Tag: electricity

Nixing The Noise

One of the biggest problems of PCs is the noise. My newest computer is no exception.

As soon as I fired it up, I head the whine and the whir. They were tough to dismiss. I buttoned up the case, but there was little change. Some of the problem was fixable, some I’m resigned to endure.

One of the biggest problems with PCs is the noise. My newest computer is no exception.

As soon as I fired it up, I head the whine and whir. They were tough to dismiss. I buttoned up the case, but there was little change. Some of the problem was fixable. Some, I’m resigned to endure.

I mentioned yesterday, the speed throttling ‘pot’ had been left of the CPU cooler. Turning down that fan made a difference – and the CPU temperature has not climbed.

Right now the CPU, motherboard and power supply all check in between 32&#176 and 34&#176 Celsius (89&#176 – 93&#176 Fahrenheit). I think the CPU can easily hand 60&#176 Celsius. I have no clue about the power supply or motherboard, though I assume they’ve got less leeway.

I should add, computers are incredible heat producers. The faster they get, the more heat they produce. And, of course, heat means electricity. This has become a big problem for the proprietors of ‘server farms,’ which need to be cooled ferociously.

If I placed my hand over the fan grate on the back of the case also quieted the machine. That fan was spinning at around 3,000 rpm. As it turns out, in my box of never to be thrown out computer parts, was another speed controlling pot.

Listening carefully, I throttling that fan back until most of its noise was gone. It is now spinning at 2,000 rpm. That’s 1/3 lower in speed, but light years in noise.

Still the computer has a definite whir. I think the problem is the hard drives. Most PCs have one. This PC has five!

The Devil made me do it.

Actually, I had the drives hanging around from older projects. They seemed too young and virile to be filed away somewhere. Today, they could probably be replaced by a single drive – and sometime in the future that’s what I’ll do. Just not now. You have to draw the cash line somewhere.

Oh – last night while throwing in the last of the additions, I did notice some errors in my thinking. What I assumed was ‘just’ a disk controller turned out to be a RAID controller.

I didn’t plan for my two 60 Gb drives to become a RAID&#185, but I had little choice if I wanted to use them.

Also, my TV card may only support 320×240 resolution – 25% of the pixels I’d get with the 640×480 I assumed it was capable of. I bought it cheap, online. Maybe I just didn’t peruse the specs properly.

I think it’s time to stop writing technical stuff for a while.

&#185 – It stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives, and in my configuration two drives look like one. Since half the data is written to each, getting over some mechanical imitations, they are faster than single drives. Other types of RAID are used to create two copies of all data, for safety purposes.

The Meisels Go Home To New Orleans

Back when Hurricane Katrina was threatening the Gulf Coast, I did my best to get Ruth Meisel out. The day she drove to safety up north was the last time she saw her home, until yesterday.

With her two adult children in tow, Ruth Meisel returned to New Orleans to see what could be salvaged and tie up loose ends. She will be among the tens, maybe hundreds of thousands, who will leave their homes and move elsewhere.

New Orleans is being abandoned, wholesale.

I asked her son, my friend, Farrell to type some of his thoughts so I could put them here in the blog. I’ll sprinkle a few of his photos here, though the best way to see them is in this slideshow.

Clean up goes on. 80% of the city was affected. Some parts of the city have begun to function, albeit at half speed. This area is still without electricity and is deemed unsafe. It’s expected that electricity won’t be restored in New Orleans East for six to nine months. My mother returned for the first time since the hurricane and subsequent floods, to survey the damage and see if anything could be saved. She’s suited up and ready to go inside. In the background, my sister, Cheri, ready to suit up, as well.

It’s nice… no, it’s amazing to see Ruth smiling.

Here’s my read. She could be distressed with what she’s about to see, or she could be happy to see she raised her children right, and they are accompanying and supporting her. She chose the latter.

