when they're done, that'll be a good thing. And the construction has actually improved the sight-lines to the North, which is the predominant danger.

But in the meantime, if you use that station, please, please be careful. The rest of us don't need to have our morning commute fouled up by having to wait for the coroner to mop you up. I get to make that joke, because it nearly happened to me.

Trivia: World's first powered vehicle?

In the modern world, people and goods are transported across distances by a wide variety of power systems, from internal combustion, to electrical, to rocketry, and animal (including human) power.

The first non-human powered transport was domesticated animal power, of course, reaching back into pre-history. Potential energy machines, such as spring powered engines simply store human power (when you wind up the spring), so they don't change the timeline at all.

No, to find the first example of a non-animal powered transportation system, we have to look for the first such system that operated under its own power.

If you count systems where all of the energy is expended at the beginning of the journey, then we can include the development of firearms. But if we restrict the field to systems where motive power is applied throughout the journey, then the Chinese experimentation with rocketry in the 13th century is where we have to begin. If we further restrict the field to vehicles that aren't single-use (I don't believe the Chinese ever flew a refuel-able rocket), then we will arrive at steam powered vehicles. And the first one ever was a toy built for the Chinese emperor in 1672. Once again, China figures into the history of transport.

What exactly is being safeguarded here?!

It's commonplace nowadays to buy bottles and jars of stuff from the grocery store and find a seal attached to the top of the bottle underneath a screw-on top.

Now, it's annoying to have to remove the spout from the jar, remove the seal an reattach the spout the first time you use it (as opposed to removing, say, a shrink-wrap plastic wrapper around the spout/cap). But you can sort of understand it. The seal is like the lid of a canning jar - it's a hermetic seal that preserves the contents from spoilage.

The trend sort of started with the Tylenol poisoning scares in the 1980s, and what became a seal against spoilage gained a second purpose as a protection against product tampering.

But the concept falls really, really flat when the product being protected is DISHWASHER DETERGENT!!!!

Ordinary ergonomics

I'm continually astonished by the poor ergonomics of every day items. It's as if people don't actually try the things they create and put into the marketplace.

Today's example, believe it or not, is Betty Crocker's Dark Chocolate brownie mix.

If you've been living in a cave your entire life, I'll briefly describe this product. It's a box with a pouch of powder, and a second pouch of chocolate syrup inside. You mix the powder with a measured amount of water, vegetable oil, and eggs; pour it into a pan; throw it in the oven and bake until done. The result: a pan of brownies.

So what ergonomic issues could I be talking about? Well, the box has the instructions on the back. The instructions include the amounts of the ingredients you need to add to the mix, the temperature of the oven and the baking time.

That's pretty important information. In particular, the amount of water and oil you need to add is a particularly important piece of information, I'd guess.

So why the hell is that information in the smallest font on the box?! The font showing that you need to use ½ cup of oil is positively miniscule. So small that it's actually hard to tell whether it says ½ or ⅓ cup. Hell, it may even be hard to see the difference in your browser on this page, depending on your setup.

So, what? Could they not spare the extra few micrograms of ink?!

Happy Halloween!

Trivia: four-corner counties

There is only one place in the U.S. where four states meet.

But what about counties?

In California, there are two such spots. The two sets of four counties in question are:

1. San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Kern and Kings

and

2. Santa Clara, Alameda, San Joaquin and Stanislaus.

There are a couple more that might appear to qualify, but if you look at them closely on a map, they don't quite meet up (merely instead forming two nearby spots where 3 counties meet). For it to truly be a four-corners meeting, two map lines must cross each other cleanly (not necessarily at 90 degree angles, as they do at Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado). While it is possible to make a map where more than 4 areas come together to meet at a point, there are no "5 (or more) corner" spots in California.

So, there you go.

First words from the moon?

If you ask people what were the first words spoken by a human from the moon's surface, their answer will often be Neil Armstrong's "One small step" quotation. I happened to think about that a bit today, and it doesn't really ring true.

As of yet, no human being has truly been in contact with the lunar surface. The only way such an event would truly be possible would be to build a pressurized enclosure on the moon. Only then could someone walk on the surface without the protection of a space suit. What we're left with is an approximation - the Apollo astronauts who visited the lunar surface did so constantly surrounded by a bubble of Earth's atmosphere, whether that bubble was located around them in a suit while they were EVA or whether that bubble was around them in the LEM. And Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent an extended period of time after the actual landing before they opened the hatch and descended to the actual lunar surface. Buzz even had rime to take communion.

