March 2019 - Page 3 of 3 - DEW Consulting

March 4, 2019March 4, 2019

Luggage

Did you ever wonder what happens when an airline loses your luggage? Well, wonder no more.

Airports are noted for having whimsical sculptures like the one above in Sacramento. Also, there’s the giant rabbit, below, which I’ve never been able to figure out. Sacramento is known as “The River City” and also “The City of Trees.” But, A GIANT GEODESIC RED RABBIT? Really?

Red Rabbit at SMF. — Inside the main terminal at SMF.

If anybody knows the backstory, please tell me. This is the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night, not knowing.

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On a slightly less frivolous note, it seems the folks at History.com are on an plane crash kick these days. You can read the two most recent installments here, and here. In the first instance (1974), it was a faulty latch mechanism on a rear hatch entry door that led to disaster. In the second (1962), it was a jammed elevator spring tab, part of the system controlling an airplane’s lift and altitude, that was the culprit. Proving yet again that it’s often the little things that sneak up and bite you.

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Of course, that was all a long time ago. Those kind of catastrophes no longer occur. Right? Uh, yeah, right. At least since April 17, 2018….

Woman partially sucked out aircraft window. — Southwest Flight 1380.

Which is why, given a choice, I sit on the aisle, not the window. Just sayin’.

My guess is that, whatever the backstory on the whimsical red rabbit at SMF, airlines would much rather you NOT be thinking “aisle versus window” every time you board an airplane.

Bottom line: Lost luggage? It is literally the least of your worries.

March 3, 2019March 2, 2019

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday today to Theodor Geisel who was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1904. Theodor Geisel? I hear you ask… who’s that?

Better known to the world as “Dr. Seuss” (his middle name, and also his mother’s maiden name), Geisel was the author and illustrator of such beloved children’s books as “The Cat in the Hat” and “Green Eggs and Ham.” Not to mention “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish,” “The Lorax,” and “Horton Hears a Who!” Complete list is on Wikipedia – you can view it here. Yep, 48+ books… 200+ million copies: That’s a whole lotta “Hop on Pop.”

Which one is your favorite?

I’ll only tell you mine if you tell me yours. Hey, my website, my rules. Capische?

And now you know the answer to the trivia question, “What was Theodor Giesel’s first publication?” It’s NOT (as most people think) 1937’s “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.” Instead, it’s 1931’s “Pocket Book of Boners.” Whodathunkit, eh?

March 1, 2019December 24, 2019

Love Story

This is a love story – sorta, kinda. Hey, I’m branching out here! But maybe not in exactly the way that you think.

The website motherboard.vice.com has a fascinating article on how text messages are encrypted and transmitted. No, really, I’m serious: It’s fascinating. It’s called “The Route of A Text Message, a Love Story.” Hence, the misleading title. Sneaky, see? You can read it all, here. Or, read on if you dare.

A small word of warning: When my son set up my website on his server, he gave me access to tools that tell me – among other things – who comes in the front door, how long they stay, and where they came from. So I know exactly who, when, where, and how long people are visiting my site. Also, I know which links they click while they’re inside.

Remember, in this case it’s just little old me. But can you imagine how much Google or Microsoft or Apple knows about you and your habits? I mean, I only know which version of which browser you’re using, and how many times you’ve visited my site before. They probably know what you had for breakfast, and how long it took you to digest it. Scary, that.

If you are as horrified by that last bit of information as I am, well… good. We can run but we can’t hide. Now, though, at least we all realize we’re being tracked. If knowledge is power, then sometimes it’s profit too – but I digress. Bottom line: I know whether you clicked the link or not. You been warned.

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Let’s get back to the Love Story, shall we? The article about Internet text protocols was written by this guy:

Scott B. Weingart is an historian of science, a data scientist, and a librarian at Carnegie Mellon University. Find him on twitter @scott_bot. This article originally appeared on Weingart’s blog, the scottbot irregular.

For a techie, he’s a pretty good writer. This may explain why he held my interest most of the way through a piece that includes snippets of Android code. He also plumbs the depths of the 279-byte limit in SS7. Not to mention, he uses the term “reverse nibble notation,” which has got to be my favorite technical term of all time. Oh, he also includes a table with the complete GSM-7 character set. Be still my beating heart!

Come to think of it, maybe this helps explain why the guy’s wife is sending him come-hither text messages around bedtime. Listen, I’m no expert on love and marriage. But anybody who can make stuff this dry sound positively lively has already got a decent head start on the rest of us. Suffice it to say, this is not just your average bit-twiddler with a pocket-protector: This dude’s got literary game. I’ll leave it to his wife to critique him in the sack. Hey, I can only do so much.

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Fact is, even spying with my son’s stealth tools, I have no earthly idea whether you plowed all the way through to the end of the Motherboard article or not. Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates might know, but I don’t. Then again, Jeff Bezos wasn’t smart enough to realize it was unwise sending nude selfies to a woman-not-his-wife. Not even when, in the very near future, his soon-to-be-ex-wife will likely win a divorce settlement valued in the billions of dollars. So, there’s that.

Full disclosure: Around the time the author of the Motherboard piece got to his bit about electromagnetic signals pinging off cell towers, I kind of tuned out there for a minute. Oh, alright, I admit it: I switched off completely. That’s the problem with technical information – or indeed, with any information. That 279-byte limit in SS7? It’s very much like what goes on inside our heads when reading a story like this one. If you wanna get through to your audience, better do it in the first couple of paragraphs, otherwise they’ll fall asleep. Well, without the nude selfies they will I guess.

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“All’s well that ends well.” Probably not so true in real life – just ask Jeff Bezos – but I always like to throw that in near the end to give my readers the feeling that things are gonna be OK. My secret data mining tools tell me that the only posts of mine that end up in wide circulation are ones with cartoons and puns. Posts about esoteric details of Internet text protocols? Not so much. But lately I’ve noticed a few of my readers pinging off cell towers in Amsterdam and Helsinki. I must say, this has me really intrigued. Who the hell are these people? And what are they doing reading my blog? And maybe most important of all: Did they click the link to read the Motherboard article?

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Last word goes to Scott Weingart, because he really IS a very entertaining writer. Besides, I know for a FACT that literally NONE of you got all the way down to the end of his article, where the following appears:

My wife’s text wouldn’t have reached me had I not paid the phone bill on time. Had there not been a small army of workers handling financial systems behind the scenes. Technicians keeping the phone towers in working order, which they reach via a network of roads partially subsidized by federal taxes collected from hundreds of millions of Americans across 50 states. Because so many transactions still occur via (snail) mail, if the U.S. postal system collapsed tomorrow, my phone service would falter. Exploited factory workers in South America and Asia assembled parts in both our phones. Exhausted programmers renting expensive Silicon Valley closets are as-you-read-this pushing out code ensuring our phones communicate without interruption…

So here I am, in the office late one Sunday night. “I love you,” my wife texted from the bedroom, before the message traversed 40 or so feet to my phone in a handful of seconds. I realize what it means. It’s time to wish her goodnight, and perhaps wrap up this essay. I tap away the last few words. I’m now slightly more cognizant of the complex layering of miles, signals, years of history, and human sweat it took to keep my wife from having to shout down the stairs that it’s about damn time I come get some rest.

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There. You’re welcome. All that, and “exploited factory workers” too. Along with “exhausted programmers renting expensive Silicon Valley closets,” hoo boy.

Now go to bed. Get some rest.

Tomorrow’s gonna be a big day, I can tell.

Because I’ve got all the tools.

Yup, better believe it, Bunky.

You can run, but you can’t hide.

March 1, 2019August 25, 2019

Getty

February 28th has such an embarrassment of riches when it comes to This Day in History, it’s hard to pick just one: Watson & Crick Discover Chemical Structure of DNA (1953)? Thelonius Monk Makes The Cover of Time Magazine (1964)? Pope Benedict Resigns (2013)? Congress Creates Colorado Territory (1861)? ATF Raids Branch Davidian Compound (1993)? Getty Museum Endowed (1982)? Final Episode of M.A.S.H. Airs (1983)?

I was sorely tempted by that last one. In honor of this week’s Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi – and also because I have an Airbnb guest visiting from Seoul right now – I recently watched the 1970 Robert Altman movie version of M.A.S.H. That’s the one starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould as Hawkeye and Trapper John, not the ’72-’83 TV version with Alan Alda. Although best remembered in the context of the Vietnam War, M.A.S.H. was based on the 1968 Richard Hooker novel about the Korean conflict.

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In the end, though, I settled on the Getty. Back when we lived in LA and before we had kids, we’d go up there to Malibu and stroll through the Getty’s Greek and Roman antiquities all the time – because we were young and poor, and because it was spectacular and free.

Peristyle Garden of the Getty Villa in Malibu, inspired by the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum which was destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD.

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And now it becomes clearer why it was free. I guess I kind of knew it at the time: Getty was an oil tycoon, after all. But the details of his bequest, and the museum’s endowment, really are mind-boggling, even by robber baron standards.

The American oil billionaire died in 1976. But legal wrangling over his fortune by his children and ex-wives kept his will in probate until 1982. During those six years, what was a originally a $700 million bequest to the museum nearly doubled. By 2000, the endowment was worth $5 billion – even after the trust spent nearly $1 billion in the 1990s on the construction of a massive museum and arts education complex in Los Angeles.

Furthermore:

In leaving a third of his fortune to the J. Paul Getty Museum, his only stipulation was that the fortune be used “for the diffusion of artistic and general knowledge.” This gave the museum extraordinary freedom – an unusual legacy from a man who in his life had sought absolute control over his affairs. The laws governing trusts, however, indicate that the museum must spend 4.25 percent of its endowment three out of every four years in order to retain its tax-exempt status. In the first year after its endowment, that figure equaled $54 million. Today the amount the museum must spend three out of four years is more than $200 million. The J. Paul Getty Museum’s greatest challenge, therefore, is finding enough art and culture to buy – but not too much that other museums accuse the Getty of hoarding the world’s masterpieces.

For an art museum, that’s a nice problem to have.