Join the Saturn Ion Fan Club

Today was in the upper 80s — tomorrow is supposed to hit 100, a record high for August first in Syracuse. Miserable weather now, but exactly the sort of day I remember with misplaced fondness while scraping the windshield during a February ice storm.

This is also the sort of day when you really want the air conditioning in the car to work. Especially when it doesn't.

One of my Ion's quirky failures is the fan switch, which interlocks with the air conditioner. You should be able to twist the knob from OFF to 1 and receive a gentle breeze and have the A/C activate; going further through 2 and 3 to 4 should yield a marrow congealing blast. But not my car: 1, 2 and 3 are dead and 4 sometimes condescends to give me a brief puff.

Looked this up on line to see if I could get any wisdom: none, just other overheated and disgruntled souls who paid $130 for a new switch plus labor. Nuts to that, said I: what have I got to lose by taking a look at it myself? (This is the point in most literature where the reader cringes and imagines the shower of sparks that ignites the upholstery, and so on, until the fire department arrives, but too late to save the garage.)

Happily, nothing untoward happened... and guess what? I fixed the darn thing. Saved a couple hundred bucks. Made Laurie so happy she showered me with an undetermined number of kisses. So now I'm doubly happy!

If you happen to have a Saturn with a similar problem, I'll share the secrets (some of this is specific to the Ion, so your car might vary):

1. Do not remove the fan knob at any time. This will be very important later, as it will keep small parts from flying out and getting lost.
2. Remove the trim that surrounds the center cluster of radio and HVAC controls by pulling the two vents straight out, then gently coaxing the rest of the piece loose. The thing is held in place by a handful of spring clips.
3. Use a 9/32" nutdriver to remove the two screws that hold the stereo in place; pull it straight out and disconnect the antenna wire (it just pulls out), ground wire (it pulls off) and the harness (you have to press a release tab to pull it out).
4. Use the same nutdriver to remove the two screws that hold the HVAC panel. This doesn't buy much, just a bit of wiggle play.
5. You should now see a harness plugged into the back of the HVAC panel directly behind the fan knob. Press the release tab and pull the plug off the back of the switch.
6. There are two screws that secure the back of the fan switch; use a 7/32" nutdriver to remove them.
7. You are about to remove the back of the switch, but first a warning: when it comes off, chances are you will find a copper disk and a spring loose inside... so be careful with the next step.
8. The back of the switch it still held in place by three plastic tabs. Use a small flat screwdriver to gently pry them back just until the switch back pops free. I started with the one aimed toward the driver's footwell, then the one aimed toward the passenger footwell, and finally the top one.
9. Hopefully you will now have the plastic switch back, the copper disk, and the spring... if it all came apart, you just found the problem. Rejoice and be guardedly optimistic.
10. Take a tissue and clean out the inside of the switchback and the copper disk; Saturn got overly happy with grease, which seems to be the root cause of the problem... it tends to push the disk away from the contacts and makes it disengage from the knob shaft.
11. Put the spring back first, and then push the copper disk onto the shaft with the two contact dimples pointed out. Notice that it is keyed, and will only go on one way. You should be able to push it far enough so that the plastic shaft goes through the middle; then rotate the disk a quarter of a turn until the disk pops out a little bit, but stays on the shaft. If it stays in place without your holding it, you've done it right.
12. Snap the switchback back in place and plug the harness back in. Turn the ignition key on and check the fan: if it works, continue on... if nothing happens, take the switch back apart and make sure the disk is seated correctly and that the dimples are pointed toward the engine.
13. Secure the switch with the two 7/32" hex screws, then secure the HVAC assembly with two 9/32" hex screws.
14. Reconnect the stereo's wiring harness, ground lug, and antenna; put it back in place and secure it with the last two 9/32" hex screws.
15. Put the trim piece back in place, starting with the bottom and working toward the top.
16. Double-check that everything works, then rejoice and be moderately satisfied.
17. Go inside and with a grim face, tell your wife a sad tale about this $130 switch and the outrageous labor bills... that won't be necessary because you just fixed it yourself. As she kisses you over and over, rejoice and be exceedingly glad.

Foundational issues

Thursday and Friday were lost days for blogging purposes... a combination of intricate printed circuit repair and unrelenting paperwork made the idea of staring at a computer screen about as inviting as a bowl of ice cream at room temperature.

That, and we've been in Breaking News! mode all week. Nowadays it's the weather: ohmygosh, it's raining, break into the programming to let everyone know. Send the satellite truck to Fair Haven to show a washed out culvert. Roll every truck! We don't know where or why, but get out there! Intense concentration punctuated by annoying interruption.

---

This morning feels a lot more productive: the front brakes on my Saturn Ion have been making odd noises, so off to Advance Auto Parts for a new set of pads. I've seen a lot of Advance in the three years since we bought the Ion, mostly for replacement front turn signal bulbs that would last only a few weeks at a time. Finally Saturn issued a recall concerning the problem and added a couple of resistors so that the bulbs wouldn't burn so bright when operating as daytime running lamps.