So how do you pick the first words spoken from the moon? Well, they'd have to be the first words spoken by a human being who was inside of a vessel that was in contact with the lunar surface. And if you read the NASA transcripts of Apollo 11, you'll find that the first words from the lunar surface given that definition actually came from Buzz Aldrin.

As the LEM was descending for its final landing, a probe descending from one of the landing legs made contact with the lunar surface. That probe lit a light on the instrument panel. When that light lit up, Buzz said, "Contact light," as a cue to Neil to cut the engines and let the LEM fall the rest of the way to the surface.

And those words were the ones that made history.

History is often like that. The first creatures ever to cross the Golden Gate other than by water or air were a pair of workmen on the Golden Gate bridge who were engaging in a repair mission of sorts. They hauled themselves over the unfinished cables and into the history books more than a year before the first pedestrian would cross the finished bridge. The flag raising at Mount Suribachi (on Iwo Jima) that was widely and famously photographed was actually the raising of the second flag, ordered by a commander who thought the first flag was too small. If you visit the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, you'll find two poles - the real South Pole, which is just a simple spike in the ground and a small, plain sign, and a few hundred yards away, is the so-called "ceremonial" pole, which is a giant barber-pole decorated monstrosity surrounded by the flags of all the nations with a presence in Antarctica. The ceremonial one is the one that people expect to see, but it's not the real one.

Losing weight

Last January, I had a Vertical Gastrectomy. Since then, I've lost 180 pounds.



I'm almost half the man I was.

I still want to lose another 30 pounds or so, but that's going to go more slowly, I think.

Hit by CalTrain - learn from my mistake

This morning on my way to work, I got hit by the northbound CalTrain train that I was supposed to board at the Santa Clara station. I was taken to the hospital to be checked out, but only suffered from bruises and scrapes and needed two stitches on my forehead. Service was delayed for everyone else for 20 minutes while the police investigated. For those inconvenienced, and to the crew of the train, I offer my apologies.

The Santa Clara station is one of the few stations remaining that are so-called "hold out" stations. That is, there is a platform between the two tracks intended for use by passengers boarding (or disembarking) trains on the far track - which are the Northbound trains. Well, today, the Northbound train was on the opposite track. When I heard the train approach ringing its bell, I glanced over in that direction and saw the train approaching and slowing down, but did not see that it was on the wrong track. So I started to cross the Southbound track - where the train was - and got hit. The train was going maybe 5 MPH, but it still threw me 10 feet onto the platform. I thank my lucky stars that it threw me onto the platform rather than onto the tracks.

Generally, I wait until the head of the train passes me before I venture across the crossing. Today I didn't do that, and it nearly cost me my life. I don't intend to repeat that mistake. Please don't anyone else repeat it either.

I'd like to see CalTrain fix all of the "hold out" stations. They're working on California Avenue right now, and they've shut down weekday service to Atherton, but I haven't heard about any plans for Santa Clara.

Still here

No, I'm not going to be one of those folks who abandons their blog. I just don't have anything interesting to post about of late. I've decided everybody is tired of me whining about bad beats and cold decks, and there really isn't anything interesting on the mac front.

I did get a chance to play the Thursday morning tournament at Bay 101 last week and came in 9th. I didn't have to rebuy, but I did buy the add-on, so that $80 turned into $170. w00t.

As soon as anything interesting happens, I'll post about it.

Earthquake damage

Humpf. The earthquake really did do some damage.

Two things, in fact.

One of Scarlet's porcelain angels fell over on the bookshelf and broke. I'm not sure what it cost, but though I offered to glue it back together, Scarlet said it was a total loss.

And the shaking must have rattled something a bit too hard between the hot water heater and the circulation pump I installed. It started leaking. Fortunately, it was caught by the flood sensor I installed as part of our alarm system. We got a call at 6 AM from the alarm people that the flood sensor had gone off. Just to be on the safe side, we called our favorite plumber (Gus from Castle Plumbing) to come out and fix it - mostly just so we could get him to check to make sure it wasn't more serious. He said it was just loose, so he tightened it. $100.