What is this?

I came across something very cool looking during my Web surfing today. Take a look:



What is it? A slice of brain tissue? A sea sponge?

Click here to see the full context of this amazing picture.

Global Investor Magazine article

My brother was again quoted in a financial magazine article. Adam boasts that the reporter didn't even misquote him once!

A message for Comcast's marketing department

I have a great idea for Comcast's marketing department: stop sending me glossy leaflets on a daily basis. The way I figure it, they must spend at least $10 per month getting the word out to me, an existing customer. Instead of trying to milk more money out of me year after year, just keep my cable rates steady. The latest glossy brochure offers digital cable for just $10 more per month than what I'm paying. Yeah, how about giving it to me for no additional money like a similar brochure a few weeks offered?

I've written before in this blog about the slowly increasing price for video cable service from Comcast. While it's true that an increase a few dollars a month won't kill my entertainment budget, it will leave a very bitter taste in my mouth. That same mouth is now chomping at the bit waiting for Verizon to finally lay FIOS they have been promising over the last couple months. Even when FIOS gets here, I'm not sure I'll drop Comcast immediately since I rely so heavily on their cable modem service for my tether to the outside world. But once Verizon has proven itself as a reliable ISP, Comcast can say goodbye to this subscriber.

Cross County Trail

I had my first ride on the Montgomery County "Cross County Trail" tonight. I had initially intended to ride on the Schuylkill River trail towards Norristown from the Spring Mill train station, but ended up switching to the newly opened portion of the Cross County at Elm Street in Conshohocken. The path was generally flat and went through some former industrial land near the Alan Wood Steel plant. After passing by Ikea and Circuit City, the trail dips down underneath Ridge Pike. After passing Cracker Barrel and the Metroplex shopping center, the trail abruptly ends underneath the Blue Route (I-476) underpass along Chemical Road.

It was fun to ride, though it was a little spooky to be the only person on the trail. According to the County Web site, the trail will eventually be 17.5 miles connecting Conshohocken to Bucks County via Willow Grove. The Web site mentions pedestrian bridges to be built over Germantown Pike and Flourtown Road, which will make the route much safer than attempting to cross these busy roads. I can still remember when both of these crossings were railroad grade crossings, all remnants of which are long gone.

While the Rails-to-Trails locator doesn't mention it (yet), this new portion of the trail certainly follows an old railroad right-of-way that is still shown on Google Maps.

All told, it was a little over 9 miles from Spring Mill to Metroplex and back. That was a great ride length for a late spring after work ride.

Geeky Web Link

Being the science geek that I am, I enjoy reading about science from a historical aspect. I stumbled upon a Web site today that combines the archives of Modern Mechanics, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and Scientific American.

Some of the articles are quite intriguing, such as the one from 1938 describing the home experiments you can do with hydrofluoric acid. Yes, that's the same acid that eats through glass.
So much for the modern disclaimer: "kids, don't try this at home..."

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/

A happy 35th birthday party

Kate threw a great 35th birthday party for me on May 12. With friends and family around the house, we enjoyed great food from T'Dori and an awesome cake from Gianni Brothers. We had eaten yummy cake from Gianni Brothers at the baby shower for (then-unnamed) Aidan Overpeck. Kate loved the cake so much that she knew it was the appropriate way to celebrate my 35th. MaryAnn, the pastry chef at Gianni, asked for creative freedom for the cake design. Kate gave her complete freedom to design the outside of the cake, with the caveat that the inside had to be the yummy chocolate we had experienced with the Overpecks.


Railroad Cake for Scott's 35th



Railroad Cake with lit candles



Train pinata



Aunt Maxine and Mom enjoy some T'Dori food

A beautiful day to fly!

For the first time in a very long time I was on a flight today that wasn't packed and actually took off on time. For the 10 of us (yes, just 10) on the Comair (Delta Connection) Canadair Regional Jet that normally holds 50 passengers, the trip from Trenton to Boston was delightful. I wasn't bashful in taking out my camera and snapping some very nice aerial shots.

This is the Delaware river and Trenton, NJ, looking to the south. Pennsylvania is on the right side of the photo, while New Jersey is on the left. The northern-most (lowest) bridge is the Calhoun Street bridge. The next bridge to the south is the famous "Trenton Makes The World Takes" bridge. Next up is the Trenton-Morrisville Route 1 Toll Bridge. And the last bridge (farthest south) is a railroad bridge. In fact, if you look to the right of that bridge, you can see an Amtrak Acela train headed for Philadelphia that recently crossed the bridge.



I also got a unique shot of runway 22 at LaGuardia (LGA) airport.



Here is the Hudson River, Central Park, and most of Manhattan.


The other quite spectacular shot I got was of the George Washington Bridge (center of photo) and Yankee Stadium (lower right-hand corner).


I hope you enjoyed these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them! Overall, the flight was teriffic. We even arrived 20 minutes early (gasp)! Of course the ground crew was nowhere to be found since we were so early. Oh well...

There are still good companies out there...

I sometimes use this blog as a place to vent frustrations about poor customer service. Overall, I think many companies have lost touch with their customers. As a result of really not caring, they provide dismal service. I will rattle off a few with which I've had poor dealings recently: iBahn (a.k.a. STSN - hotel internet company) and Presentation Services (a.k.a. Conference Solutions - AV projector rental) come to mind.

I'm going to try to highlight companies that have fulfilled their duty as corporate citizens. First up is ASUS motherboards. A little over a year ago I purchased an ASUS A8N SLI board for my new home-built computer. A few weeks ago there was a horrible noise coming from the inside of the case. Fearing that my CPU fan or case fan was dying (which can lead to sudden and irreversible death to a computer), I shut everything down. It was only after I popped open the case and took a listen during a reboot that I realized it was my chipset fan. This tiny fan, which sits on top of the "Northbridge" chipset, was in its death throes.

Cleaning the fan with compressed aid yielded a temporary fix, but when I rebooted the fan would refuse to spin up on its own.

A quick Google search yielded a smattering of folks with the same problem. ASUS was providing a free replacement fan for the asking. I phoned ASUS at 510-739-3777 extension 3 (not a toll-free call, but that's OK since I have Vonage and there is no such thing as a long distance call any more) and provided my mother board's serial number. Less than a week later a replacement fan showed up on my doorstep. Installation was a snap, and I'm now back to normal with no worries of an overheated chipset. Kudos to ASUS for standing by their product even though it wasn't under warranty.