It's been a disappointing experience: our first Saturn, a 93 SW2, ran for ten years and 200,000 miles with little more than routine maintenance; it's easily our favorite car. The second Saturn, a 2000 LS2, had some problems from the start but was generally okay -- but we replaced it after five years when it became obvious that it would need major work to pass the state inspection. The Ion is just not well built or reliable: not in major areas, but in details that become annoying. Short-lived bulbs. Underengineered seat release knobs that snap off. A failed fan switch. Parts that don't line up correctly -- like the right rear door. It won't leave me stranded by the side of the road, but I might wind up in a muggy rainstorm with a defroster that only comes on at quarter power.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Ion get replaced with another Hyundai, as we replaced Laurie's LS2 with a Santa Fe. This really overcooks my grits, as they say; Saturn has wonderful dealers who are great to work with, but the cars just aren't what they were (or ought to be). The Hyundai dealers aren't in the same league, but their cars are well built and give a lot of value for the money... and the ten year warranty is more than triple the Ion's. I figure that I know competent mechanics, so I can work around a poor service department if the car is worth the effort.

The brake job went quickly and easily, and I was pleased to find that the timing was just right: the pads were down to about 1/8th of an inch but hadn't gone down to the rivets, so the rotors don't need to be changed. Hurray! All told, I figure we saved about $200 by doing it myself.

Celebrated by taking the car for a brief spin to seat the pads, fill up the tank, and check the tire pressure (the Nedrow Hess station is one of the few remaining places with free air). Got about halfway there and a huge doe came blasting out of the woods in front of me. Oh, yes -- those new brake pads definitely worked. Felt like one of those commercials for a national muffler chain: "you never know when you'll have to stop fast... until..." All I lacked was a baby in the back seat to complete the picture.

Drove around the corner, which takes me past the south side of WSYR's AM tower field.

One of the first sights to greet you when you drive north into Syracuse: sweep around the curve on I81 near the Nedrow exit, and there's the triple tower array in the valley, flashing their beacons as they have been doing for more than 60 years. Before the interstates cut through the city... before the MONY building with the star on top... before the Carrier Dome. The two north towers are older, built before the Army Corps of Engineers rechanneled the winding Onondaga Creek that meandered past the field. The south tower is newer, but still older than I am. Years have passed since cows grazed in the field, and now the only activity you will find is an occasional youth buzzing through on an ATV. The field, which used to be even and grassy, is now weed covered, rutted and heaved where fill from the creek has settled. The concrete bases on which the towers stand have settled and deteriorated, reportedly giving the south tower a slight lean.

How does one go about replacing footings for a tower 330 feet tall, weighing hundreds of tons? As it turns out, like this:

You build a temporary brace around the failed foundation while you build the replacement.

These two fellows are from Montana, doing here what they do around the country for other aging stations. And from the looks of things, they're very good at it. Today they are placing temporary jacks on the northwest and southeast legs; once they are secure, the ceramic base insulators are removed and the old footings are demolished. Forms are built for new footings, and new concrete is poured. The team leader says that they expect to have two legs of two towers ready for pouring on Monday, and once they cure, they move the jacks to the opposite legs and repeat the process.

I remarked at what an amazing sight it is; the leader just shrugged. "It's what we do."

Go fly a paraglider...

Not a whole lot of time to write today. The newsroom's going nuts: some Skaneateles fellow with too much time and money on his hands flew a paraglider into a tree and had to be rescued. We've been in breaking news mode ever since, interrupting The View (not a big loss) with a breathless live account of firefighters helping him climb back down.

You would think that coverage like this would be reserved for a much more substantial emergency: as one former 9 reporter used to say, a plane full of nuns and handicapped children crashing into Carousel Mall.

A practical problem with focusing this much time and attention on such a non-story is that you have reporters on the air for protracted periods, live, with nothing to talk about except the color of the victim's shorts and whether they were wearing a red ball cap or a yellow crash helmet at the time of impact.

It must be a very slow news day nationally: already we have fed this to ABC, CNN, and NNS. "The Middle-East exploded today, but first this breaking story just in from Skaneateles..."

Oh, bother.

How low can you go?

Blogger's authoring tools have been running really slow this week. I tried uploading a picture, but that doesn't seem to work right now. I'll try again in a couple of minutes.

Our production department has a twelve-year-old Chevy Astro van, all wheel drive, complete with a special roof rack so that someone can climb up and use the truck as a camera platform. Of course, nobody ever does — the truck moves enough that it isn't terribly stable, and without any provision for a guard rail, it just isn't worth the risk of falling off.

Old-timers still call it the PM Truck, but it isn't and never was; its predecessor was a stretch Ford van with the PM Magazine logo on the side... but we haven't carried PM Magazine in 22 years. Funny how names tend to stick to things long after any logical association is gone: we still call the main news microwave system the ELU — short for Eyewitness Live Unit — and channel 9 canned the "Eyewitness News" identity at about the same time PM Magazine went away.

We bought our first microwave truck — the ELU — back in 1983. It was part of the first wave of investment that Ackerley Communications made in the station, and we were so proud that we produced a special open for the newscasts that began with beating drums, blaring horns, and a big-voice announcer intoning,

"From all over Syracuse and Central New York, this is Nine Eyewitness News with Bud Hedinger, Sheryl Nathans, Doug Logan, and the Nine Eyewitness Live Unit!"

