Brass at Westminster

Our brass group will be playing at the Westminster SDA church tomorrow morning, with prelude starting at 10:45. See you there?

320 Crest Lane
Westminster, MD 21157

Recycling Electrons

I'm sure this has been done to death in high-school and college physics classrooms and labs around the world, and I'm showing my naivete by bringing it up again. But it strikes me that we're set up to use our electric potential very inefficiently.

To look at it one way, you could say that electrons flow from the ground into our houses, through our appliances and down the wire to whatever utility generates electrical potential for us. What bothers me is the perception that a stream of electrons will generally flow through only one appliance of mine on the way from ground to utility.

Many of my appliances have no need for the full potential available on the wire. Shouldn't there be some way to reuse the available current?

What I'm imagining is some kind of master router that would replace my circuit-breaker box. Rather than the hard-wired (literally) division of current between the various circuits in my house, this master router would manage the provision of potential among the various circuits, taking what comes back down the black wire and augmenting it to provided the needed current for the next circuit.

At its simplest, I think this would be like wiring lamps in series, instead of having all the circuits of my house wired essentially in parallel. And I'm not remembering if wiring in series would make the electric meter spin any more slowly.

If you could do this, would there be any reduction in my demands on the power company? Would it help if you could do something similar at each electric socket or switch?

Sleepy ThinkPad

For the past several weeks I've been living with a ThinkPad annoyance: my T61 puts itself into stand-by mode whenever it gets too warm. Suggestions on keeping it cooler?

A Different Kind of Memory Problem

As I look back on brass rehearsal last night, I notice something unfamiliar: with two different topics, I had something in my mind, but not in my mental schedule.

In conversation, I mentioned that I would need to leave quickly (because I had another rehearsal to attend). But that need didn't "click" with me until nearly half an hour after rehearsal should have ended, when I suddenly "remembered" that I needed to be rushing out the door.

And on the way out the door, I mentioned to someone that we had brought three new, still-in-the-box music stands with us, but didn't remember until this morning that we needed to unbox and assemble them.

With two different topics, my "autopilot" was working with respect to having critical knowledge available for conversation, but it was broken as far as getting me to understand that I needed to act on that knowledge. I've never noticed this kind of discrepancy before.

Why Today is So Exciting!

OK, I give up. I really can't explain it! Just know that it has to do with four french horns, a piano and this incredible piece of music. And my parents. All happening at six o'clock this evening.

Sweet Dreams!

This sounds too fun to be legal: http://www.umbrianserenades.com/about/index.html

Gmail 2 for Treo 700p - Don't Do It!

I downloaded the new version 2 Gmail midlet to my Treo 700p today, and found that it refused to do anything, and pretty much locked up the phone in the process of doing it. I tried a few different work-arounds, and reinstalled once or twice, but to no avail.

To my great relief, I found that Evan Brewer has a copy of the previous 1.5.0 version on his server, as mentioned in his article here. Thank you Evan!

What Will They Say About You?

It has been suggested by some that a useful way to find out what's important to you, in the process of trying to set life goals and make plans, is to imagine your funeral. What do you hope will be listed as your most significant accomplishments and lasting achievements? What will your family, friends and acquaintances be saying over dinner as they remember you?

Certainly, this type of analysis was critical in the conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge. It seems reasonable that it could prove useful for less fictional characters as well.

It occurs to me that a similar exercise is to imagine yourself leaving your place of employment. This is something that each of us may have the chance to actually do more than once in a career.

We had a farewell luncheon today for a team member who is leaving both the project and the company, and I just found myself wondering what kind of speeches would have been made if I had been the dearly departing.

Free Speech Unique to America

A thought provoking and (for the moment) encouraging article about First Amendment rights in my country.

In other news: Beth had significant oral surgery earlier this week, and could use prayers, flowers, cards, et cetera.

Also, I'm involved in quite a lot of music (this isn't Easter or Christmas, is it?) and I'd love to tell you about it when I have a moment to write another post. The big ear-worm at the moment is Puccini's Messa di Gloria: beautiful stuff.

PBA Begins

We're sitting in the church, and listening as Elder Dodge organizes this mammoth event. The numbers this year are staggering: it looks like 45 teams made it to the finals this year! This doesn't reach the proportions I had hoped for: see the opening paragraph at PBAWiki.org. But it is very easily the largest group in the four years that the Triadalphia Sparks have been here.

About half of the pews in the church have been allocated to the 45 teams. Each team comprises six (typically) Pathfinders, and is assigned an adult local judge and scorekeeper. Each team also has a runner, usually an Adventurer or similarly-aged youngster, and the runners were assigned this year by calling all eligible kids to the front, and then directing them to each go find one of the local judges, who were standing until they connected with a runner.

This is the first year that the local judges have been asked to check the uniforms for completeness. According to the rules any participants who are lacking parts of the official uniform are to be disqualified, but this is the first year that the inspection has occurred during the orientation.

A little more rigor this year with respect to who may walk around and take pictures during the event. Official photos are to be posted on the PathfinderBibleAchievement.org website within three weeks.

As always, the scoring is based on the highest-achieving team. Any team that reaches 90% of that score is considered to have a first-place finish, 80% second place, and the remainder third place. My personal prayer as we go into this event is for 45 first-place finishes. God is able to grant this if it brings glory to His name.

Because of the way these events are conducted, we will not have an accurate picture of how the kids are doing until the end, when the scores are announced. At the half-way point, we'll get a few minutes to chat with the players, and we can get a feel then for how they think they are doing.

Opening prayer . . . and they're off. :-)

If you've been following along, it will be 45 questions (I expect) before I have much more to report. Take the time to shoot me an e-mail, please, so I can tell the kids at half-time about all the people who are praying for them.

Note to the organizers for next year: take steps to ensure that the cameras and cranes are removed from the sanctuary before the event next year, so that all the teams have a good view of the screens.

This year our team wound up on the opposite side of the sanctuary from where we chose to sit. We could have tried to move closer, but it didn't seem worthwhile at the time. But I'm finding it even more difficult than usual to get a sense of how our team is doing or feeling.


The yellow sign in the center is for our team.

45 questions, time for the half-way point stretch.

Well, the news is not the unburnished enthusiasm we have been praying for. Because the team is short by one player, there are five chapters that have had less polish than the others, and one eight-point question came from those chapters.

One of the astonishing features of this year's event is that the judges (we assume) have selected questions to remove preemptively. So far five of the questions, now six questions, now seven, now eight, have been removed from the event. This significantly reduced the potential score and the opportunity for teams from behind to make up their scores. Now nine. We are told this is for the sake of time.

We're waiting for the teams to finish writing the 90th (last) question, which was the list of generations between the captivity and Jesus.

According to our record keeping, there should be a total of either 191 points or 198 points.

Uncle Dan from Your Story Hour is here to say a few words.

I gave an announcement about PBAWiki.org.

There's announcement that Battle Creek will be hosting a Pathfinder museum.

I haven't forgotten about you. The score tallying is taking a very long team, and our emcee is continuing to discourse on many topics as we wait for the score to be returned.

The scores have been returned. We should be hearing something momentarily.

We have the scores now. This is not official, but my count as they were handed out was that 40 of the 45 teams scored a first-place finish, and the remaining five were all second place. This is a very close finish, and an amazing number of very high scores. The Triadelphia Sparks suffered from the missing member, and wound up with one of those 2nd-place finishes.

Closing song and benediction, and we hurry for supper and the train.