Randy’s Blog

Recently I read this article about "The Hum", a mysterious, persistent, dull noise some people claim to hear in certain parts of the world. The third paragraph caught my attention:

Exasperated, MacPherson turned his focus to scientific literature and pored over reports of the mysterious noise before coming across an article by University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to exploring topics outside of mainstream science. "I almost dropped my laptop," says MacPherson. "I was sure that I was hearing the Hum."

My first thought was "Hey, an OU professor!" My second thought was "How have I never heard of this journal before?!?" It sounds exactly like the kind of thing I'm interested in! I quickly found the journal's website, and a few minutes of looking around confirmed it. It's basically scientific research into "X-Files"-like topics. So I mentally filed it away and decided to take an even closer look sometime later.

The very next day, on an unrelated website, I read an article about researchers trying to find time travelers:

What Happened When We Tried To Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

They searched the web looking for people mentioning Pope Francis before he became Pope, or comet ISON before it was discovered. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, they found nothing. As the title implies, most of the article was actually about how the researcher couldn't get his paper published in any academic journals (although he was easily able to sell movie rights). However, the very first comment was from someone saying the Journal of Scientific Exploration was created for exactly this type of paper!

That made two references in two days, and pretty much sealed the deal. I signed up for an Associate Membership, paid my dues, setup an account, and now I'm in. I just wish I'd known about this journal years ago!

On Wednesday we had an HVAC company come by for a routine inspection of our air conditioner. When he was done, the guy (who was by far the friendliest maintenance person I've encountered) went over all the operating stats about our unit: pressure levels, temperatures, airflow, fan speed, system BTU, percent efficiency, amps, capacitors, etc. The takeaway was that our unit is operating almost perfectly across the board. He said he was impressed with how well it was running. Sweet. 

He also convinced me to sign up for their club membership. Normally I decline, but rates went up and the membership now saves a decent chunk of money, rather than the small fraction it used to be. He left, and I felt good about our A/C and fairly pleased that I was now saving money.

Then, Saturday night, the A/C stopped working. And it was just in time for a heat wave: this weekend was the first in nearly 2 years to have back-to-back predicted highs in the 90s. The temp in our house was in the low 80s and only going up. So at 8pm on Saturday I called the HVAC company again. I explained the A/C had just gotten a clean bill of health, and that I was a member of "the club." Fourty-five minutes later a different repair guy was at our house, working in the dark to find the problem.

And within a half hour, he had found it: a bug. Specifically, an earwig. It had the gall to crawl into an electrical switch in our perfectly fine A/C, and was crushed when the unit tried to turn on. Its body then acted as an insulator that prevented electricity from flowing. Once it was removed, the A/C started up just fine. This was the first time such a thing had happened to us, but he said it has happened many times in his 20+ years on the job.

In the end, the dead earwig cost us $100.

A few days ago, while thinking about the awesome-ness of grand slams in baseball, I wondered if a player had ever hit two in a single game. A quick search pulled up an entire Wikipedia page devoted to the topic:

List of Major League Baseball hitters with two grand slams in one game

Here are a few highlights:

• 13 players have accomplished the feat.
• No one has ever hit more than two in a game.
• A St. Louis player hit two grand slams in the same inning! ('99, Fernando Tatis). He set a record for most RBIs in an inning (8).
• One pitcher has done it. He only hit two grand slams in his career, and they happened in the same game.
• One player hit grand slams on consecutive pitches, in the 5th and 6th innings.
• One player hit an additional home run in the game, finishing with 11 RBIs, an American League record.
• One player hit his grand slams from both sides of the plate.

The website baseball-almanac.com points out that this feat is really a team effort:

"One man may end up with all the glory (and RBIs), but without his teammates getting on, he just has two solo home runs."

Dave Winer is the guy who basically invented blogging. He's been writing his blog at scripting.com since the mid-90s. He also helped create RSS, which is possibly the greatest invention of the internet era (at the very least, it's my favorite). A few months back he suggested that people stopped blogging the past few years because blogging tools haven't gotten any better.

That thought has stuck with me ever since. I've been thinking about blogging again, but blogger.com just felt outdated. When Google shut down their RSS reader last year, some people suggested that blogger.com might be next, given how little it's been updated over the years, and how heavily Google+ is being promoted. That hasn't happened so far, but it gave me another reason to look elsewhere.

So I've been looking at blogging platforms recently, and I've discovered there are a lot out there. A few I've looked at include:

• Ghost
• Postagon
• Silvrback
• Roon
• Posthaven

I thought I would use Ghost, because it seems to be the up-and-coming blog software with the most traction. But, it's still in the very early stages, and it looks like themes need to be tweaked and re-tweaked with each new release. So I kept looking, and eventually settled on Posthaven. It's also a work-in-progress, but seems to be further along in some respects. It's simple and clean, and I like that comments are built-in, so I don't have to use a third-party comment system. And, it's a paid service ($5/month), which (I hope) gives it a slightly better chance of succeeding in the long run.

One other neat feature is that email subscriptions are also built-in. So if you want to get notified about new posts, look in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page for a sign-up feature.

Cheers!

11.80 miles along the Prairie Trail

Riding time: 1 hour 7 minutes

It was perfect weather. Sunny, blue skies, 75 degrees. I've logged 61 miles on the bike so far this year. I'd like to match last year's total of 155 miles, but I got a late start this year because of the winter that just wouldn't quit. So we shall see.