We used to dream of the day when we'd come out of the open and hear "Good evening... Bud, Sheryl and Doug are off tonight... this is the Eyewitness Live Unit. In tonight's top stories..."

Anyway, this ELU receiver is also known as "Remote 2". And no, we have never had a receiver called "Remote 1"... that was designated as a spare switcher input we could use for random purposes. There's no law that says that things need to make sense.

---

Construction continues on the Elecraft K2 radio kit. The front panel was finished this weekend, and work has begun on the main RF board.


I'm also studying for the license test... and just now made the discovery that operator privileges for the Technician class license begin above 50 Megahertz. And guess what? This radio tops out at 30. Which means there's absolutely no benefit to my getting a Technician class license. To use this radio I need a General class ticket, which requires studying another element of theory and operating practices, plus learning Morse code.

I guess I won't be ready by the August 3rd testing date, after all.

---

I'm definitely losing it. The reason for mentioning the PM Van in the first place is that some time overnight, it converted itself into a low-rider. The front bumper is about three inches off the pavement, and the front wheel wells are resting on the tops of the tires. All it needs is ball fringe and Mariachi music to complete the picture.

Careful investigation has turned up a warm trail around the vehicle, and we definitely suspect the involvement of our resident marauding geese.

Back from Biloxi

The team got back yesterday morning: thirty exhausted teens and leaders all wearing red tee shirts. Each team member has their own stories, but a common theme is amazement at the scope of the devastation, even now, nearly a year later. Some of Hannah's photos tell the story more eloquently than words. The region is full of areas where something used to be — but is no longer.


Quite common are "stairs to nowhere"...

Some multi-story buildings were outright destroyed; others look like this. No, that isn't a building with a parking area underneath... the vacant first floor used to be a pharmacy.

A beautiful picture of a terrible sight.

There is so much remaining to be done.

No rest...

We're dragging today. One of the leaders from Hannah's group called last evening to let us know that she had gotten a particularly bad headache, probably the result of dehydration, but was doing well after having gotten some sleep in a cooler location. Laurie talked with her a while and she sounded fine, though somewhat annoyed with all the fuss.

It's extremely hot and muggy in Biloxi right now (not that this is unusual), to the point where the leader was saying that he's sweat clear through his leather work boots. Ugh!

They called back shortly after 11 to let us know two of the women leaders were taking her to he hospital: the team medic didn't like the way she looked, and was concerned about the dehydration continuing. The women called back about 20 minutes later when they arrived, and the hospital called some time after that to let us know that we would be charged for a co-payment. Fine, no problem. They gave Hannah IV fluids and sent them back sometime around three. They're tired, for the obvious reasons; back home, we never really got back to sleep all that well, half expecting yet another call. With her mouthguard, Laurie can make a sound that mimics the phone's ringer quite realistically. Not quite being asleep tends to make snore, which keeps Laurie from sleeping soundly, so she makes more fake phone sounds. Synergy at its worst. So when our friendly neighborhood skunk wandered through, we were well aware of it.

Another leader called this morning to fill us in, and she's doing okay, but will be spending more time sleeping, at least this morning. They start back for home tomorrow... others have been having problems with the heat, too, so it sounds like everyone will be glad to get back on the air conditioned bus.

---

I finally gave up on sleep about an hour early, spending a little time on the radio kit. Installed the parts for the single-sideband transmit option onto the front panel board, so all that's left for this assembly is the mechanical work of preparing and installing the front bezel plate and the tuning encoder. Huzzah! I'll leave a picture to close the week.

Do we make anything here anymore?

Brace yourself: I'm having a mood today. Over the course of this week I have been dealing with equipment failures and new system design work that has required direct contact with various manufacturers of broadcast equipment. And not a single one is in the United States.

• Evertz: Ontario.
• Tandberg: England.
• Panasonic: Japan.
• Miranda: Quebec.
• Sony: Japan.
• Sierra Video / Kramer: Israel.
• Ross: Ontario.
• Leitch: Ontario, at least for now.

Leitch is not doing well by me this week. Within a matter of days I have had two of their digital video switchers fail. The first is WSYR's final program bypass switch, and it managed to take the station off the air for a while. It's on its way back to suburban Toronto by way of Grand Island, New York. That's inefficient, but it's how you have to deal with customs issues for equipment being shipped outside the country for repair — unless you want to become the exporter of record, which is a paperwork nightmare.

The second failure wasn't fatal: a circuit card containing a small digital switcher overheated and made the audio cut in and out intermittently. This came to light over the weekend when the temperature was in the mid 90s, and it messed up our Watertown station for a while. The overheating problem is particularly annoying since it was preventable: every card produces a certain amount of heat, and the mounting frames are capable of removing a certain amount of heat. The key is to not install more cards than the frame can cool, and I am quite careful about this. But being careful doesn't work when the printed specs for the card are wrong... a fact that only became apparent when I compared the manual that shipped with the boards, versus a current revision manual on the web site. We had eight of these cards spread among three small frames; this week I have replaced the three frames with a single larger frame with much more aggressive fan cooling, and things are working much better now.

Leitch worries me. They have been around for years, and their equipment has historically been quite well designed and unusually reliable. Look at the stations in our region, and you will find dozens of Leitch frames full of cards, plus switchers, synchronizers, clocks, video still-stores and other key pieces of infrastructure. Hundreds and hundreds of devices. I can count on two hands the number of Leitch equipment failures over the past 25 years or so — but they've been concentrated in the last five years and have affected relatively new equipment. What's more, they were recently acquired by Harris Corporation, so their customer records are somewhat screwed up. When we tried to send back WSYR's switcher for repair, it took a day for them to figure out who we were and to agree to do business with us.

Dealing with these foreign companies is especially galling when one considers the early giants of broadcast equipment: Ampex, in Redwood City California; RCA, in Camden New Jersey; General Electric, here in Syracuse New York. Nowadays there is not a single company in the United States that makes video cameras or recorders.

Apparently the drift isn't unique to this country: a new DVD recorder arrived last week, a JVC. The company is an offshoot of RCA, the letters standing for Japan Victor Company. But look closely on the box: Made in China. Sigh.

---

Hannah called last night while the bus was bringing the team back from supper. Her work group has been sheetrocking and finishing houses, and she has been painting. Sounds like it's been going smoothly, and the group has been getting along well. They get back home this Sunday, and I'm looking forward to that. There's a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles in the very near future: she turns 16 this Saturday. Sigh again.

A tale of two kits

Progress continues on my new transciever kit. The front panel circuit board is almost complete, but there's a brief detour: because the training program included the SSB transmit option, I have to install some extra parts from that package before I can finish this assembly. It should just take a few minutes, and then I can move on to the main RF board. At the rate this is moving along, I will likely have a completed radio that I cannot test: I don't have an amateur license yet, and the next examinations are August 3rd.

I've been taking sample tests on line, passing the technician class element (2) easily and passing the general class element (3) about half of the time. The technical stuff isn't a big deal: that hasn't changed since I took the FCC commercial radiotelephone operator test nearly 25 years ago. What trips me up is the culture of amateur radio, and acronyms like RACES. It would be really nice to walk in and get all of the testing accomplished for a general class license in one trip, but that would mean learning Morse code in two weeks, which is a stretch. I do, after all, have a life — even without the motorcycle. So I'll probably just do what's necessary right now for the technician class and go back later for the general... or maybe the extra class.

A co-worker just stuck his head in my office: he is also building one of these kits. Yesterday I had asked him how he was coming along, and he said that he was about halfway done with the main RF board. That's pretty fast, I remarked: that board is the last one to be built. Oh, no, he said: he decided to start with that one. Not a good idea, I pointed out: they have you assemble things in a certain order because some parts block access to others; besides, the first two boards include the test circuitry that's needed to build the last. "I guess I'll have to look at the instructions," he said.

His comment today: "you were right. But I don't think I need to undo too much."

Doing things in the right order can be important. He's about to leave with the live truck for an 5pm news story... sure hope he decides to open the garage door first.

Demise of the geek

Got a 5:30 wakeup call today from the station to let me know that a piece of equipment failed that we had been working on yesterday. He said it died at 3am, so he came in and patched around it to put the station back on the air. So is everything back up and running? Yes, he just wanted to inform me of the problem.

Thank you ever so much for not calling me when the problem's actually happening and my involvement might be relevant. And thank you again for waking me up to tell me something that could have waited until I got in at the normal time. Grump!

And to cap it all off, the problem was not what the fellow thought: it was a completely different piece of equipment farther down the transmission path from what I had been working on yesterday. So I got to work on this, after all. My joy knows no bounds.

Sleep deprivation is a known aid to the sardonic arts. But I have kept it to myself... until now.

---

It has come to my attention that I drew some erroneous correlations yesterday between amateur radio enthusiasts and, for want of a better word, geeks. While I'm still not clear on all of the dynamics involved, the feedback I have received from family and friends leads me to issue some clarifications:

• Becoming a ham does not necessarily lead to spurning showers and other forms of personal hygiene. If there's any cause-effect relationship, it's more likely the reverse. I see this with other solitary pursuits; back when the fairgrounds hosted weekend computer expos, the aroma of unwashed hackers was overpowering. In any case, clean amateurs do indeed abound.
• The effects of wearing pocket protectors can apparently be mitigated by owning a motorcycle. Research is pending, but the effect appears to be similar to lowering one's cholesterol levels by eating oatmeal.
• I still have issues with the armbands, and the idea that someone has to identify themselves as OFFICIAL. As with junk mail, anything that needs to say that it's important on the outside, probably isn't on the inside.

The home office apologizes for any confusion or offense that might have resulted.

Also, concern was expressed about endangering my parents' Heathkit AR-1515 stereo receiver by exposing it to the glare of publicity. So I will blur the control knobs to disguise its true identity:

There's still a few minutes left before I have to go back to work... maybe I'll wander down the street to the Kawasaki dealership for some research...

