Meet Tomato

Hello. My name is Tomato.

Well, I've added another pony to the stable. This one is a '95 Honda Del Sol. Here's a great photo from Honda.

The Del Sol (also called the Civic Del Sol or CRX Del Sol) is a 2-seat skateboard with a targa-top.

The top is made of aluminum and weighs around 30 pounds and fits in a cradle in the trunk. It's not as convenient as most convertibles, but it will do.

When you look up, nothing but sky

I've been learning to drive stick. I've known how for a while, but I've been getting better and better driving the Del Sol around regularly.

Honda D Engine. Efficient and Reliable. Zippy if well handled.

The engine is a 1.5 Liter non-VTEC Honda D engine. It's only 100 hp or so, but it redlines at 7,000+ rpm and powers a car that only weighs 2,300 lbs or so. For comparison, a truck will weigh between 5,000 and 6,000 lbs. A Prius weighs 2,900 lbs. The engineering rule of thumb is ever time you double your weight, you need to quadruple your horsepower. Even with reving the hell out of the engine while learning to drive stick, I'm sure I'm getting at least in the low 30's for mpg.

Tomato barely reaches the top of the tailgate of the truck.

Tomato is very low to the ground with stiff suspension. It doesn't make for the most comfortable ride, but it can take a corner like nobody's business.

The car has taken some abuse over the years, but it's solid and will now be well taken care of. Since it's so light, I might convert it to an electric car a few years down the road.

Sometimes, the posts write themselves

PINING FOR THE FJORDS!

One of the greatest comedy sketches of all time.

Tulane's Pikes in the news

So, I heard that the pikes were under arrest, I thought 'it couldn't happen to a nicer group of guys.' They've had this coming for years. The Times-Pic has a rundown of some of their recent incidents, but I can think of far more off the top of my head.

When I was in high school, a Newman high school girl was drugged and raped by the pikes. The brothers in question never went to jail. Oh, yeah, and the Pikes still hold a Boone's Farm party every year for high school girls. Parents are horrified when they find a flyer for the party in one of their little girls' bag.

The most infamous incident happened in the late 90's. Josh Gimelstob, brother of the famous tennis player, was being issued a DUI by a cop. The Pike, drunk, lost control of the vehicle and ran over the cop and dragged the body down McAllister (the road that runs through the middle of campus). It looked like someone spilled gallons of red paint all down the street. Josh then fled the scene. Here's a steaming turd of an article about the trial hosted on the defense attorney's website. Josh got 6 months in a prison alternative program and not a single night in prison for murdering a cop! What did that do for him? Well, a few years down the road, he led cops on a high speed pursuit winding through the back roads of New Jersey at 120 mph. Cops called off the chase because of the danger to civilians and the cops, but just a few blocks down the road, they found Josh with his Mercedes SUV wrapped around a tree.

A few years later, the Pikes took a pledge on a pub crawl. The pledge died of alcohol poisoning. Cops interview the Pikes and they all keep their mouths shut. No charges are ever filed.

I forget exactly when, but the Pikes got kicked off campus, but got special dispensation from Nationals to operate without affiliation to a school. This is normally a no-no for big fraternities. A lot of national Pikes considered their NOLA brethren an embarrassment. My dad, an Ole Miss pike, detested the NOLA Pikes.

They continued to operate and were total assholes. They were also INFAMOUS for ruffieing girls, especially at their big party, Saturate. Dues for the Pikes ran something like $5,000 a semester and none of it went towards keeping the house up (TOTAL dump). It all went for beer and coke.

When I was at Tulane, a student body president campaigned to get them back on campus, arguing it's better to have an in-house problem than a loose cannon. The Hullabaloo and a large group of Newcomb students RAILED against the idea as a disaster waiting to happen. I'd love to see some of those editorials they ran reprinted in the Times-Pic. Cowen, despite his general hatred for the Greek system, gave the move his tacit approval. He had struck up a friendship with some large-donating Pike parents back in 2002.

