Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Late for Billy Joel (Updated w/ Photos)

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Great concert . . . but we were late. No fault of our own though, since we left Richmond headed for Virginia Beach with plenty of time to spare (more than 1.5 hours earlier than should have been necessary).

First, we got caught in a brutal thunderstorm—hail and everything. That slowed us down, but not enough to make us late. Then, passing through Hampton, we approached the bridge-tunnel and traffic stopped. Not just slowed, but stopped (see the photo Melissa took of us dead-stop next to a sign that says, what else, “No Stopping”). We inched ahead a few feet at a time for well over an hour, eventually seeing a sign that helpfully informed us that a disabled car was in the tunnel and thus (inexplicably) the tunnel was closed. Way to operate a tunnel, guys. I don’t know whether to blame Virginia Beach for this idiocy or VDOT and the state legislature for their perennial failure to fund transportation.

We finally got through and parked past 8:30 for a show that started at 8:00 (and without getting our planned dinner) and took a small spot on the grass at the venue nearer to 9:00 after the long hike from the lot. The remainder of the show was great, despite fairly poor (last-choice) seats, but I’m pretty mad we missed almost half of it. Oh well. Virginia Beach will not likely be a place we travel to in the future for concerts, since their roads seem to be pretty unreliable. At the right you’ll see grainy, low-quality pictures (the second of which is artificially enhanced to make it show . . . anything) of Billy Joel on a big screen and a wacky crowd of people.

What are your experiences (if any) with Virginia Beach area roads? Should I give them another chance?

Scientists: Water Ice Found on Mars

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While minor glitches continue to effect the mission of the Phoenix Mars Mission, there’s some fairly big news from the Red Planet today. A small trench dug by the lander four days ago exposed some small, white clumps of something—possibly just salt, but possibly frozen water. Looking again at the trench today, scientists discovered that the chunks had disappeared. Scientists believe that the chunks sublimated, which is basically when something evaporates directly from a solid into a gas (without passing through a liquid phase). Apparently salt doesn’t do this, but water does.

NASA and the University of Arizona have released a press release (and associated images) claiming, essentially, that water ice exists on Mars. I’d be willing to bet they’re right, but I’ll wait for direct evidence rather than an indirectly-observed sublimation before I buy into it 100 percent. Scientists shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions . . . the disappearance of the white material could be sublimation, but then again it could be something else (in four days, I’m sure some white, non-water substances could melt into a liquid and be reabsorbed into the soil, for example). You can’t conclude that the material is water ice unless a) its sublimation was directly observed or b) you test it directly.

I’m sure one of those is on the scientists’ to-do list, along with checking out that flagpole I mentioned the other week.

Update 7/31/2008: The findings have been confirmed; there is water on Mars.

Appropriateness Fail

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I just submitted the image at the right (click for a bigger version) to the always-entertaining FailBlog. The image, however, isn’t as much funny as it is uncomfortable.

You see, many web sites are supported by advertising. In most cases, advertisements are either applied without regard to the content itself (e.g., randomly) or ads are selected based on what an ad software product thinks fits the content of the page (with correct, incorrect, or often-bizarre results).

I’m not sure which method was responsible for what I captured on my RSS feed reader last week. The story, from TVNewser’s feed, was one of the earliest reports I caught about the untimely death of Mr. Tim Russert. The ad text displayed inline immediately following the story reads as follows:

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Night Highway

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This year, Melissa and I are staying with my family about 45 minutes away from Roanoke, where the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church is being held this week (and to-which I am a lay-delegate). Since the conference runs late into the evening, that means a nice night-time drive down a four-lane country highway, followed by a short night’s sleep, followed by a morning drive back to the conference. Fun :-).

Busy Week Ahead

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So, I’ve got an extremely busy week ahead of me. Following a nice weekend down-south with the family, I’ll be heading to Roanoke (with poor Melissa in-tow) tonight for the kick-off of the 2008 Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. The conference runs through mid-day Wednesday, so I’m unlikely to have hardly any time to myself between now and then.

UMC Annual Conferences are the key regional decision-making bodies of the United Methodist Church. They have responsibility for operations, church policy, and pastor assignments within the conference (the Virginia Conference encompasses most of the state of Virginia, except the south-west corner), and every four years they vote for and send delegates to the General Conference that makes denomination-wide policy. Conferences are composed, essentially, of all clergy within the conference and a roughly-equal number of ‘laity’ (non-clergy church members, like me). My church has two pastors, and I’ve been selected to be one of our two lay-delegates to the conference.

Conference business usually starts around 8:15am, and finishes around 9:15pm, so I have a few long days ahead. That means, while I’ll try to keep making postings, I may well fall behind.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.