Birth of the geek

It has been a quiet weekend around our house. Hannah's group arrived in Biloxi on Saturday after being on the road something like 22 hours. One of our student ministry interns sent back a picture taken in front of a memorial built by ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Edition, across the street from the beach. I understand that during the worst of the flooding, the water level was higher than the black structure you see in the background.

Back home, the heat wave has made the cats lethargic: they sprawl across the floor, feet up in the air in the most unfeline poses, oblivious to everything around them. It's 91° in Syracuse right now, but the afternoon is young. The weather discourages vigorous activity, so once the important chores were done (reattaching the whiteboard to Hannah's door, for example) I started the new ham radio kit.

Let's get one thing straight from the start: no, there is no need to send me plastic pocket protectors, and yes, I still plan to take showers. If I ever start going about in public with a pink day-glo plastic badge engraved with my call sign, a frequency counter hanging from my belt, and a red elastic armband that says OFFICIAL COMMUNICATIONS THROUGH AMATEUR RADIO, you have permission to give me a dope slap. The main reason I have never been particularly interested in ham radio, frankly, is some of the people who are. Probably the vast majority of amateurs are wonderful folks with a dedication to public service — but the self-important strutters who insist on having special access and privileges just make my skin crawl. Please, for the love of everything that's good, don't let me go there!

I went through the kit Saturday, checking to make sure all of the parts are present and undamaged. Counting 41 #4 internal tooth lockwashers is about the least fun part of the project, but it pays off: being familiar with the parts makes it less likely to accidentally install something in the wrong place. It's no fun at all to have to go back and disassemble things. The inventory was generally uneventful: everything was there, including several resistors with purple bands that were closer to gray. But I know that 5% resistors don't come in 480 ohms, so the subterfuge was only mildly annoying. Many of my company's objectives for this program involve basic skills like identifying parts and reading resistor color codes, but I've been doing that sort of work here every day for the last 24 years. Most of what I learned is that my eyes don't work as well as they used to, and that parts are smaller than they used to be.

Construction actually goes quite quickly, at least so far. I finished the first circuit board, the controller, Saturday afternoon.

The front panel board is about halfway completed. This is way too much fun, and reminds me of building Heathkits with Dad. We put together a stereo receiver with a digital frequency display when I was in high school, and my parents still use it. Not bad: the percentage of consumer electronics equipment still in daily service after thirty years is pretty low, and very little is user serviceable.

You know, I'm really starting to get excited about this. I wonder where they order those custom ball caps with the call letters...

A flyin' Friday

Busy day, very little time, so a quick post before the weekend.

Got into the station several hours late (by previous arrangement) — Hannah left for Biloxi Mississippi this morning with a group of 30 from our church, so Laurie and I were there to see their bus off. I imagine they're somewhere around southern Pennsylvania or northern Virginia by now. They're spending a week doing disaster relief in areas devastated by Katrina, and the weather is already getting them in the mood: it's actually going to be hotter here in central NY than in Mississippi for the next few days.

Just as I got my office door unlocked, my boss presented me with a box and two thick books: the RF training course. He had asked several months ago if I would be interested, and I said definitely. I work mostly on studio systems design, with component-level equipment design and software thrown in — so becoming more rounded technically is something I've wanted to do. On closer examination, it turns out that this course takes the form of building my own amateur transmitter / receiver, which is mine to keep in exchange for doing the work to get at least a general class amateur license. It's amusing in a way: I've been designing systems to transmit high definition video, pumping out over nineteen million bits of data every second... and now I need to learn how to transmit morse code at five words per minute. But I'm looking forward to it.

My sandwich is done and I'm hearing some hollering down the hall, so I better stop and check it out.

Happy weekend!

Ice Cream Day!

It's ice cream day at the station: the folks who fill the vending machines brought in a soft-serve machine and boxes of toppings. I'm not sure what we'll do with a gallon and a half of maraschino cherries... probably the night guys will come up with a way to launch them at passing cars or something similarly productive. Ice cream machines are much simpler nowadays than they were 30 years ago when I worked at Carvel; now you just pull the lever and ice cream comes out. Back then our machines were like the dashboard of Dad's 1966 Volvo, with knobs to pull and lots of buttons to push. And if you didn't do it just right, the machine would either bind up in a fit of frozen dairy constipation or get the chocolate runs.

So the amazing thing, in light of this modern day simplicity, is that many of our people can't figure the thing out. They push the lever, they twist the lever, they flip the switch to turn the whole thing off. It reminds me of Moses, who needed only to speak to the rock for water to come forth, but he had to whack it with his stick instead. Twice. (If you're curious, the account is in Numbers 20:2-12.) For the sake of our news department, I hope the penalty for abusing the ice cream machine is not so severe. Already I have reassembled the lever and valve assembly half a dozen times.

The machine also reveals the mindset of some of our folks, who will watch as people ahead of them pump out bowls of ice cream and then get cranky when they try and ice cream stops coming out. Some people just don't grasp the idea that (1) you have to put something in, in order to get something out, and (2) there are limits to how fast things work. These are broad truths that apply to more than ice cream machines, but many people just don't get it.