Did the Pikes behave once on campus? Nope. If anything, they got worse. They started picking fights with other students. The date raping of girls got worse (if that was even possible). There was a large sign that read, "RAPE FREE ZONE" in their frat house that was considered a joke. Anyone who didn't think the Pikes were a ticking time bomb was either a fool or a liar.

I have one piece of advice for the Pikes. Before you go to Central Lockup, you might want to get a tattoo on your butt:


Full disclosure: I was a close friend of Ducky Riess (who ran the fraternity system at Tulane for 50+ years, although not the more recent years) and I was a fraternity member at Tulane.

NOTE- Some minor edits for spelling.

UPDATE- Didn't really want to write a new blog post about this, but had a couple of quick things to say. First off, it's sad that the Times-Pic put this story on the front page 2 days in a row when there were murders and shootings and real news happening all over the city. Second off, after all the rapes and hooliganism, it's a couple assholes who wanted to join these assholes that shuts them down. Rape? Murder of a police officer? Eh. Pouring crab boil on the genitals of a rich, white asshole, SOUND THE ALARM!

Brief Jazz Fest Announcement

Straw hats kick ass. You may now continue what you were doing.

London Ave. Canal Floodgate

London Avenue Hurricane Protection Gate- Lakeside

So I find myself out by UNO with some time to kill, so I decided to take a stroll. I walked around the London Avenue Floodgate and took a few photos that I want to share.

Canal side

In general, I was pretty impressed by the civil/structural side of the structure. Seems like that civil engineer wasn't fucking around when he designed the members that support the gate, especially the supports on the canal side of the structure.

MWI pumps with booms (orange strip at bottom)

I did see one thing that had me worried. The MWI pumps (the original ones that were subject of so much controversy are still surrounded by booms. Not only are there 2 big booms across the inlet and outlet of the canal, but each MWI pump has it's own boom surrounding it. This suggests that either the MWI pumps are STILL leaking hydraulic fluid or the operators are less that fully confident about them.

Boom on canal side of gate

In fact, I might have noticed an oil slick near one of the booms. It was a very bright day, so I can't be 100% without taking a boat to the middle of the canal, but I think I observed an oil slick caught in the apex of the curve of the boom.

New Pumps

The new pumps look like everything is in order and lined up how it should be. The new pumps are made by one of the largest, most reputable pump companies (Gorman Rupp? Milton Roy? Anyone help my memory? I forget which off the top of my head).

You can check out the rest of the photos here. I've added a few notes, too.

MCain loses my vote

Today, John McCain gave a major speech on economics and proves it really isn't his thing. I read the whole thing. Most of it was fluff. He's sort of a step behind trends, which actually makes him look pretty good compared to most politicians (who are 3 steps behind at best). The parts that he should have expanded upon (like corruption on Wall Street), he didn't and the concrete parts are total crap (like the "choose your tax system" and making the 2001 tax cuts permanent). He could have said, 'I'll double the budget for the Securities and Exchange Commission.' That's something concrete that would dispel skepticism that he's not just another fiscally irresponsible Bush Republican.

And then I get to this part:

I propose that the federal government suspend all taxes on gasoline now paid by the American people -- from Memorial Day to Labor Day of this year. The effect will be an immediate economic stimulus -- taking a few dollars off the price of a tank of gas every time a family, a farmer, or trucker stops to fill up. Over the same period, our government should suspend the purchase of oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has also contributed to the rising price of oil...

I'll address the SPR part first. Filling SPR is something that should have been done a long time ago, when prices were much lower. If we assume for a moment that we must start bombing Iran soon or have a 100-year war in Iraq, filling SPR is a life or death necessity. Under that assumption, i does nothing but weakens the national security of the United States. Period.

The gas tax repeal has been put forth a few times in the past. Most of the time, it has been suggested as part of an emergency response to an OPEC embargo or hurricane along the Energy Coast (to borrow a phase from Mary Landrieu). Bob Dole suggested that in '96. For a short term emergency, it's an acceptable band-aid, but to ease a supply shortfall that isn't going away any time soon, it borders on suicidal. Not only that, but it fails basic economics. The price is determined, at it's most basic level, by supply and demand. His plan artificially lowers the price, which will raise demand. Since his plan doesn't address supply and there's not likely to be any dramatic changes over this summer (at least not positive ones), the price of gas will just go back to the level it's at now within a month or two. Then, what do you think the chances of politicians re-instituting the gas tax right before a major election? Not a snowball's chance in hell, leading to a repeat of this on a national scale:

Image from Wiki page on Minnesota Bridge Collapse

Imagine hundreds of bridges all across the country collapsing with cars careening over the edge...

