The War in Iraq

The War in Iraq is officially over today. Thank goodness. There are a number of regrets associated with this little skirmish. The first one I notice is that Iraq is a proper name and therefore unusable in Scrabble or that other word game that got Alec Baldwin kicked off a plane last week. It would be really nice if there were more words with "q" that didn't require a "u". Of course, my cousins and sisters would know them before me and I'd actually lose out in the long run.

The second thing is that we prefer to call it the "War in Iraq", rather than the "Iraq War". There's an extra word in there which seems useless unless you believe that it is actually the "Oil War" and it is important to know that this part of the Oil War is being fought in Iraq.

But maybe the biggest regret is the amount of money spent and how poorly it was spent. The war in Iraq cost 800 billion dollars. That's a lot of money and maybe the cause of the current recession. You just can't spend that amount of money blowing things up and not see an impact. That's 800 billion dollars/32 million Iraqis = 25,000 dollars/person. The Iraqi gdp = $82 billion which puts the per capita income around $2500. That's ten years of income for every man woman and child in the country of Iraq. The real tragedy is that so many people died or were maimed and injured. With that kind of money, it's hard to imagine that it couldn't have been spent better. We could have walked in and said, "Look Sadam, here's a bunch of billions. Go have yourself a great life." We could have said to the insurgents, "Here's ten years salary, go have a coffee and chill for ten years. We'll take care of stuff for you." We could have bribed the crap out of everybody and made it a real happy place. We could have even built a mosque or five, planted some grass and trees, and given everybody an iPhone and an iPad with cell phone and internet accounts. We could have built a few Disney Lands. It's mighty damn hard to imagine any way that money could have been thrown away more efficiently than we did it in Iraq. And with 32,000 injured veterans, we're going to be paying for this war for a long time with more than just money. I don't know if I should be more ashamed of my country for its moral failure or for its stupid inefficiency.

I'm a fan of Barack's. He's doing all he can. He's gotten us out of Iraq, he was in charge when Bin Laden was taken out, and I hope he's gonna soon realize the futility of trying to do anything in Afghanistan. When we quit expending so much American capital on stupid missions, we're also gonna see the economy get better.

Well, that's all for now.

Added note: I got a comment that suggested that I was in Iraq. I wasn't. Also, I just missed Vietnam.

Blog Update

Two things - the economy and the spam situation.

First, I'll give a little update on the economy. Since I wrote a few weeks ago on the economy, a few birds have come home to roost. As predicted, the unemployment rate in NC has risen. Gov. Bev Perdue announced that the unemployment rate in NC had risen to 10.7% after sitting sluggishly around the 9.5% for most of the "recovery". This is primarily the result of the increase in the number of workers released by the public sector. This coincides with what may, or may not, be the start of the second dip of the double dip recession. I think it's just a stumble and we're going to come out of this real slowly. The problem is that it will be so slow that a drop in the relative standard of living in the US is already in progress.

Spam update. I still keep all my spam and the daily rate has dropped to just below 60/day.

Spam Update

Well, a number of days have passed and I'm still saving my spam. Google is dutifully deleting it after 30 or so days. I say "30 or so" because the spam doesn't disappear exactly on day 31 but usually after a variable number of days, varying from 30 to 33. Anyhow, I calculate the daily rate from time to time and it seems to be stuck around 64/day. I get a nice variety including regular ads, online pharmacies, credit cards, credit help, alcohol rehab, Christian dating, etc. The pron and male enhancement stuff seems a lot rarer these days, though not gone completely. I got an ad from Hooters for

Happy National Chicken Wing Day!

I'll probably continue to keep saving the spam for a while longer and then I'll go back to deleting it with regularity.

I'm not an Economist, but....

I'm not an economist but I've been watching the economy like everyone else and I'm starting to see something happen that I predicted a while back. Only, no one was really listening. So I'll talk a little bit about it here. It has to do with the nasty loss of jobs coming in the public sector.

Here's a few baseline beliefs that I hold. The housing bubble and sloppy banking had a lot to do with the recession. And no, it's not even close to over. It may never be over. But I suspect that a bigger problem is the two high tech wars that we're fighting. It's just not a very good idea to spend a lot of money making very expensive things and then blowing them up when you could be making other things and selling them. So the convergence of those things got us going downhill.