Fire crews were dispatched to a transformer fire in front of Taco Bell shortly before noon today; the power here was flickering so badly that I started up the big diesel generator and we ran from that for an hour. The director for the noon news thanked me later for keeping his equipment from resetting while it was on the air, but I had to tell the truth: I just didn't want to deal with all the melting ice cream if the power went out.

Reality returns with a thud

It's definitely one of those days. I got a 4:47am wakeup call from the station: it seems that both of the Dunamis playout servers had stopped working overnight. (Dunamis is a system I designed to automatically generate digital graphics over program, squeezing the program video back if necessary. If you watch WSYR-TV and see school closings, tickers during the news or time and temperature, you're seeing Dunamis. It's a combination of generic and custom hardware, driven by enough custom software to fill several binders.)

Turns out that these servers did an automatic Windows Update at 3am, which forced them to reboot. That shouldn't be a problem; the computers are set to automatically log back onto the network and restart the necessary applications, so at most the system should only be down for a couple of minutes.

Not so today. Our folks at corporate headquarters decided that everyone needed to be reminded that the computers and email are the property of the corporation and that they reserve the right to monitor activity. Fine, not a problem... except that the reminder takes the form of a pop-up window with an OK button that must be clicked before the machine will finish booting up. Worse, the remote access software that lets me fix this kind of problem from home, now doesn't start until this OK button is clicked.

So now we have a number of computers critical to various on-air functions that shut down at the whim of Microsoft, stay down thanks to the whim of some lawyers, and require a special personal visit in the wee hours.

As Steve, a master control operator here twenty years ago, used to say: when the phone rings at three in the morning, it ain't Publishers Clearing House calling to say you've won.

Maybe I can set up automatic call forwarding to one of our lawyers... that ought to get the problem fixed pretty quickly.

---

Update... the forces of goodness and light have prevailed, and the popup has been banished — at least for now. Apparently the popup took down air-critical equipment at radio and television stations all across the country, and the resulting firestorm convinced the right folks that staying on the air is more important, after all.

Journals of a soggy Maine vacation -- part five

We finished up this year's Maine trip on a low key, wandering around and looking for whatever might be interesting. The public pier at Falmouth Foreside is a busy place: yes, there are the usual pleasure craft, but it's mostly local business, not tourism:



By the way, clicking the photographs will send you to a full-size version with all the details. Several people have commented on the small pictures, and it really isn't obvious.

Here's something you don't see too often: a crew was busy about half a mile away getting ready to move this house. I can't imagine how they are going to get it down the hill to the road — it's only about 100 feet away, but a drop of at least 25 feet. I wonder how much a house like this weighs... it's not exactly something you tow behind your Chevy.

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We packed up on Friday, leaving a smelly rectangle of muddy dead grass behind, headed back home with an overnight stop in Brattleboro, Vermont. It felt so luxurious to take a hot shower without worrying about running out of quarters, and to walk around with dry feet. The mud stains will take a while to disappear completely from our feet and ankles, but it's a good start.

This has been a good vacation. It wasn't what we had expected, and the weather was disappointing... but spending the time together and doing what we pleased was wonderful. As wet as we were, it was nothing compared to the folks along the Susquehanna river basin who were flooded out of their homes. Tomorrow's weather doesn't look good: our meteorologists are expecting something like four inches of rain, largely concentrated in areas that had already flooded and still have saturated ground. Later this week Hannah leaves with a group from our church for Biloxi, Mississippi: part of the ongoing cleanup from Katrina. I hope they don't return home to find the same conditions here.

Journals of a soggy Maine vacation -- part four

(Wednesday, June 28 — about 10am)

The mist is creeping up from the bay, shrouding the campsites in a heavy damp blanket that mutes the distant boat horns of the lobstermen as they go about tending their traps. The three of us are sitting on a bench, Laurie and Hannah reading, I waiting for a particular grey bird to alight nearby so that I might photograph it. It was sticking close by until the camera came out, and now has gone into hiding.



Yesterday was the one day of our stay with no significant rain, but a brisk wind that kept the tarp flapping and crackling all night. Sleep came only with difficulty, but finally we drifted off in our noisy but still dry shelter. It was a sound that woke me up — something that just wasn't right — to find Hannah peering through the netting at a grey catbird that had found its way under the tarp, and was now trapped between the tarp and the tent. It flew from one side to the other, sounding a piteous Greap! when its escape was arrested by the plastic. It had tried to fly over the tent, succeeding only in leaving brown spots of mud on the taffeta. When I finally got my eyes to focus, mud wasn't the first substance that came to mind when a bird was concerned, but we have officially determined that mud it shall be — even if it isn't.

We tried herding it around the tent but to no avail. Finally we unstaked a back corner of the tarp and lifted it up, hoping that the bird would recognize the path to freedom and leave. It took an awfully long time, but just as I was ready to give up and try something else, it burst past and left. It didn't even pause to say thanks or goodbye.

My tentmates are getting anxious to take off and do something a bit more entertaining than waiting for the bird to reappear, so I'll pack up the camera for now. That should be all it takes to bring him back.