Another thing that bugs me is I think he knows what he's saying is bullshit. He was smart enough to realize corn-based ethanol was bullshit when everyone else was gaga for it (and then, like all the other candidates, shut his pie hole right before Iowa). Knowing your plan is bullshit, yet expounding upon it anyway is reminiscent an alleged quote of Huey Long's in regard to the "Share Our Wealth" program. When Long was confronted by a someone running the numbers on his program and told their weren't enough rich people to make it work, Long allegedly said, "Yeah, but by the time they figure that out, I'll have them sold on something else."* McCain's plan smacks of unbridled demagoguery.

It really pains me to say all this, too. I really liked McCain. I remembered rooting for him in the primaries back in 2000 when I was still in high school. My dad knew the Mississippi McCains well. I read his book. I watched him speak to a crowd that was packed to the rafters during my Katrina semester at Ole Miss. It pains me to say this, but Senator McCain, you have lost my vote.

UPDATE- The Hillary/McCain gas tax plan reborn as a Nigerian fraud scam. Appropriate.


* I've been looking for a source on the internet for that. Am I just making the quote up? Did it come from a debunked history? If anyone knows, please let me know.

So, the last thing Derrick Shepard wants to do...

before he goes to federal pound me in the ass prison is pass that ban on baggy pants. Well, if that's what you want your legacy to be, so be it. Just remember not to brag about it too loudly in prison.

"Watch out for engineers...

...they start out with sewing machines and end up with the atomic bomb."
- Marcel Pagnol
Critiques des Critiques

Fridge that operates without electricity. Great example of seat of the pants engineering . Uses evaporative cooling to keep fruit fresh for weeks.

There's been a major breakthrough in energy efficiency that you might not have heard of. EnergyStar (governmental body that writes efficiency standards) has, for the first time, written new standards for hot water heaters, one of the most energy hogging home appliances. A little less than 20% of your Entergy bill comes from your water heater. Here's what General Electric has come up with. The on-demand heaters are extremely efficient, but they draw a lot of amperage, so wiring them up demands special attention. The simplest way to improve your heater efficiency is install a programmable remote for your water heater that turns it off when you aren't likely to use it (like in the middle of the night and middle of the day during weekdays).

Peer Reviewers Raise Questions [about Corps' Cat 5 Plans]. First off, hats off to Mark Schleifstein. He wrote a technical article that's both understandable and factually correct. Not an easy task. Secondly, the article scares me. It sounds like the "plan" the Corps is coming up with is going to be inferior to something I could cook up in a weekend. None of the technical problems will be addressed, the operating assumptions will be false, and the organizational issues will doom their plan to failure from the start. And the report isn't anywhere near finished yet! The last deadline they missed was January and they're now saying they might not have the plan finished by December. Here's my suggestion: get the head of Boh Brothers in a room with the presidents of all the local engineering companies, give them a dozen staff engineers, give them 3 weeks, and watch what they cook up. The results from that experienced, local group would astound you.

Also, Bob Bea rails against "100-year protection."

SPR expansion on Gulf Coast concerns residents. I've helped design solution mining facilities and the numbers in this article are concerning. The disposal method is also an ecological disaster waiting to happen.

Top 10 Paying College Majors. The top 5: Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Civil Engineering. They don't even go into the smaller majors like Industrial Engineering (Lee Iacocca's major).

One final, random observation from my recent personal observations about engineering:
* Filtration. There's no information in most undergraduate curricula about filtration, but it's one of the fastest growing fields of work for mechanical engineers. Nobody has specialists in filtration, but everyone is starting to run into it. Also, filtration is more complicated than just "stick a filter in there and that'll do it."