My mother knew from earlier reports and a prior visit by my sister, that things didn’t look so good. She’s been very optimistic and hopeful, looking forward and giving us much encouragement. My mother’s house survived the storm on the outside, but the inside looked and smelled awful and was a total disaster. Entering the front door we were greeted by a living room chair that wasn’t there when my mother left in August. That gives you an idea of how we were greeted.

From the marks on the wall it looks like 4-5 feet of water made it into the house. From the ‘bunny suits’ the Meisel’s wore, you can assume it wasn’t spring water.

Nearly everything was ruined.

One of the things that struck Farrell when we spoke on the phone was the proliferation of signs advertising Katrina related services. There are also markings, scrawled on homes with spray paint.

This house has been FEMA’d. FEMA is not an acronym here. It’s a four-letter word. BTW, so is Bush.
One of the city’s synagogues, Beth Israel, an Orthodox house of worship…Also one of the city’s oldest, which used to be in the historic uptown area until the late 1960s. Also on Canal Blvd, note the watermarks. Reportedly, the head Rabbi fled town, leaving the Torah scrolls to flood and be rescued from religious volunteers. The Rabbi has since been fired. My sister spotted prayer books and prayer shawls on the ground in front of the now-deserted synagogue….a sin in the Jewish religion.

Here’s how Farrell ended his note, and I’ll leave it pretty much intact:

As I visit here, for the first time in several years, 3 months after the devastation that has been chronicled worldwide, I have now discovered: A Missing City. Parts of the city and neighboring parish (Jefferson) we have seen are beginning to function, but it’s slow and without spirit.

In our many conversations with New Orleanians and Jeffersonians, one hears a great deal of anger leveled at Government. I could only find one person with a nice thing to say about President Bush. I asked why? The waitress at the seafood restaurant said it was the Louisiana Governor’s fault for not letting Bush send FEMA and the troops in. I then asked, out of curiosity, did she know that Bush was on a fundraising trip in California for three days before he did a “fly-over”, VP Cheney was buying a vacation house and the Secretary of State was shopping in Manhattan, while her home state, Alabama, was flooded. The waitress hadn’t heard that.

A newspaper stand owner or manager clearly vented his anger towards Bush, but didn’t spare either the local, regional and state governments, but felt, the US Government let Louisiana down.

Most of the Greater New Orleans area, (Orleans and neighboring parishes), as it’s known, with some 1 million people once living there, don’t have electricity, a home, assistance from FEMA, insurance companies, and they feel forgotten just three months after the hurricane and floods.. As is the case with crises the world over, once the cameras leave, the sense of urgency goes with the camera crews.

The stores and shops that are open are operating for limited hours due to two factors: limited shoppers and limited staff.

It’s quite unusual to be driving in one part of the area, say neighboring Metairie, where the shops and malls have reopened, only to continue on Interstate 10 to downtown New Orleans, and pass through darkness because whole areas have no power.

There were some signs of life downtown and in the French Quarter. The beautiful St. Charles Avenue historic areas seemed to be untouched and lit, yet, just a few blocks away, one would have thought we could have been in a war zone.

Rumors of price gouging exist. Household stores are reportedly charging double for goods consumers can buy in the middle of the state or in Mississippi for less. Gasoline is 30 cents a gallon more expensive than in the center of Mississippi or Louisiana reportedly.

Residents feel abandoned now. From the newspaper shop owner to restaurateur, residents don’t feel the city of N.O. census will approach even half of it’s close to 461,000 registered residents.

Employers are looking for employees. Potential employees are looking for housing, assistance from FEMA and the insurance companies, and those are the few, who have returned.

The Times-Picayune reported today that the New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin, rumored to be in Washington on business, actually wasn’t there on business, but took his family on vacation to Jamaica. While I’m sure he’s deserving of a break, there are several hundred thousand to one million people, who’d love to take that break, if only they could get some help from the various government agencies so they could get on with their lives and rebuild. And I haven’t even begun to discuss the levee system.

