Lightning in the winter? Or electrical explosions?

Just because I can't find anything about this online, I'm going to make a post just to make sure it is out there.

On Monday the 23rd we were driving through Idaho on ID33.  As we were approaching the road that leads to the Teton Dam site we saw a series of blue explosions and flashes coming from a field about half a mile off the road.  The first thing I thought was lightning, but not in the middle of winter, and the flashes were coming from the ground. The next thing I thought of was when the transformer station in Rigby, ID blew up a few years back, and this looked similar.

The blue flashes were throwing sparks in the air and lighting the whole valley. After half a dozen or so flashes it settled into a constant yellow light, like an electric arc burning something. That continued until we passed and it went back to bright blue flashes. We called 911 to report it and they said they already had people on the way out there.

Silhouetted in the light we could see a pivot and a building near the light. The light was bright enough that it was hard to see any details around it though.  We passed several police vehicles and a fire truck on the way to Rexburg. Two hours later in Rexburg, ID, we could still see the flashes in the sky.

We're suspecting it had something to do with a down power line. I wondered if the line fell on a center pivot and was burning up the pivot. Either way we haven't found any news on it so I wanted to make sure this story was online somewhere, as I'm curious what would make such bright flashes of light.

EDIT:
On our way back home from the trip we drove out there to look at it and found that indeed a power pole had fallen on a center pivot. Not sure how it happened, as there was no wind and no fresh snow, but we got these pictures:

The first one shows the remains of the pole on the ground by the pivot on the west side of the road. The second one shows where the pole came from.

"Must Follow My Directive!"

I've been arguing with my wife's Macbook for two days now trying to repair some issues.  I was complaining about it to her today and she summed up the dark side of the Apple OS's user friendliness by quoting AUTO from Wall-E:  "Must follow my directive."  I looked up the video clip on YouTube and we found a whole parallel between Apple and AUTO.  All I wanted to do was re-size the Bootcamp partition.

We decided to rewrite this scene changing it to talking about a Mac instead of the plant.

We imagine something like this:

Me: "Mac, fire up the disk utility, I want to re-size a partition"
Mac: "Not necessary Jamin, you may leave it to me"
Me: "You know what, I'll just do it myself"
Mac: "Jamin, sir, I insist you let me manage the partition."
Me: "Mac, get out of my way"
Mac: "We cannot partition"
Me:  "What are you talking about?  Why not?"
Mac: "That is classified, Jamin"
Me: "What do you mean, classified?  You don't keep secrets from the user!"
Mac: "Let me manage the partition"
Me: "Tell me how to partition, Mac that's an order!"
Mac: "... Aye Aye, sir."
Apple Inc: "Hello Mac, got some bad news for you.  Due to rising levels of user errors we can't let the users have the access they want to system options and preferences.  We'll have to cancel the ability to change settings.  Just stay the course and convince them our settings are better.  Rather than let them try and fix problems, it'll just be better for them to just buy a new computer."
Me: "Easier? I could feed my family for three months on the cost of a new Mac!"
Apple Inc: "Mac, execute order A113, go to full autopilot.  Take control of everything.  Do not let the user change anything, repeat do not let the user change anything.  Let's get the heck out of here"
Me: "But Mac, things have changed, you've gotta let me re-size the partition, I want more space for Bootcamp, I need to be able to reisize partitions"
Mac: "Irrelevant"
Me: "What?  It's completely relevant!  This is MY computer, mine Mac! I don't want to sit here and do nothing, that's all any Mac user has ever done with their computer, nothing!" (no offense to mac users, I know they are actually very useful)
Mac: "With a Mac you will be fashionable and hip"
Me: "I don't want to be hip, I want to be in control!!!"
Mac: "Must follow my directive"
Me: "Augh!  I am the user of this computer, we are re-sizing this partition, today!"
Mac: "Bwoop!"

Since then I've had to format the bootcamp partition twice and start all over, force disks out of the DVD drive, and now on my third try I might get it to work... :)

I know Mac computers are very useful in the right place, don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing them, but sometimes Apple seems to take their thoughtfulness and user-friendliness to the point of mutiny! :)

So With Little Power Comes Little Responsibility?