R.I.P. Ashley

Ashley Morris has passed away. I only met him in person a couple of times, but his writing was an inspiration. I'm shocked he's gone all of a sudden. He will be sorely missed. My condolences to his family.

Greg Peters and Ray eulogize him.

Oil drips and discharges

There is no gas shortage. While this author makes some good points, he has some enormous holes in his arguments. He confuses oil inventories with gasoline inventories. Also, while gasoline is at a 15 year high in terms of absolute numbers, in terms of days of supply, we're not doing nearly as well. Days of supply are how many days we could run our cars without any new refining until we ran out. It takes into consideration consumption, which is much higher now than it was in 1990. Also, as much as people's eyes pop at the profits the oil majors are making now, it wasn't too long ago they were just hanging on. In the late 90's, when gasoline was 99 cents a gallon (partly as a result of Venezuela fighting for market share), companies were laying off workers and just barely hanging on. After the oil bust in the 80's, 1/3 of the entire industry lost their jobs! I still find if fascinating that the old timers I deal with are thinking 'when is the bubble going to bust' and not 'wow, we're making a lot of money.' The oil bust of the 80's is still deeply ingrained into the psyche of oilfield workers.

Artic the next Saudi Arabia? I doubt it. The most famous prospect in the Arctic is Mukluk. Mukluk is INFAMOUS within the oil industry. It was considered to be a "sure thing" and when the exploration rights were put of for auction by MMS (Federal Government), the bidding exploded. BP spent a billion dollars (back when a billion dollars meant something) to drill a dry hole (no oil). Other companies couldn't believe it, so they went in and drilled more dry holes. No oil was ever found. Here's a different geologist's take. Much more realistic. Nice little factoid at the end, too.

Japanese government paid for 100% of Prius' hybrid drive development, ex-VP alleges Toyota says Jim Press is full of shit. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Japan takes their engineering research very seriously. They spend boatloads on research that could be useful in the near term on what is usually referred to as 'application engineering' (my half-assed definition: applying known technologies in combination to get stuff done).

40% of Spanish electricity comes from wind. 40% of electricity production met by wind energy in a major industrial country... Wind has serious potential and is the most economical of all the alternative energies. That doesn't mean you can completely do without base load stations, but nobody can claim wind is useless. Don't forget about solar, too. Especially solar thermal. Solar power provides peak power (electricity at mid-day, when demand is highest), which makes it even more valuable. Solar power is a long way away from being economical for base power generation, but because peak power generation is so expensive (it's usually achieved through natural gas powered turbines), it is starting to be economical for peak power generation, even without subsidies.

News of Note - 2 April 2008

Louisiana companies hiding from state tax man... Louisiana companies have the 5th highest rate of tax avoidance in the country. Maybe this should figure into our dear government's pro-business agenda. Some companies are paying their fair share, while others bear the burden for the rest.

The School Crotch Inspector. The line between school discipline and child molestation... needs to be tattooed across this sorry excuse for a principal's forehead. I can name a certain FORMER principal of Ben Franklin High School who wished she could get away with this fascist shit.

Oops, another ethnic group riots in China. Same tension between locals and migrating (Manifest Destiny?) Han-Chinese. That idea of the Han Chinese migrating westward in a replication of America's Manifest Destiny would be a very interesting concept to explore over a few beers...

And while we're on the subject of China, China's housing bubble bursts
and The Wheels Fall Off China's Boom. With the potential to knock the wheels off the entire country. China is going to regret having the Olympics. In the meantime, the Chinese army is going to get a workout. One piece of advice to the Chinese government: hire Scott McClellon. I hear he isn't busy. And the press LOVES buying his bullshit. The last 8 years have proven the press (or at least 98% of them) will swallow whatever bullshit you tell them to swallow, so long as you tell it to them in a spiffy way.

SCREW SUSTAINABILITY! Not the article you might think by reading the title. Well worth a read. Thought provoking and makes you think how we got where we are as a species.

How effective is abstinence-only education? Florida sets the bar.

Photos of Al Copeland's Funeral. Monster trucks, motorcycles, cars and boats galore.

Relay-based Computer. Relay-based computer. Instead of transistors, hundreds (thousands?) of automotive relays.