As I write this at 2am Central Standard Time, I was trying to think, after only two days here, how could I best describe what I have seen and heard? The word that comes to mind is “abyss.”

New Orleans, which had once been described as the “city that care forgot,” from an old Mardi Gras tale, has become the bottomless gulf or pit. There are only a handful of truly unique cities in the U.S. with some history and character. When tourists think of those cities, New Orleans had always been in the same company with San Francisco, Boston, New York, Savannah, and perhaps one or two other cities or towns.

It would not be an exaggeration to suggest, if there is no sense of urgency, New Orleans could drop off that list in my lifetime.

Please, look at the pictures. It is so sad… so tragic.

I Didn’t Know I Was This Nice

My friend Farrell’s mom, Ruth, has been interviewed again about her escape from New Orleans.

Every time she tells the story, I become a bigger hero. It’s now the “Legend of Geoff Fox.”

Seriously, this was a call anyone with info would make to the parent of a close friend. I am glad Ruth escaped New Orleans unscathed. I’m glad she listened to her family and friends, because I know in her heart she very much wanted to stay.

The story from the Valley Gazette continues at the jump.

Continue reading “I Didn’t Know I Was This Nice”

Katrina Comes Calling

I woke up and turned on the computer. The Miami radar showed Katrina closer than I expected. I think people in Florida are surprised it’s this close this soon. A friend in South Florida says the Hurricane Center’s personnel are on TV ‘tap dancing’.

I called my folks. “Put down the hurricane shutters,” I said. Hours later, the shutters were still up.

None of the neighbors had theirs down, my mom told me.

The shutters are down now. The wind is beginning to blow. The heaviest rain and wind are still to come.

Most likely they will not need the shutters, just as most likely I won’t need my seat belt on the drive home tonight.

They are currently with phone service but without electricity. The no electricity thing is the part they didn’t want to go through again.

Powerless

The strangest thing happened at work this afternoon. The power went out.

Actually, that’s an oversimplification. Though most of our lights stayed on, all our computer screens went dark (as did the computers driving them). In the days of film or videotape that might not have been as awful. Today, everything is on a computer. Everything – even stuff you wouldn’t expect, like video.

Our engineers started scrambling. They knew part of the station was powerless, but they didn’t know why or where the problem was.

Throughout the building there was the incessant chirping of Nextel as engineer called engineer, hoping for some insight or a sign that would lead to a fix.

Where Nextels weren’t chirping, UPS (uninterruptable power supplies) were. Their batteries were quickly draining and they were signaling their own death.

I started to think, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone, what would we do? How would we, or could we, do the news with only limited electricity?

There have been stations in hurricane and tornado areas that broadcast from their parking lot using a ‘live truck’ as a mobile control room. Is that even possible anymore when all the video is on a hard drive somewhere?

Someone asked me if I had any magnetic Suns! I’ve been doing the weather for over 20 years. That era totally predates me.

I watched a production person move through the studio holding a gigantic electrical strip… like an extension cord on steroids.

Our master control operators managed to reroute our feed around the television station, going from Springfield, MA to Mad Mare Mountain in Hamden. We were back. Somehow, with part of our electricity on, another engineer figured out a way to get a camera on live for a news brief. There would be no video from stories, but at least we’d have a live on-air presence.

Soon all the computers returned. I’m not sure what the problem was, but it was fixed.

Back in the weather area I had a dozen or so PCs to bring back to life. Some of them needed to be fired in sequence to bring up the networks that interconnected them.

One by one they came back to life. Little by little the entire building picked up where it had left off. By the time we got on the air at 5:00 PM, it was impossible to know we had been dead in the water less than an hour earlier.

If this was some sort of test – we passed. I just don’t want to have to go through it again… though I’d like to play around with magnetic Suns and Magic Markers.

The Challenge of Computing

For the past few months I’ve been blogging, emailing, and computing in general on my backup machine. Somehow, my main computer had become unstable, rebooting at any or no occasion.

I’m not sure what made it go nuts. I only know it did. I suspect it wasn’t a virus or spyware. I’m very careful about that, but something was bugging it and it was relentless.

At one point I wondered if the problem wasn’t caused by the power supply? Considering all the crap I’ve got shoved in my computer case, it might have been overtaxed. A few weeks ago I ordered a new, quieter, more powerful power supply and a few extra sticks of memory.

This weekend I pulled the old supply and hooked up the new one. Though it looks complex with lots of wires and plugs connected to it, it’s really pretty straightforward.

I fired up the computer and – well, it was the same garbage. Right in the middle of nothing the computer would reboot. Maybe the original power supply was bad and a spike of electricity from its strained regulators had put bad data on my hard drives?

I decided to start from the very beginning.

My C:\ drive didn’t contain much other than installed programs. All my important data was squirreled elsewhere. I re-formatted the drive.

Next came my copy of Windows XP. In the drive it went and the install process was underway… until it stopped. Randomly, files weren’t being copied properly and Windows wasn’t shy about telling me.

The message was something like, “Press Enter to try again, skip this file at your peril.” I pressed Enter… and Enter… and Enter. Sometimes on the second or third try a recalcitrant file would load, only to hit the another pothole a few seconds later.

Finally there was a file that wouldn’t copy, no matter what I did! Was it the CD drive, my hard drive, the Windows CD itself or something I hadn’t thought of yet? I kept trying, but never got any further.

Finally, tonight at work while reading through an old Usenet message, I found something that might be the culprit… though it sounded off the wall. Sometimes when mixing and matching memory chips, Windows balks. It just refuses to install.

That, in a nutshell, was what had happened to me.

I’m guessing – actually, it’s more like hoping, I’ll be able to stick the memory into the PC once Windows is loaded and running. It will run much faster with 1 Gb of RAM than it does with 512 Mb.

As I type this Windows is updating, installing all the security patches that have come out since XP hit the scene. I still have a few more drivers and utilities to throw on before it’s time to reinstall my programs.

What a royal pain!

In the long run, all of this anguish and angst will go away. The computer will run like a top. I will be happy.

It’s a machine I designed and built myself. Unless something goes wrong from time-to-time I feel I just haven’t pushed the envelope.

Frances – The Back Story

This week, people all over Florida will be reminded why the state was sparsely populated until the 50s – it’s really hot and humid.

I spoke to my folks this afternoon. They have phone service, but no electricity. As far as they can tell there is no electricity at all in Boynton Beach. Their condo has begun to steam up and they spent much of today out of doors.

Undoubtedly, there are more people with phone service than working phones. What I mean is, in many places the phone lines work, but cordless phone base units need power from the wall! If those people would only plug in an old fashioned phone, they’d be back in touch.

In my folks’ kitchen, whatever is left in the freezer has melted enough to send rivulets of water down the outside of their refrigerator. I told my mom to just open it up and empty it out, because anything left is now unfit for human consumption.

Back in the very late 60s I lived in Lake Worth, Florida without air conditioning. You get used to anything, I suppose. But, looking back, it was brutal. I wish my folks wouldn’t have to undergo that same experience.

There’s no timetable for getting their power back on, though I hope the average age of the residents will spark the electric company to go to extra human efforts.

To The Mall

There was some thought of visiting my friend Paul in New York this weekend, but when that didn’t work out, I asked Helaine and Steffie what they wanted to do. Mall.

Hey, I asked.

My friend Peter Mokover (gratuitous mention) summarized it properly on the phone. “Girl’s stores.” He’s right, that’s what malls are all about.

In many ways this is similar to gifts given to couples. Yes, it’s for them… but it’s really for her.

We headed out to West Farms Mall, about 45 minutes from here. First stop was Dunkin’ Donuts. I picked up a cup of coffee and the spied something new in the baked goods rack – Low Carb Bagels.

