Drummond's Days

Cleaning up my office, I found a Dec 2002 copy of Astronomy magazine. I am an amateur astronomer - built my own telescope years ago - so I pick up the magazine now and then.

The 8" Meade LX90 telescope was featured for $1495.
The 8" LX200GPS was $1999.

So I decide to check out Meade today and find that comparable telescopes now cost $1799 and $2599. Not only that, Meade moved its manufacturing facility from California to Mexico last year.

http://www.meade.com/factorytour/index.html

Higher prices, cheaper labour, and less quality. And lets not forget - unemployed Americans who used to work for Meade.

Shame on Meade. I will not be buying their products.

I wonder if the Volt will live up to all the hype. 230 mpg. I really doubt that. Apparently that number is based on plugging it in all the time, and driving short distances. Mileage should be based on a long trip of at least 200 miles.

The big reason I am a fan of cars like this is the fact they are so quiet. I live near a highway, and would appreciate less noise. Noisy motorcycles should be banned.

Hopefully we'll see a change in vehicle technology, instead of just talk and the status quo. Nothing has really changed much in the past 30 years with vehicles except a small increase in fuel economy.

A big bough from an old oak tree fell down in my front yard early this week. Fell on the wires but amazingly they didn't break. Super thick communications and internet/cable saved them. The telephone company came and trimmed the tree. The old oak was infested with carpenter ants, and they had weakened the tree to the point of failure. I think this tree is at least 200-300 years old, as it is 4 ft in diameter. It was cut down yesterday. I plan to count the rings when I get a chance.

Its sad to see such an old and majestic tree being destroyed. As I watched the chain saws hack it down, I thought to myself that I am responsible for the death of this old and majestic life form. I felt a bit guilty and sad. To be fair, the tree sustained major damage long ago, likely in a hurricane, as the trunk has a big split in it. This is how the ants likely got into the tree. Sentimentality aside, it had to go. It posed a danger to the road and the wires.

Imagine what the world was like when this tree was a sapling. No railway, just horse and buggy.  Clean air, lots of wild animals and Indians about. Flintlocks. The US was a very young nation, or maybe it was still a colony. Slavery was permitted. Hard to say if someone planted it. The road nearby has been used for centuries, since the 1760s anyway, and people lived around here since then.

There are 4 other oaks in my yard. I would say the one in the back yard is about 100-130 yrs old. The others are 100 or so.

They should be around long after I'm gone, one would think.....

Every couple of years, Microsoft rolls out a new operating system, whether we need it or not. Then they'll threaten us by saying that the "old" system (i.e. XP) is not going to be supported past a certain date,  like announcing an imminent death. Make it sound scary. XP has been holding out much longer than it was supposed to, as people bitched and were unwilling to upgrade to the crappy Vista. New is not always better.

Its all about money. Greedy Microsoft can't make more money if they can't sell a new operating system every few years... to people and businesses who are perfectly happy with what they got. I use XP Pro, its stable and does everything I want. I don't need no stinking gadgets! Tried Vista, didn't like it. Despite gigs of memory, and a new PC, it still runs like a pig compared to XP. I dislike the feel of Vista too, and I'm not alone. 

So they're rolling out Windows 7 soon. Nice cold name for God knows what. I'm sure it'll be more expensive and require even more powerful hardware to work. Which drives people to throw out their perfectly good PCs and buy more powerful ones. In 2011 we'll see Windows 8, in 2013 Windows 9.....Cha-Ching folks.

Its a damn shame that Microsoft dominates the market. A damn shame.

I have a 10 year old dog. She started scratching herself crazy about 6 weeks ago. Big trouble , as she was pulling out her coat and scratching herself raw.

Took her to the vet, and the vet took blood for tests. $230 later, she told me that the dog had low thyroid levels. I give her a thyroid pill once a day now. She has more energy, and stopped scratching after a month. I had to keep one of those cones on her head for a 5 weeks or so, that kept her from scratching and let her heal where it was raw.

It is too early for fleas or ticks here, so it was easy to rule out parasites. She was not around other dogs and stayed at home, so she never caught anything. I thought it might be a food allergy, as I gave her a new kind of dog food just before the itching started. I changed that right away. It is important to rule these things out.

Just like people need thyroid medication, so do some dogs. She is doing great now, happier, with more energy.