Where Cheney puts his money. Analysis of VP's financial holdings and movings based off his filings. Good place to put your 401(k) money?

10 Most Prophetic SciFi Films. Cool list.

More data beats better algorithm. I've always found the thinking behind computer programming quite useful, even if I'll never write another line of code for the rest of my life.

In Wal-Mart We Trust. Wal-Mart did the most to help those in need during and after Katrina. The article is as much an indictment on FEMA as praise for Wal-Mart, but from my experience, Wal-Mart was ok. I evacuated with a t-shirt, 2 pairs of underwear, and a laptop and not much else, so Wal-Mart was a life saver at the time. I'll give them some props for reopening as fast as they did, too.

You might have already read these, but they're worth highlighting:

Krugman's take on financial "overhaul." Paulson thinks LESS regulation is the answer!?!?

Matt Taibbi tells us the unvarnished truth about the Wright controversy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski writes about the best way to responsibly withdraw from Iraq.

I was just thinking that I hadn't heard anything from Jim Letten in a while...

He was busy. And now we know what he was working on. Mose Jefferson indicted on 7 counts.

Lord Humongous' Streetcar

Seen on St. Charles:


Looks like one of the streetcars from the collision that was pressed into service with some box steel and plate steel armor. Looks like a cattle pusher.

How'd you like to look out your side mirror and see that barreling down at you? My favorite streetcar driver before the storm used to take his streetcar and gently nudge cars blocking the tracks with the little 4" rubber bumper on the front, all the while screaming, "move that buggy!" I can only imagine the destruction he would reap in this beasty.

Post apocalyptic New Orleans indeed...

UPDATE- And on the way home from work today, a pickup truck decided to pick a fight with a streetcar:

Streetcar vs. Pickup

Streetcar wins.

Chinese engineering gone wrong...

A while back, everyone got all in a huff about lead and drug-laced Chinese-made toys. Everyone wondered what the hell was going on in China. And then of course, everyone forgot about it and moved on...

I just wanted to take a minute to share a few stories that have been forwarded to me over the past few months. I work in heavy industry, so equipment has to be of the highest quality. When it isn't, shit blows up and people die. Here are two stories of why the only thing made in China on some of the jobs I work on are the workers' underwear.


This photo is from a pressurized steam line in a powerplant. Most heavy duty seamless piping is made in a handful of mills in Japan (largest source), South Korea, and the United States. The pipe had documentation that said it was made in the USA. After it was installed and the plant was in operation, the pipe blew up killing 2 workers and injuring many others.

Insufficient weld penetration along the seam of the seamless pipe was the cause. Upon investigation, the pipe was made in China while the documentation was forged. Several important tests were either ignored or forged by unscrupulous brokers. Last I heard, the Chinese government was still trying to hunt down the last of the brokers.

The next story comes from a pressure vessel explosion. Pressure vessels are important pieces of equipment in many industrial processes. From boilers for heating, to cracking vessels, to separator vessels, making a large steel jar that can hold in all the pressure is extremely important.

Back in the late 19th and early 20th century, boiler explosions were common. Gradually, engineers learned their lesson and now all pressure vessels are manufactured to a common code put out by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). ASME Boiler Code spells out ever little detail. It's thicker than a stack of Bibles. I wouldn't be surprised if the proper procedure to break wind around the vessel spelled out.

This is one vessel that failed in spectacular fashion. Nobody was injured (they were testing the vessel before shipment). Instead of bending, the steel just snapped with a ragged edge. That's a BAD sign. Steel is supposed to fail in a ductile (bending) fashion, not brittle failure (just snapping with no warning). No material testing (Charpy, etc.) was done on the steel during manufacturer. ASME boiler code wasn't consulted during the manufacture of this vessel. The foreman and his workers just built the vessel off the top of their head.

This is stuff that's almost unheard of since the 1930's. These are just 2 samples of failures I've gotten in my inbox in my time as an engineer.

Disturbing stuff from the country that's supposed to be "the next hyperpower." I think China has a lot of potential, but count me underwhelmed.

NOTE- Edits for grammar and clarity.