Unfortunately, to avoid a complete free fall and it's resulting catastrophic crash, the government stepped in and softened the blow with a bunch of money. The problem is that we were spending money like we were getting it before the crash. And now it's coming in a lot slower since fewer are working and they're working for less and the rich are paying less in taxes (Thanks, George). The people working in the private sector took the brunt of the job loss for the first two years. I think that's stabilizing. My prediction some time ago was that the public sector, which was largely spared from job loss early in the recession, is now gonna get whacked big time. I think we're seeing it now, especially in education. We'll probably downsize the postal service soon and a host of other federal, state and local services will start to lose employees. This will stretch out the recession for a few more years.

OK, here's the good news, maybe. I think that as we wind down the two wars and try to avoid getting into any more (think Libya and the like), the economy will slowly improve. I think services will deteriorate to the point that we realize that we're not taxing the rich people appropriately and the tax structure will slowly change back to something reasonable as Warren Buffet suggests. The wholesale destruction of the public sector will allow it to be rebuilt with better efficiency and a lot of useless agencies will disappear or at least get more efficient and do useful things. Maybe we'll actually see the benefit of and be forced to implement universal health care.

Overall, I think that bailing out the country was the best thing to do. It kept us out of a depression but substantially extended the time for recovery. Maybe it spread the pain out a bit more but lessened it's intensity for many. I think the wholesale exit of the manufacturing sector and it's associated support (like R & D) will stop and will return to America, though it will be through a nasty global wage normalization (nasty for us, good for the poorer countries). No more predictions for now. Should be an interesting ride.

Going in Circles

I am currently working at Duke and so I have a parking place on the Duke campus in a parking deck not too far away from where I work. Of course, I have to pay for it. It seems that everyone who works in our lab rolls into work around 9, and so I do also. However, it also seems that everyone else at Duke gets to work a bit earlier. So I have to drive up to the sixth or seventh floor to find an open parking space. When the weather is nice (i.e. not so hot) I just drive up to the seventh floor. I like the view. The drive up or down can be a bit dizzying. I made a movie of the drive down one day and I decided that I would share it with you. Enjoy. Don't stand up quickly after viewing.

Spam Experiment



I recently started a spam experiment. I currently use a free email account from a pretty big company that is associated with searching. One of the nice things about this email client is that it allows you to capture email from numerous accounts besides just theirs. So I get email addressed to my accounts from my employer, my small company, my cable company and my primary account along with a few aliases that I've set up. I've had some of these accounts for a while and I've registered on a variety of websites over the years. So I get a lot of spam. The spam filter is pretty good and so most goes in the spam box. The only mail that slips through that I shouldn't get is the stuff where somebody types in the wrong email address. I've written about this on occasion. I usually empty the spam box a couple of times a day with a quick scan first to make sure nothing important shows up there. I did this because I just didn't like the spam in my mail client. It made me feel icky.

Recently, I decided to see what happened if I let it just accumulate. My email account keeps it for 30 days and then tosses it. After 30 days, the amount of spam should reach some steady state and I can watch and tell if there is a spam surge or spam drop by following the total. They say that most of the spam comes from just a few places and if a spammer is shut down, there is a global drop in the amount of spam that one gets. Word is that spam and porn are using about 60% of the internet bandwidth, with spam using about 85% of the email traffic.

I've been doing this for 16 days so far. At midnight, I had 1038 spams which works out to 64.875 spams a day. So I'm on track to reach somewhere around 2000 spams at steady state. I'll let you know when I reach steady-state.

As I was typing this, a question arose in my mind. Should I be talking about "spams" or "pieces of spam." In other words, does the word "spam" describe an individual piece of email or does it describe the entire body of work. If you're down on your luck and eating cheaply, you don't ask for another spam, you ask for another piece of spam. Or not. Anyhow, I leave you with this:

Computer Setup

Recently, in order to get a bit more room on my desk, I rearranged my computer network so that all the peripherals would go on my lovely wife's desk rather than on mine. Her desk is about 4 times the size of mine to begin with. But first, I had to get some more room on the desk. There was the problem of this old Mac computer taking up space. We bought it in 1998 and it still ran fine. Unfortunately, most of the internet browsers that would run on it tend to crash a lot due to a lack of compatibility with current web standards. But it had served us well for a number of years. I wanted to give it to a good home. So it went on Craig's list for $5. Basically I was trying to avoid a trip to the dump.


After no bites for a couple of days, I finally got an email. I arranged for the guy to pick it up. He showed up in an AT&T service truck. He worked for them and kept old computers running for fun and occasionally donated them to his church for various functions.