Low Carb Bagels! How is that possible? Is there anything less friendly to carb counters than a bagel.

I bought the bagel.

Before I left the counter I asked if there was any information on this bagel? Was it 10% lower, 20%, 80%? The woman serving me didn’t know. Later I went to the Dunkin’ Donuts website. No info there either.

The bagel was fine. It seemed to be coated with cheese. I’m really not sure. I just wish I could find out what it is.

We went to the mall. Peter’s right – girl’s stores.

I spent some time at the bookstore, Radio Shack and The Discovery Channel Store, but there’s nothing as compelling to me as Abercrombie and Fitch is to Steffie. I also made 3-4 calls to my parents in Boynton Beach. Hurricane Frances has them trapped inside. They’re comfortable, well fed and with friends, but without TV, computer, air conditioning or electricity.

Before we left, we had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. Wow. I have never seen a business built so much on merchandising. Even the menus had warnings about taking them, because they were for sale in the store… which you walk through to go inside.

My burger was good and the three of us split a “Volcano.”

Here’s the bottom line. It was really nice to spend the day with my family. It is a pleasure we don’t have all the time and I savor it.

Powerless

I was sound asleep when Steffie walked into the bedroom. She leaned down to wake me. I sprung up – as if I had been launched.

“The alarm is beeping,” she said.

I was groggy – after all, it wasn’t 10:00 AM yet. I walked down the hall to the panel for our alarm system. The LED readout and another light were flashing. From inside the box came, “beep.”

I turned to Steffie and asked if the power was out? I guess I wasn’t very lucid if I had to ask. It was off.

Back in high school I had a teacher, Mr. Temes, who complained that his Brooklyn neighborhood of Manhattan Beach was connected to the power grid by a piece of zip cord. It sometimes seems the same here.

We had been hit by moderately powerful thunderstorms overnight, with torrential downpours. But the power worked then. We didn’t lose the juice until it was sunny, dry and warm.

I reset the alarm system and went back to the bedroom. As I put my head on the pillow I stopped to listen to the silence.

We live in a world with so many little noises generated electrically that it’s easy to miss them. But you really do hear the difference when the power’s off.

Every electrical appliance with a transformer is vibrating a little when it’s plugged in. Refrigerators cycle their compressor on and off. The pump to pressurize our well water kicks in. There was nothing.

Well, actually, that’s not so. There was mostly nothing, punctuated by yet another beep every few seconds. Years ago we had bought a cordless phone with a great feature. So you don’t take it too far from its base, it beeps when it loses contact with the mother ship.

Every time the power fails, it beeps incessantly.

I was first made aware of the little noises we always hear when I read “The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium : An Englishman’s World.” Robert Lacey, the author, talked about the things we’d notice that were different back then, and noise was high on the list.

Before I fell asleep I picked up my cellphone (which now works at home) and called Helaine. She was out shopping. We are so totally dependent on electricity that until recently neither of us carried a key to the house – depending on the garage door opener and then security system protected interior doors.

Luckily, before she returned the power problem was fixed. I knew it when I heard a small motor kick in and the sound of a little extra water streaming into our toilet’s tank.

Flag Day in Hudson, NY

All the photos on this page, and lots of parade pictures, can be seen in my photo gallery.

Back in 1969, when I got my first paid on-air radio job in Fall River, Massachusetts at WSAR (Ahoy there matey, it’s 14-80) I met Skippy Ross – a fellow disk jockey. He was older, wiser, married, and the station’s music director. We became friends.

Later, in 1971, I went to WBT in Charlotte, NC. Skippy was already there… he just wasn’t Skippy anymore. In Worcester, MA he had become Skip Tyler and now he was Bob Lacey.

For nearly 35 years he has been Bob Lacey, working at the radio and television stations at 1 Julian Price Place, and becoming a Charlotte institution. He and his partner, Sheri Lynch run a woman friendly&#185 morning drive radio show, syndicated across the country.