— It was. But I can unpack quickly when required.

---

We had supper in Portland — a chain restaurant called Romano's Macaroni Grill. We had no idea what to expect, but I was curious to see how they keep the pasta from falling between the bars. It took about ten minutes to be seated, but we hardly noticed the delay as we watched a mildly hyper fellow with shaved head apply the final touches to the dishes before they were hustled off to the tables. Constant frenetic motion, applying sauces and garnish, and a brief dance of pain after unthinkingly grabbing a platter that had just come out from the broiler. It would have been hard to tear us away from the spectacle, but we were pretty hungry. The food was good, but the entertainment value was much greater than we bargained for, especially when a man at the next table was serenaded in Italian (I suppose) by the staff. Apparently when it's your birthday you get a special red napkin and are required to twirl it above your head as they sing. It's a solid motivation to be a neat eater: everyone else gets to see whatever mess you have made and gets a chance to wear it if you twirl hard enough.

Spent some after-dinner time at the Borders book store across the parking lot, enjoying the laziness, browsing and lounging around. Near the back of the store I spotted one of those ubiquitous yellow and black Dummies books:



I can only hope that its target audience is patients, not doctors.

Journals of a soggy Maine vacation -- Saturday Extra

The tent, wind curtains and ground cloth are drying in the back yard; it took ten minutes of hosing at full blast to remove the stinky residue of rotting vegetation that was all that remained under our tent when we packed up last week. It didn't smell any better when I unpacked it today than it did when we left a week ago... but it's much better now. I imagine the site still looks a lot like this:

I seldom post on Saturdays, preferring to use my lunch breaks at work as a diversion from whatever I happen to be enmeshed in at the time. But a month ago I alluded to Ralph in Freeport, and now is as good a time as any to explain.

"I don't feel too good," was how it started. We were in the L. L. Bean factory store on Depot Street in Portland, a block away from the flagship store; Laurie was somewhere in the back, Hannah and I near the front, when we heard the young boy's announcement to his father. Just as we turned to look, the boy turned gray, bent forward slightly and deposited his lunch right dead center in the aisle between men's outerwear and discounted pullover shirts. The two of us didn't need to see any more and made our way — through an alternate route — out the front door where we waited for Laurie and remarked at our mutual revulsion.

Laurie didn't come out for a while, but the boy and his father did... followed by the mother, who stomped across the gravel parking lot berating the two, loudly demanding, "Why did you have to let him do it there? You should have made him wait!" The boy, for his part, looked considerably better; his dad just looked resigned. Apparently such was his life.

These kinds of events are made to be told, and we decided on the spot that the boy ought to be named Ralph. Hannah was not enthusiastic about returning to the store later that night, fearing another encounter with Ralph, but she reluctantly gave in, enticed by the prospect of visiting Ben and Jerry's afterwards. It turned out that the folks at Bean had done a very good job cleaning up the mess, to our relief, leaving no evidence behind. So for the past few years, that part of our traditional outlet shopping has been identified with Ralph — initially to Hannah's discomfort, now more at her instigation.

This year we parked in the gravel lot and walked down the hill to the factory store, past a hot dog vendor's cart and her picnic table...

And what do we find painted on the table, facing us as we go by?

Some things just cannot be made up.

Journals of a soggy Maine vacation -- part three

One of the results of this weather is that some of the things we had hoped to do — kayaking, going for walks, visiting the beach — were replaced by indoor activities like shopping, reading, seeing a movie, or going to museums. It also meant that we spent more time in the car than normal, so Hannah got to spend more time getting to know her new digital camera. So today's pictures are from her!

This typifies our trip: soaked and sagging. We took the long way home after visiting the music box museum in Wiscasset and missed a turn, winding up in the middle of nowhere. Not that we really minded... we were just glad to be alive. The tour guide at the museum was a bit creepy — "We start by offering our guests a candy to begin their visit on a sweet note," he intoned while putting on white cotton gloves, making us more than a bit nervous about how the visit might end. A cross between Liberace and Freddy Krueger, disguised as a Dutch retired schoolteacher. Please ignore the moaning from the basement, it's merely our guests from last week.

We were not alone on the trip: accompanying us were Jewell (emphasis on the second syllable, please), a lamb who can go from placid to exuberant in 1.7 seconds (perhaps the caffeine has something to do with that)...

...and Woodrow Charles (Wood Chuck for short), a groundhog with a lively sense of humor and a breathless snicker that reminds me of Muttley, Dick Dastardly's cartoon sidekick.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am compelled to add that while Jewell is Hannah's, Woodrow is mine. He is a veteran of difficult business meetings and has helped me run the sound console at church. More even-tempered than I am, he has a somewhat better sense of proportion. He's also better looking.

Journals of a soggy Maine Vacation -- selected shorts

Q: Why would Freeport have a school devoted to hunting for crickets?

A: Because they serve them across the street.

I'll stick with the clam chowder and shrimp, thanks.

---

You can run, but you can't spell.

---

On our way out of the campground, I noticed a dead squirrel on the side of the dirt road.

