-
Hooray for the internet!

I quickly type [west oakland air raid siren], hoping for some explanation, like the map of recent earthquakes on the usgs site, which we use at my childhood home to find out, "Was that an earthquake?  Or is the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base just using its bombing range for larger-than-average ordinance today?"

[west oakland air raide siren]  First result: a youtube video with the caption "In Oakland every 1st Wednesday of the month at noon the air raid sirens go off as a test. They sure are loud ..."

Is it really noon already?  Is it really *Wednesday* already?  So it is!  So what does it mean?

Second result: Sirens key to East Bay alert system / After 9/11, Oakland expanded ...

Hooray for the internet!  :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Drilling into Aluminum with a Spade Bit

-
Should you use a wood-cutting spade-bit in metal?  Specifically Aluminum.  The internet seems to have to primary opinions, "no, that's really dangerous," and "I've done it."  This week, with Steve Westwood and a bunch of 9th grade robotics students, I changed my opinion from the former to the latter. - Use a drill press.  I still feel like hand-drills would be dangerous (heheh, we'll see when and if I change my mind on that), and might not be effective. - You want "chips," not just friction and tiny grindings. - Using cutting fluid (or some other oil in a pinch?) will at least tell you if you're heating things up to the smoke point of the cutting fluid, give you a warning that you're getting too hot, and a tiny thermal buffer for you to realize, "whoa that's too hot," and stop. - For the love of the FSM, clamp your work in such a way that if it becomes unclamped and spins, it won't disembowel you or remove appenda...
Read more

who is IOZ?

-
This guy reminds me of many of the thoughts I had before recently getting more and more jaded to the idea of military action. He writes about "cruise-missile liberalism," into which I suppose I've been slipping recently, and insists that people should be nice to each other, among other things. http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/ That said, he doesn't give me a satisfactory answer to "What do you do when peaceful Libyan protesters, walking down the street with signs, get mowed down, day after day, by automatic weapons, under the orders of the 'leader' of the country, and then some other Libyans ask for help in dealing with this horrific criminal." :/ Edit: this article mentions a few likely reasons America keeps involving itself in wars. Excerpted: "It is as if the president has big red button on his desk, and then his aides come in and say, "There's something really nasty happening to some unfortunate people, Mr. President, but if you pus...
Read more

Meanwhile, in Yantalo, Peru...

-
Image
Update (Friday, 16 August, 2013): I'm leaving Yantalo this afternoon, so I won't be able to personally steward any more donations here.  However!  Your donations have already funded a gas s tove is well covered (yay, no more smoke inhalation or sooty clothing/walls!), as well as a potable-water container (oh yeah, I forgot to mention she tends to boil and drink the yellowish water from the tap... I'm not sure what makes it yellow), as well as enough money to refill each of those a few times.  The remaining $100ish (edit $150!) will stay here in the Luz Dina roof fund, from which money could be drawn for any other emergencies she may encounter.  Another volunteer plans to run another fund-raiser, and I'll publicize this one even more once we secure someone who actually wants to do the work of installing a new roof, and have figured out how much it will cost.   In the meantime, I'm sure the patches helped a fair amount with the leaks, and the rainy season isn'...
Read more