Bob and I have remained friends through all this time. When my life was falling apart in the mid-70s, Bob took time off and drove with me through the Western United States. We have shared good times and bad longer than most married couples – and with a better relationship.

On-the-air Bob refers to me as his ‘gold best friend.’ It’s an honor I treasure.

We are two very different people. I think the difference can be best explained in a little story. The year was 1973 and I was leaving Charlotte, moving to Cleveland (based, as it turns out, on bad information from someone who wanted me to leave). It was my last day there and I was getting a new tire put on my car. Bob joined me at the tire store on Independence Boulevard, a busy Charlotte business district back then.

We went to the Coke machine. Bob went first. His soda plopped from the slot, he put the bottle into the opened, pushed down and was ready to drink. I got my bottle, went to the opener, pushed down and… soda all over me. It was as if a midget was in the machine, waiting for me to shake the bottle.

To me, Bob has always seems suave and in control. I have always seemed like an unmade bed – scattered and kinetic.

We are both lucky, because in spite of setbacks in our lives, we’ve done well – both with our careers and families. And, for two old guys (and he is much older and very, very short… make that very, very, very short) we’ve aged well.

I was on the phone with Bob late last week. It was the usual chit chat. I asked him what he was doing over the weekend and he told me he and Sheri (his radio partner) were flying to Hudson, NY for Flag Day. There’s a parade, which they ride in, the emcee from the reviewing stand.

Hudson is a few hours from here – a nice drive if it’s a nice day. There’s some highway to take you away from the urban areas and then it’s small, sparsely traveled 2-lane roads through rolling hills. The trip goes up through Northwest Connecticut, cuts through the Southwest corner of Massachusetts and then west into New York and the Hudson River.

I decided to go.

Since I knew neither Helaine nor Stefanie would want to take this road trip, I prepared a geek’s journey. My camera was ready with two sets of batteries and two flash memory cards (I could have taken 350 high resolution photos, but only took 273). I put my old Dell laptop on the passenger’s seat, plugged an inverter into the cigarette lighter and threw a GPS antenna onto the armrest between the seats. This trip would be well documented.

The trip up was uneventful. The weather superb – truly perfect. Though I had printed directions before leaving the house, the GPS receiver was really helpful, showing me my turns before I got to them.

With the top down, on a sunny day, there are lots of sensations. The warmth of the sun (I was worried about the warmth of the sun on my laptop, which I removed from the seat and put on the floor while still in Connecticut), the breeze, the aroma.

Springtime has good aromas. There weren’t many restaurants to pass at this time of day on this route. I did smell freshly cut grass (a watermelon-like smell), freshly cut lumber (as I passed a mill) and a dairy farm. They were all distinct, but the dairy farm was certainly the most pungent.

I have a radar detector mounted in the convertible. When I first bought the car, I had electricity brought from an interior light directly to the unit. It only went off once on the trip, and then because a police car was going the opposite direction and must have had his transmitter on.

By the time I got to Hudson, the streets downtown were closed off for the parade. This was a bigger deal than I thought – and as I’d later find out the longest parade I’d ever seen.

The main street of Hudson, Warren Street, was lined with happy people. For some reason I expected this to be a lily white town. That was not the case. There was just about every shade of person imaginable, and they were all out on the street together ready for the parade.

It seems like Hudson is a town that was, and possibly still is, down on its luck. I walked on cracked sidewalks with tall weeds growing through them. There were small houses with chipped paint. On Warren Street itself the homes were old but freshly painted. It had the aura of gentrification – a two edged sword which rebuilds and displaces.

I moved toward the river, where the reviewing stand had been erected, and waited for Bob and Sheri. They arrived, first in the parade, sitting in a convertible. It is only now, looking at the photo, that I realize it is a used car, for sale, with the price tag nicely affixed to the windshield. Still, it looked great rolling down Warren Street, and Bob and Sheri were enjoying every second of it.

We chatted for a few seconds and then they made their way to the microphone and the parade began. It was a bad day to have a fire in the Hudson Valley, because I believe every piece of fire equipment for a hundred miles was rolling down Warren Street – even a blue fire truck from Philmont, NY! Along with the fire equipment there were policemen and soldiers and and organizations, plus kid from schools and sports leagues.

This was the longest parade I had ever seen. As we approached the 3 hour mark, I turned to a policeman standing near me and asked, “Are they going around for a second time?”

There was a sad moment. A float in memory of a local soldier who had been killed in Iraq. The base of the float was full of American flags – one for each death in this war. In a glass case, the soldier’s uniform was displayed. Very, very sad.

The parade ended and Bob, Sheri and I hopped onto a golf cart to head down to the riverside where the festivities would continue. The scene was very much like those beeping carts that careen through the terminals at airports, taking people with more pull than us to the next gate.

It was getting late. I had a drive ahead of me. They had autographs and then a plane ride back to Charlotte. We’d all get home around the same time.

I wish I could have spent more time with Bob, and with Sheri who I like a lot. Bob and I are already trying to figure out a time for next summer. But maybe there will be time sooner.

The good thing about gold friends is, their friendship will wait.

&#185 – When I say woman friendly, I mean a show which is not based on sex, bodily functions and stretching the vocabulary envelope. Stern, Imus and Bubba the Love Sponge don’t qualify for this genre.

All the photos on this page, and lots of parade pictures, can be seen in my photo gallery.

The Most Beautiful Weather


The past two days have featured the most beautiful weather you could imagine. Temperatures were in the upper 60s and low 70s, the dew points (hence humidity) were low, the sky azure blue. I had nothing to do and nowhere to go.

I tried to convince Helaine to go to New York City, but with Steffie studying for finals, she wanted to stay nearby. I called a friend, trying to see if he’d take a drive to the shore. Zero.

This afternoon, the sunshine was too much to take. I put the top down on the car and headed toward Branford with the intention of catching the setting Sun over Long Island Sound.

Though I often kvetch about the winter weather, there’s no doubt Connecticut is spectacularly beautiful. I live in an area called Mount Carmel, though I’m only at 280 feet above sea level. Within a mile of our house is Sleeping Giant Mountain.

When the glaciers retreated after the last ice age, they left much of what they were pushing forward in place. That’s how Long Island got to be where it is and how Southern Connecticut has some sharp, though not very tall, ‘mountains.’ Most notable are East Rock, overlooking New Haven Harbor and Sleeping Giant.

In the Sound itself are many pint sized island, often one single rock, left with the glacial retreat. The group off the Branford shoreline is called the Thimble Islands.

Stony Creek, an area in Branford overlooking the Thimbles was my destination. The thought was I’d go there early enough to see the sunset, get some photos and go home.

I hadn’t been to the Branford shoreline for a number of years, and I appreciate it more today. There are some ostentatious homes, though most are not. In fact the best way to characterize the architecture of Stony Creek is, appropriate. This is the right place to have a fence or home draped with floats that usually mark the lobster pots that sit beneath the water’s surface.

Parking was easier than I’d ever seen it at the Town Dock. The view was clear all the way to the horizon. There were few boats moving among the islands – probably due to the later hour.

I’ve only been on a Thimble Island once in my twenty years here. Someone I used to work with used to be married to a someone whose parents owned a small home on Governors Island – right next door to Jane Pauley and Garry Trudeau. I spent an afternoon trying to be nonchalant whenever in their presence.

The house I visited was small and sweet. The center of the island was like the spine of a large flat rock. Though there was fresh water and a telephone (in those pre-cell days) at the house, there was no outside source of electricity. When it got dark outside, it got dark inside.

As the Sun began to set, I began to realize it would be setting behind a small hill – not over the water. I got in my car and began to drive.