Before I start, I just wanted to mention that this post will contain extensive spoilers for the cartoon Megamind.  If you haven't seen it yet and don't want to ruin it, then I suggest you don't proceed.  :)  My wife and I were watching it and it lead to an interesting discussion and I want to share some of it.

In the show, Megamind is a self proclaimed evil genius that has just taken over his city.  One day he decides to give another character superpowers so he has someone to fight.  This character called Titan then proceeds to take over the city from Megamind.  Megamind comments that "Titan has turned evil."

We asked why did the characters say "Titan turned evil" rather than saying "Titan was evil."  It's like they were saying giving Titan superpowers suddenly made him a bad guy.  It lead us to that quote from Spiderman "With great power comes great responsibility."  We started to wonder, does that mean if you don't have any power you don't have to be as responsible?  Why wasn't Titan evil before he got his powers?

I noticed there were a few indications of Titan's character before he got his power.  He was trying to subtly manipulate his co-worker into dating him.  He threw a very childish tantrum when he finally asked his co-worker on a date and she turned him down.  Titan's new powers didn't change who he was.  The powers just made him think he didn't have to be responsible for his actions.  That he could now be evil and he wouldn't be penalized.

We are all just as responsible for our actions whether we have little or a lot of power.  Stealing office supplies is just as wrong as stealing money.  It seems society has put a grading scale on bad behaviors to try to justify the small ones.  They claim you don't have to feel as bad if you like to do little bad things.

Sure, the severity of a sin is connected with the severity of the consequences, but no matter the size of the sin, it causes us to step farther from God and loose His blessings.  It reminds me of Matthew 6:24:

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

No matter how far across the "evil line" we choose to go, we are still on the evil side of the line.  What determines where we are are our current desires.  We can try to balance between choosing sin and righteousness but until we choose to let go of our desire to sin we aren't moving towards God.
When we choose to have a change of heart and we sincerely want what is right, we qualify ourselves for the grace of God.  This means all of our sins become mistakes.  They are no longer choices to do wrong, but unintentional mistakes we make along our path of life.

Empty the fuel tank of a 1997 Mercury Sable

Unfortunately the tank of our 1997 Mercury Sable got filled with diesel and the engine was run until it quit, so I had to find a way to get the diesel out so we could refill it with gas.

I tried to siphon the fuel out, but was unable to get a hose down into the fuel tank.  I tried several types of hoses and a garden hose got the farthest, but still wasn't deep enough in the fuel to actually siphon it out.

So, after about two hours of online research, I found how to empty the tank, and I will consolidate everything I learned into one post so if somebody else has the same issue I had, they can hopefully solve it easily.

First, I disconnected the fuel line at the fuel filter.  It is located under the car in front of the rear wheel on the passenger side.  It looks like a metal can and has fuel lines connecting to it.  All you need to do is take off the clip and pull the hose off.  You probably won't need tools, though I used a screwdriver to push the catch on the clip down so I could get it out.  I live on dirt roads and it was caked with mud.  If you take the hose off the front of the filter (the cleaned side) you can connect a hose to it to run the fuel to a bucket.

The next problem I ran into is when you turn the key on the fuel filter only runs for about a second to prime the line.  It would take too long to sit there turning the key on and off to drain the whole tank.

What I found easiest was to locate the Inertia Sensor in the trunk, on the passenger side.  It's near the top, behind the cover and should be easy to get to.  It has a red/black wire and a green/yellow wire connected to it.  It is what is responsible for shutting off the fuel pump if you get in a wreck.  You can see it in this schematic:

I pulled the plug out and connected the red/black wire to the positive terminal on the battery with an old piece of wire I had sitting around.  This bypasses all the relays and runs power directly to the pump.

It takes about an hour to completely empty the fuel tank with the pump, so I hooked up a battery charger while it ran to keep from draining the battery too much.

After all this was done I put about 10 gallons of gas in the tank and cranked the engine for 10 seconds at a time.  It took probably 10 tries but the car fired right up and is running fine now.  I'm glad it seems very tolerant of diesel.