So with more room on the desk, I drew up plans for how the new arrangement would all look. The most important thing was to figure out how to accommodate all the little black power converter boxes on the power strip. Here's the layout:

And here's how it all looks,

and here's my more roomy desk ready for my new hobby of building little electronic thingys.


Don't ask me why I have so many printers. Suffice it to say that they practically give them away and rob you blind when you try to fill them with ink.

New Lights

I think it is a wife's job in life to adsorb any free time a man finds. That's what my wife said when I told her that I had finally finished up the task of the day and added, "Well, there goes a Saturday."

Anyhow, earlier today, as we were puttering around the yard doing a variety of things, my lovely wife decided that it was time to replace the lovely lights lining the driveway with some that actually lighted up. We bought one of those solar panel with 6 lights packs from Costco a few years ago. It worked fair for a while, though it was never very bright. Eventually, a couple of the lights got run over and the lights got dimmer and dimmer.

I thought it was a reasonable idea but this time we were gonna run real electricity from the house. I figured it wouldn't be technically difficult, but it was going to be an all afternoon job digging a trench to run and hide the wire. So we went to Lowe's, found a light kit (6 lights, a transformer and 50' of wire) that we liked and bought it. We needed to get more wire (100 ft) cause the lights were gonna be far from the house. We also bought three more lights so if someone runs over one, we can replace it.

It took all afternoon to dig the trench for the wire. I got some help from my daughter. She shoved wire into the ground as I split the dirt with a square spade. I started it one way and realized I grabbed the 50 ft wire instead of the 100 ft wire. Pull it up start over. Redid it with the longer wire and realized that the path we were taking wouldn't reach the bottom. Pull it up and start over. So I went straight across the yard. Once I got to the bottom of the driveway, where the lights go, my wife came out and helped a bit with planning and assembly. With the 100 ft wire, we had about one foot to spare. Eventually as the sun was setting, I got through just in time to start the charcoal for supper.

As it got dark, the lights came on. Well, four of the seven that we set up, came on. So I went back out and did a bit of troubleshooting. The little doodads that stick into the wire, missed on a couple because we were using a larger guage wire and had to cut off the little guide thingies. So I fixed that and wiggled the light on the other and, voila, all the lights are on and the job is done and the day is gone.

Maybe, I'll stick in a picture some day.



And there it is.

It Weren't Me !!!!

As I've mentioned before on this blog, a number of years ago I got a gmail account and, because I was early on gmail, I got a simple account name, my first initial and my last name (e.g. flastname@gmail.com). I've gotten a lot of mail from people who meant to send it to somebody else whose email was like mine except that it had a number or three after the name (e.g. flastname47@gmail.com). I usually write back and point out the mistake and usually people write back and thank me for catching it. Not today. I'll post the exchange for your amusement.

I got up this morning and saw this in my inbox from Patco Lamp:

So I'd like to know why

1. Your e mailing my wife Sherry?
2. Why does she have your phone number and why would she want to call you to say Howdy and
3. Why are you addressing my wife as "Sweet Lady"?

I'd just like to know before we meet so you can give me a good explanation.......


So I wrote back:


Hi Mr. Lamp, I don't know who you are. I don't know your wife. I haven't called your wife nor have I addressed her in any way. You have the wrong email address. This email sounds pretty threatening to me. I suggest that in the future you don't put threats in writing. It looks real bad in a courtroom.

the wrong guy


To which he replied:

Thats real funny, because your name and your e mail address are on her phone from where you e mailed her. They dont just pop up there on there own.

By now you've figured out that this guy is pissed and he doesn't know how to use an apostrophe and he doesn't know the difference between you're and your or there and they're. So I write back:

Sorry, you got the wrong guy. There are thousands of phughes's out there and I get an email for them about once a day. Usually someone forgets to add some numbers onto the email address. I get emails for Phyllis in Cary, Paul in Toronto, Patricia in Minnesota, Padma in California, Patrick and Peter in England and some hardware store in Australia sends me emails addressed to Paul whenever they have a sale. There's also that pitcher for the NY Yankees. I get a few emails meant for him too. I only know one Sherry and she's a judge. I haven't talked to her in about 7 years when she came to my 50th birthday.

When I get an email clearly intended for someone else, I usually reply because I know the intended person probably didn't get it. Most people write back and thank me for letting them know. You're the first that has answered with a tone of hostility.

Good luck with your quest. You're barking up the wrong tree.