Jeff: "How do you get roadkill where the speed limit is only five miles an hour?"

Laurie: "Slow squirrels."

---

Just down U.S. Route 1 from Wiscasset:

Thanks for the warning.

Journals of a soggy Maine vacation -- part two

(Monday, June 26 — about 11am)

It's another soggy morning and we're sitting outside the laundromat in Freeport waiting for our clothes to finish drying. Unlike last year when we got rained out, this is a planned event for the sake of cleanliness rather than an impromptu response to a tent filled with water. The jumbo alien tarp has turned out to be an enormous boon: with rain at least part of every day we've been here, the ground is saturated. Standing water surrounds the tent, several inches deep in spots, but under the tarp it's mostly dry except for light moisture left over from the first day's storm. Inside the tent, there's none of the condensation that normally beads on the fabric overnight. Hooray.



Driving off the site was briefly heart stopping, especially when we came to a low marshy patch that our neighbors had churned up with their trailer the day before. Hannah had ventured to the washroom early in the morning and returned with a report of widespread flooding; she went back to sleep while I laid awake listening to the frogs and worrying about getting the Santa Fe stuck in the mud. The worry was well founded, but the traction control kicked in and we made our way out, but not without leaving more ruts in the ooze.

The park lady at the entrance booth was remarkably chipper for such a gray day, and when I asked about parking on the road rather than on our soupy site, said she was surprised that we had lasted this long in a tent. By all means, park where you want: they really appreciate our not tearing up the grass. Neighboring site 21 is now officially declared wet, and won't be given out until things dry out. I pointed out that on our other side, site 23 is just as wet and is accessible only through the marsh... so 23 has been given the status of wet, too. The park lady grinned as she observed that we now have our own quiet area. A haven of silver polyethelene dry in the midst of official wetness. The mists are starting to grow on me, and there are some pretty flowers near the shore.



The folks in site 21 pulled out yesterday in a flurry of grumpy ineptitude, prompting a fellow from another trailer to help. We listened to the commotion from our sleeping bags while the neighbor lady whined about how useless the trailer's manual was; her husband griped that the dealer had sent them out without knowing how to work it, though she reminded him that there had been a two-hour course when they took delivery. "But how are we supposed to remember all that?" The problem with being in a tent is that you can't laugh at things that deserve it, without people hearing. By now they are probably setting up at Old Orchard Beach, entertaining other campers and trying to figure out how to turn on the heat.

This laundromat is an anomaly for Freeport — a town in which nearly everything from L. L. Bean on down complies with a studied down-east look. Even the McDonald's across the street occupies a restored historic house, its drivethrough lacking the usual unintelligible intercom lest it spoil the ambience. The laundromat, on the other hand, is like laundromats everywhere with an air of mild disrepair and a bit too much fabric softener.



Time to stop writing: I think the clothes are dry.

Journals of a soggy Maine vacation -- part one

It's a fairly gentle first day back to work after vacation: no big crises to solve, only a moderate amount of mail to sort through. I had gone through the email several days ago at home, so there were few surprises. Still, I don't feel quite up to speed yet and it reminds me of Don Marquis' aphorism: "Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday."

That's also true for the blog. We spent over a week tenting on Casco Bay, in South Freeport Maine. It's probably our favorite spot, both for its beauty and its proximity to interesting things to see and do, as well as for the memory of how we discovered the place after a hot and discouraging day a few years ago. This year had serious potential to be a disappointment: there was rain, fog and mist every day at some point. Instead of long walks or kayaking, we did more touring and reading. Still, it was relaxing and enjoyable in a way we weren't expecting. From time to time I grabbed a pad and pen, compiling a virtual blog. Over the next few days I'll post it with relevant illustrations as I have time.

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(Saturday, June 24 — about 7:30pm)

It's cooling down at the campsite; we just finished a dinner of grilled cube steaks, followed by s'mores. The fog is rolling in from the ocean, obscuring the small island half a mile away. Everything is wet from a continuous string of rainy days that softened up the ground before we arrived. The tent took on some water the first day, but we fought back with an enormous 40' by 24' polyethelene tarp, silver on the top, blue on the bottom. It completely covers the tent and extends well beyond the back and sides, giving the site a look more reminiscent of Roswell, New Mexico than South Freeport, Maine. But it works — even though it rained hard from nearly midnight to breakfasttime this morning, it was cozy and dry inside... though noisy from the pelting rain. We ventured out to find our site surrounded by a shallow moat of standing water, with mud that grabs a sandal and won't let go.

This kind of weather can be hard to handle. I was ready to pack up and head back home the first morning, but now we're having a good time. A lot of it is a sense of winning, of prevailing against physical hardship. Our neighbors aren't prevailing, though: they got off to a bad start, forgetting some of the keys to their trailer so they couldn't extend the pop-out beds. The ignominy of having to roast marshmallows over the propane stove in their non-popped-out trailer was apparently too much; they are about to leave for another campground in Old Orchard Beach that, as the woman explained loudly to someone on her cell phone, has heated sites.

I think we'll be okay after all. We won't be looking for a heated site, that's for sure and for certain.