Because Branford’s shoreline is irregular, it was impossible to know if or when I’d find a spot with a view. And, even if there was a spot, it might not have parking or be open to strangers at all.

I headed down one road with houses on one side and a salt marsh on the other. It was obvious from the beginning there would be no sunset from here, but the view across the marsh toward an inlet from the Sound and a large marina was impressive. So was a closer scene of two ducks in a small salt pond at the edge of the marsh.

After a few minutes I moved on. Using the deep, late day shadows as my guide, I headed to a residential area. Four houses faced a small inlet. Though the sign said “No Parking,” I pulled to the curb and shut my engine. In the twenty minutes I stayed, there were no other cars.

There still wasn’t a clear shot to the Sun setting over the water, but there was a nice notch in a hill where the Sun would dip. In the foreground a sailboat was moored in the channel.

I took as many shots as I could, bracketing the exposures. I’m going to have to rethink this type of shot because I’m still not sure I got the best balance between the red sky and the sailboat… or if this type of shot is even possible in the digital world. When I allowed enough light for the boat, the sky lost its color. And, when I let the red sky dominate, the boat couldn’t be seen. Even with Photoshop this picture isn’t nearly as nice as what I saw with the naked eye.

After nearly 7,000 photos there is still plenty I don’t know about my camera – stuff I want to learn. There was probably some technique I could have use to improve my chances of a good shot. But what?

The Sun was down as I left Branford, but that made my two last shots even nicer. Branford’s Green has a few churches, including one built in 1640. It is starkly lit at night and stood out well.

A few blocks down the road is the town’s library. From the outside it is an imposing building with a domed roof and stately columns. Inside (of course it wasn’t open on a Sunday night at 8:30 PM), it seems like the kind of place Conan Doyle would put Sherlock Holmes. The floor plan is probably considered impractical today, with its alcoves and curved walls, but it is fun to be in.


All the pictures from this entry are available in a larger format in my photo gallery, or by clicking on any individual photo

Physician – Heal Thyself

All week I’ve been talking about the cold temperatures and that you’ve got to respect the “3 P’s”: Pipes, People and Pets.

In the past, when the temperature has approached zero, we’ve had a problem with one pipe – bringing the hot water to our kitchen. The way our house is built, the kitchen juts out past the foundation, and the hot water pipe is right against an outside wall between the basement and first floor.

We drip a little water, and it’s just fine. And, when I came home, the water was dripping.

I had to wash out a dish I had brought to work for my dinner. As soon as I turned on the hot water, I realized the dripping had been on the cold side and the hot was frozen! Uh oh.

I went upstairs to get a blow dryer. It’s possible to thaw a frozen pipe, if the freeze isn’t too far from the exposed part of the pipe you’re heating, and if the freeze isn’t all that long in the pipe.

The cord on a blow dryer isn’t made to reach from a counter level outlet back under the sink. Up to the (very, very cold attic) to get an extension cord.

I had to clear the cabinet beneath the sink and pile our little home chemistry lab (well, that’s what’s under there) on the kitchen floor. I wedged the blow dryer on the pipe an turned it on.

Within a few seconds there was a drip. Thirty seconds later it was a tiny stream. Within a minute water (cold water) was flowing from the tap. Not long after that, it was hot. I washed the dish.

The one time our pipe really froze, we called Frank the plumber. It took him about 30 seconds, using what looked like an arc welding transformer to heat up my pipes by using them to carry high current electricity. To this day Frank is my hero.

Right now, the thermometer out my office window reads 0.3&#167! Sunrise doesn’t come for another 5&#171 hours. We might hit 5&#171 below zero – maybe more!

Phantom Lightning

As the power failure/blackout story progresses, the Canadian power authority has begun to blame a lightning strike in Northern New York State.

This would be a subject I have some expertise in. So, take my word. There was no lightning strike in Upstate New York this afternoon that might have set off the blackout. Period. End of story.

Continue reading “Phantom Lightning”