Finally, after about three hours, I get a reply:

Sorry, I do have the wrong Phil, thanks for the info about adding a digit. Sorry for the inconvienence.

I think he spelled "inconvenience" wrong. Anyhow, I showed this to my coworkers and before we get the last email, we do a little research. It is a research lab after all. As it turns out, "Patco Lamp" isn't his name. It's the name of a "Christian" lighting store, in Fort Worth, Texas. And if you look at who runs the place, you'll find that it's run by three Patterson's (hence Patco), a man, John, and two women, one of whom is named Sherry and the other named Janet.

We were trying to think of some way to get back at whoever sent the rather threatening email. Maybe we could tell Sherry that her husband was snooping in her phone. We could call all the Philip Hughes' in the Fort Worth area and tell them that they were in trouble. Tim, imagining some right wing, religious, gun nut getting into his F150 and driving up from Texas to shoot us all, was urging that we let it drop. And then the final email came and we decided that might be a good idea.

Though I did think of asking for a lamp for my troubles.

New Post

OK, I haven't posted in quite a while and my fan base is starting to erode. In fact, there have been complaints. So I'm gonna try to start writing more and messing around less with pictures since they are the reason that I don't post so often. I feel like I need a picture to go with the blog entry and if I don't have something eye-catching, then I don't post. So no more of that.

I have two things to talk about tonight, a tribute and a rant.

Harmon Killebrew passed away today. I don't follow baseball much but this made the news. Why do I care? When I was a kid, I played little league baseball. I was terrible at it. I didn't really like it a whole lot either but there wasn't much else to do. Part of the problem was that I couldn't throw. I couldn't catch either and I was piss poor at bat to boot. One other problem that I had was that I couldn't see. It was always too bright outside for me. I could see better than anyone alive at night, but what that meant was that a bright sunny day blinded me. Still does. And it makes me sneeze too. But on a nice cloudy day when things were going right I could occasionally get a hit. The reason was that I used a Harmon Killebrew bat. No other bat felt as good to me as the Harmon Killebrew. It had the right balance of size and weight that perfectly fit my attitude. If I didn't use the Killebrew, I struck out for sure. So I've always had fond memories of the guy even though I never knew much about him. He was 74 and died of esophageal cancer. May he rest in peace.

The other thing I want to talk about has to do with computers and their peripherals. I'm the guy in the house that everybody screams at when things go wrong. We have a fairly complex setup here in the house. We have, from time to time, up to 8 computers that can connect to the internal network and also have 4 printers. The 8 computers include a computer for each person in the house plus two older ones plus an iPod touch and an iPad. Actually, my son's computer isn't usually here and the two older ones aren't usually on the network. We also have 4 printers. Why? Well, I bought one for my company that makes no money a long time ago. I keep it going even though it makes horrible noises, because it also will do faxes. We have one that I got from work when we closed down a couple of years ago and we have two wireless ones that we got for free (after the rebate) when we got my wife and my daughter's Macbook Pros. I also have a bunch of external hard disc and a small server disk that I've had for years. And it's all hooked up to a router that's hooked up to a modem that connects to the cable. So things go wrong all the time and I have to figure out what the problem is and fix it.

So here's my rant. You can do a million things to try to make things work again. You can play with the software, you can read the manual, you can change a zillion parameters, you can change the connections, you can try wireless or ethernet or USB but nothing works quite as well as unplugging something and plugging it back in. Somehow that cathartic purge does more to help recalcitrant electronics than anything else you might try.

So here's my rant. Why don't the people that make this crap just admit to it and make it easy to turn this stuff off. It's a real pain to get to the plug on a lot of this stuff. Yesterday, the internet went down. I tried a bunch of stuff. Finally I pulled out the modem, with it's 3 thick attached cables and blindly pulled out the power cord. I spent a minute trying to get that stupid cable back in. Once I did, everything worked again. This morning my daughter couldn't get the printer to work. I don't think she was aware there were 3 more on line. I switched her to another one and got her stuff printed. Anyhow, I spent 20 minutes trying to get the router to see the printer. It never happened. Finally, I reached around and pulled the plug on the printer. This one even had a little clicky thing to make it a pain to get out. After pulling the plug, I had to pull the printer away from the wall to see how to plug it back in. And when I did, Presto! the computer that had been hiding was now visible again.

I wish every piece of computer equipment that I own came with it's own ugly power switch, not those wimpy things that merely put your equipment on standby, but a real switch with exposed wires so you could be sure the electricity no longer flowed. Something like this: