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.

The Parable of Watching Welding on TV

I decided to share this here, not sure why but I do know I need to update this more often.  :)

Today my parents were talking with one of their old exchange students on Skype and I had the thought to sneak up and pop a balloon to scare the exchange student.  Then I realized that wouldn't work because the pop wouldn't be loud on her end.  I thought back about how I'd always been taught to not look at a welding arc, and it's for good reason!  On occasion I find myself looking away out of habit when they show somebody welding on TV, but it's safe to look at on TV.  Like how the balloon pop isn't loud to someone talking on Skype.


The reason is the computers' limitations.  The microphone can't pick up sounds as loud as a balloon pop, and the speakers on the other end probably can't make sounds that loud.  Same thing with the TV, the camera can't pick up light as bright as a welding arc, and the TV couldn't display it even if the camera was that sensitive.

Then I realized, this has spiritual connections.  It may be a little technical or far fetched, but it was meaningful to me.

God is sending us messages all the time.  He speaks to us trying to guide us to happiness, or, the more fertile parts of life (1 Nephi 16:16).  The scriptures describe God's voice as still and small (1 Kings 19:12) or as a feeling (Galatians 5:22).  The message he is sending is the most amazing message we can hear in this life; more glorious than anything we can message.  Are we able to receive it?

First, we might not be sensitive enough.  We may only feel part of the message, nor not believe it when we receive the message the first time.  How might we grow sensitive enough to hear it?  My best understanding is to practice listening.  Spend time focusing on listening to what God has to say every day.  This happens best through personal scripture study and prayer.  That's part of why those two things are mentioned over and over.

Second, we might use the message to hurt ourselves.  The scriptures talk about the Jews missing the mark and this knowledge they sought became a stumbling block (Jacob 4:14).  They started wanting spiritual knowledge that they weren't ready to receive, and it caused their downfall.  Do you believe all that God has taught you?  Do you keep wanting to learn more but aren't doing the simple things God has taught you to do?

Sometimes it seems like I keep hearing the same message over and over from God.  Sometimes it was conference, or it's talks at church, and I realized it's because I'm not listening.  When I stop listening I stop progressing.  Leaning back on the Book of Mormon lesson, the pointers on the Liahona stop working, and I start to get lost.

So what do we do?

I know that as we keep trying, God will strengthen us.  His message will get brighter and brighter in our hearts.  We may feel like we aren't getting anywhere, but we are getting somewhere spiritually.  Every day we hold to God's word and live his commandments we grow stronger spiritually.  Our desire and ability to repent increases.

I know God loves us.  We may not understand how he expresses his love, but it is always there.  He will help us understand if we just listen.

I got a bigger memory and lots more RAMs! 8000 RAMS!

InvisibleBread.com, go check it out!

When upgraded to Windows 7 it said it needed 2GB of RAM.  I had done fine with 2GB on Windows XP so I thought I didn't need to change anything.  When I got everything installed, updated, and ready to go, I tried to play a game.  It was painfully slow!  I went back to see what the problem was and found that Windows 7 used about 1.3 GB of RAM just idling.  I thought Windows 7 had better memory management!  It seems it does, but it just needs twice as much as Windows XP did.  Figures.

So I go on the hunt for new memory and find that RAM has changed in these last few years.

Old motherboards used to have a FSB rating which is the speed the motherboard runs at.  The memory, processor, and peripherals would then be set at a multiplier of this if they ran faster.  The wrong combination of speeds would leave one component waiting for the others to catch up.  Getting the right speeds made the whole computer run faster.

These days on AMD motherboards they use HyperTransport.  To describe it simply, it's like upgrading a traffic light from a timed light to an automatic one.  It basically directs traffic instead of just letting it pass at a set interval.  So with this, there is almost no correlation between processor and memory speed.  Get the speeds you need and they'll talk nice... except in my situation.

My motherboard is an ASUS M4A785TD-M Evo, which says it supports AM3 processors and 1800 MHz RAM OC.  I found out the OC means when they made the motherboard they set it up so it theoretically could run with faster memory, but they didn't really test it (or couldn't because the memory didn't exist yet).  With a little research I found out AM3 processors don't like memory that runs faster than 1333 MHz anyway.  So, any faster memory wouldn't work anyway.

I ended up getting two 4GB Crucial chips.  It clocked at 1333 MHz with a latency of 7.  (Model BLT2KIT4G3D1337DT1TX0.)  I went with 7 latency instead of 9 because it was only about $3 more expensive.

My motherboard still had the old BIOS that came with it, and when I put in the new RAM the motherboard wouldn't even POST.  I was about to send the memory back when I decided to try updating the BIOS.  The BIOS update version 2104 fixed it, except the timings were set for a latency of 9 instead of a latency of 7.  After some more research it seems you have to manually set timings.  Motherboards don't check that on their own.

In the ASUS bios under JumperFree Configuration menu I had to set the memory timing to manual, then change four settings.  First, I set the tCL, tRCD, tRP to 7.  Then I set the tRAS to 24.  The rest I left at automatic.  After I saved and rebooted it worked like a charm.

Space Empires 4 Review

I've been on a personal quest to find the best video games we can shrink our collection down to.  A recent one somebody suggested was Space Empires 4.  I was looking to combine Sins of a Solar Empire with Civilization 4 and replace an old game I enjoyed called Masters of Orion II.  I searched online about it and found next to nothing in way of reviews so I thought I'd add one more to the billions of web pages out there and hopefully it will help someone who is looking for information on it.

It was released in 2000, so I expected it to be decent, but it felt very much like one of those early 90s RTS games (like Outpost, Dark Reign, Masters or Orion).  The graphics were simple enough, which wasn't bad, but it was more the play style and the user interface, which caused me to loose interest.

The interface had me constantly guessing.  It had it's own style of control which was as pain because games are pretty much standardized with controls.  Things like right click to move units or cause the default action, one left click to select things.  I felt like I had to click three or four times to do what one click should be able to do.  It got old fast because I wasn't willing to learn a whole new interface at my age.  :)

The play style was pretty close to your traditional 4x conquer the galaxy games but it had a lot of small quirks that really didn't need to go there.  I built a colony ship, sent it to the planet, and then I couldn't build anything.  Turns out you need to also send colonists over with your colony ship.  I guess that makes sense but that means several more steps before I can have my colony up and running and just adds to the list of things I might forget to do to makes the game more frustrating.

Also the tech tree bugged me.  Instead of a list of available technologies you can research it just has tech levels in like 20 different categories.  If you want to get a specific tech you're left trying to guess what the programmers thought it should be categorized under, and often you need a specific level in several categories.  That leaves you having to refer to complicated tree diagrams online to try to get what tech you want instead of just telling the game to research what you want.

The battles felt very unbalanced and that one tech always dominated, and if you don't happen to know what tech that is then you've lost.  What's the point of having hundreds of ship components when only one is worth using?

Basically unless you're a big fan of the game category, avoid this one.

Parallels 7 and Games can get along!

My wife got a new iMac, the 2011 model with the i7 processor. She uses it for her illustration work and for playing games on occasion (mostly with me).

She decided to go a new route with this new computer and get Parallels so she can be playing a game and illustrating at the same time. I was skeptical that it would work and wanted to stick with good old Bootcamp but she liked the idea of switching back and forth during turned based games like Heroes of Might and Magic.

I googled and googled and googled and never found any definite info on if Parallels actually runs games or not. All I found were either vague assurances it will work (Something like "Get it, it runs faster than the old version") or screenshots (you can take a screenshot even if the game is running at 2 fps).

Finally I guessed the lack of information means people must have some degree of success or they'd be online whining about it not working. (It's sad how we report things that make us mad much more than things that work great).

Parallels Installation

We bought Parralels at the local college bookstore. It came on a USB drive with the setup program on it. When we ran the setup program it asked us if we wanted to download the latest version, which we did. It then installed fine without issue.

Windows Installation

This part had me worried. We had the Windows 7 Family Pack upgrade which meant we couldn't install it from scratch. We did try, but it said it needed a previously installed version of Windows. So we dug out an old Windows XP 64 bit disk that we had gotten free when we bought a copy of XP a while back. It installed fine surprisingly! Then we had to set Parralels to boot off the DVD drive instead of the hard drive and ran Windows 7 setup. It upgraded and activated without a problem.

Need to install toolkit through the Parallels menu after windows 7 is running.

Once we got Windows 7 running and updated it was time to install some programs. I started with basic utilities like WinRAR, Direct X, Foxit... and gosh they installed fast! I didn't even see the installer copying files I just clicked "next" and it said it was done! So far so good...

Running Games

Then I decided to try TrackMania Nations Forever first. It didn't have a single issue installing. I did the benchmark and it ran on almost max settings... except something would make it suddenly drop to 2 fps. With a little testing I found it was the shader quality setting. Any shader quality above 1 would kill the framerate, otherwise the game ran 60 fps at 2560x1440 with max settings!

Then I tried Heroes of Might and Magic 5 and Civilization 4 with the Tomas' War mod. They both ran perfectly at max settings, and we didn't have any issue playing them over a LAN.

Finally, we tried Sins of a Solar Empire... with poor results, but it could be my fault. I was running v1.05 with the 7 Deadly Sins mod v2.1. Both the game and the mod are old unfinished versions.

The main problem was that it crashed frequently and without warning. That makes any game basically unplayable. The next issue was the right click to rotate camera feature was so sensitive the camera would jump about 90 degrees with a slight movement of the mouse. The third issue was many of the textures would flash black as the game ran and sometimes the whole screen would flash. The game still had a great framerate at max graphics settings when it did run. I didn't get to test it with lots of objects onscreen though.

I tried contacting Stardock about the issues and got a frank reply: "There is nothing we can do about this, it is out of our scope." Apparently they weren't very interested in working with someone who is running the game on a iMac.

I did have issues with some of the installers, like Sins and Civ 4 went terribly slow

Some installer's backgrounds would cover up the windows and I'd have to alt-tab to see the window with the next button.


Hope this information was helpful to someone!

My experience with Xtreme Fuel Treatment

The other day someone at the grocery store commented on my kids, visited a bit about how their son had the mister mom experience, they then said they may have a business venture I may be interested in and wanted to e-mail me some videos. I figured I may as well listen in case it was actually a good thing, but the first red flag went up when they wouldn't tell me more. In my experience that means they don't have the salesman skills to make what they are selling sound as good enough. That usually means the product isn't good, if it can only be sold by expert salesmen.

They sent me a link to a video and first thing I noticed is it's a pyramid scheme. You work with "team members" trying to get them to sell for you so you can reap the rewards of their efforts selling something nobody's heard of. Often these products rely on the fact that you haven't heard of them, otherwise people wouldn't pay for them.

I told them I wanted to research it on my own and they sent another video and said they'd call after I watched it. Instead I spent the time asking Google. I couldn't find much that actually told about the product. That says to me there are a lot of marketers working full time on making it look good (like members of a pyramid scheme).

Most of the information I found was people talking about how great the product was, but there were more red flags. Many of these promotions accused people of being closed minded to the evidence about the product. Many more complained about the bogus products giving their legitimate product a bad name. Both of these are what are called logical fallacies. Comments intended to sound logical but have no real meaning.

I finally found a question on www.answers.com asking about the product. A few more interesting facts came forward here. First, it's not tested by the EPA to prove it actually works, just tested to see if it's safe. Also it isn't sold in actual stores. Stores that have to uphold their reputation and can't afford to sell products that don't work.

When I did find numbers that show it didn't work the pro XFT distributors replied saying "The results will be completely different based on driving habits" or "you have to use it for 3,000 miles to get best results." Then they promise a 30 day money back guarantee. How are you going to test it in only 30 days if you have to drive 3000 miles to get the best results?

They also said I will save about $20 per gas tank. I currently spend about $40 a tank, their product costs $5 a treatment, so I'd drop to $15. That's close to a third of the cost. So that means this product is supposed to triple my gas mileage just by adding 1/4 ounce of their product to my tank. I say it isn't possible.

I looked up how it worked and they said it uses an "organo metallic catalyst" to atomize your fuel, making it burn faster and more completely. Organometallic means they have metal in their additive. I can only see metal additives leaving deposits and shortening my engine's life.

About the faster burning fuel they said "XFT makes even low grade fuel behave like high-quality or premium fuels, eliminating the need for higher octane or other more expensive fuel." This is completely false. Higher octane fuel means it burns slower, so they are lowering the octane rating. This is detrimental for an engine! It can cause premature ignition of the fuel and will shorten your engine's life.

You may wonder why I took the time to write all this for a product that doesn't work. First, I wanted to say I gave it a fair chance to prove itself. Second, I'm hoping somebody who is researching Xtreme Fuel Treatment finds this post and realizes that it is yet another scam.

Diesel for all five senses!

Note to self: I need to figure out how to make this thing stop saying my wife is posting everything.

Our 1998 Ford Explorer got it's gas tank filled with diesel. It wasn't me, but I was tasked with fixing it. By time I got it fixed I was very soaked in Diesel.

I was told it had an anti siphon feature so I couldn't siphon the diesel out of the tank, so I first looked into disconnecting the fuel line and using the fuel pump to pump the diesel out. Well the directions I found online didn't fit this Explorer (even though he said he was working on the same model) but it did seem like all you'd need to do is turn the key on. I jacked the vehicle up so I could get to the fuel tank and found there wasn't much room under there. I tried taking off the hose clamps on the back of the tank but they were either too rusted or designed to not be removed easily, so I did some more researching. I found a story online about a guy who was trying to train the fuel tank and somebody commented that you can get a siphon tube in the tank, it would just be a little difficult.

It took a lot of pushing but I did manage to get a piece of garden hose to reach the fuel in the tank. I only got about 14 gallons siphoned out, with maybe a gallon spilled on me. I decided to try filling it up with gas and see if it ran. It didn't at first but after a bit of cranking it started running roughly. After a few more minutes it was idling normal, so I think the problem has been solved.