Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Colonial Beach and Surroundings

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As soon as Melissa and I got back from our epic, ~2,800 mile road-trip to Oklahoma, we celebrated our anniversary with a three-day weekend in Colonial Beach, Virginia and the surrounding region. Colonial Beach is a town located on the Potomac River coast of Virginia’s Northern Neck. The town was a popular destination for vacationers from the Washington, DC, metro area, at least until the Chesapeake Bay Bridge opened in 1952 and made it much easier to drive to more-distant ocean beaches.

Melissa and I enjoy the laid-back atmosphere of the Northern Neck, so we end up spending a lot of our anniversaries out that-way. You may remember last year’s trip, where we made a stop at the George Washington Birthplace National Monument (which is actually near Colonial Beach) on the way back.

Anyway, when we drove out on Saturday, May 25, we went straight to Stratford Hall, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee, which is actually twenty miles (give or take) past Colonial Beach. down the Northern Neck. After that, we back-tracked to Colonial Beach and took some photos and had some dinner. We ended up staying at a hotel further to the northwest in Dahlgren, Virginia, near the U.S. 301 bridge over the Potomac into Maryland.

On Sunday we went to Mass at Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church in Colonial Beach, took a bunch more photos, dropped by the birthplace of President James Monroe (Democratic-Republican)—a roadside obelisk where there will, someday, be a museum—and then drove around aimlessly for a while. On Monday we slept in, relaxed, and drove home. It was a wonderful, relaxing, largely stress-free weekend. Photos below!

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The Obama Scandals: Nixon Redux?

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President Barack Obama (D) came into office in 2008 with a strong mandate for sweeping away the perceived corruption and cronyism in our federal government. Among his many campaign promises was a claim that, “No political appointees in an Obama administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.” But there were signs from the beginning, if you were looking for them, that the Obama administration was no less corrupt than any other.

Obama appointed a Treasury Department Chief of Staff who had been a Goldman Sachs lobbyist a short nine months earlier and an IRS Secretary who had been chief executive at H&R Block only thirteen months earlier. He kept many leftover cronies from President George W. Bush’s (R) administration in high economic positions, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (previously New York Federal Reserve president) and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (first appointed by Bush, then re-appointed by Obama). In fact, nearly his whole administration was made up of political cronies from the Bush and Bill Clinton (D) administrations, with a few Chicago cronies thrown-in from Obama’s days in the Illinois state house.

So it should be no surprise that the ‘new day in Washington’ is beginning to look like a stale re-hash of an old day in Washington. Scandals are coming to the fore. Corruption and abuses are becoming so evident that even the lapdog media outlets are starting to awaken. Each day, President Obama reminds us more and more of President Richard Nixon (R)—using the machinery of the bureaucracy for narrow, self-serving purposes, targeting his political enemies, attempting to cover-up every error (real or imagined), and lying, lying, lying.

Think I’m over-stating things? Let’s review. . . .

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Your Speedometer is (Probably) Wrong

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Did you know that the speedometer in your car is probably wrong? And, even if you did, did you know that many auto manufacturers mis-calibrate them on purpose?

The United States federal regulations about speedometers are surprisingly vague and hard to find, but it appears that they permit an error up-to five percent of the vehicle’s indicated speed range, plus or minus. European Union (E.U.) regulations prohibit manufacturers from indicating a speed lower than the actual speed, and an up-to five percent error on the plus side. Since most auto manufacturers sell cars in Europe and the United States without major mechanical or electronic changes, they will often intentionally calibrate their speedometers to read high so they can be sure not to offend European regulators.

This is actually the recommended practice, according to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Their standard for electric speedometer accuracy, J1226, recommends either a calibration within two percent (plus or minus) of the total indicated speed range, or a calibration within four percent with a bias toward reading high. And keep in mind that this is percentage of the total indicated speed range, not percentage of the actual speed. My Subaru Outback has a speedometer with a dial that goes [absurdly] to 150 miles per hour . . . so my speed could read high by up to six miles per hour without running afoul of U.S., E.U., or SAE guidelines.

If you ever compare the speed indicated on your speedometer to the speed indicated on a GPS device, you’ll probably find that the speedometer says you’re going a bit faster than you really are. In my Outback, the discrepancy is about three miles per hour. And the depressing thing is that the car’s on-board computers actually do know the correct speed, they just display it incorrectly on the gauge. If you connect an on-board diagnostics (OBD) scanner to your car, you can display the speed that your car actually thinks it’s going, and it will probably be pretty accurate. There will be some minor variance due to tire inflation and wear (and if you have made aftermarket changes to your wheel or tire size, all bets are off) . . . but my OBD-reported speed is within 0.2 miles per hour of what the GPS reports.

This is part of why I’ve just done a semi-permanent ScanGauge II install in my Outback. In addition to advanced trip statistics, performance monitoring, and economy measurements, I can also display my actual speed . . . something that the car really ought to be able to do on its own.

2013 Road Trip: Family, Graduation, and Wedding

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Better late than never! Melissa and I got back from our week-long road trip last Tuesday, and I didn’t have much time to go through my photos and start getting everything organized . . . so I didn’t. Even now I’m swamped with other projects (and an anniversary weekend trip), so I did very little processing on the photos below. Oh well!

Anyway, we got together with the family in Lexington, Oklahoma—a small town a-ways south of Oklahoma City—on Friday afternoon and then went to Lexington High School to celebrate my cousin Thomas’s graduation. Then, on Saturday, we headed out to Seminole—east of Oklahoma City—to celebrate my cousin James’s wedding. Luckily all the storms and tornadoes held-off until Sunday.

We left for home on Monday, drove to Knoxville, Tennessee, to crash at a hotel overnight, and then drove the rest of the way home on Tuesday. The whole trip put about 2,800 miles on our trusty Subaru Outback. Good times. And above all, congratulations and blessings to Thomas on his high school graduation, and to James and Hannah on their wedding!

Photos posted below, first just a few general family and travel shots, then graduation shots, then wedding shots. Enjoy.

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The Moore Tornado

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Moore Tornado By Ks0stm [CC-BY-SA-3.0]
By Ks0stm [CC-BY-SA-3.0]
As you have probably heard, the city of Moore, Oklahoma, was struck by an especially bad tornado on Monday. It killed twenty-four, including seven children at the demolished Plaza Towers Elementary School. I normally don’t spend a lot of time on disaster stories here at Off on a Tangent—there are disasters big and small every single day—but I decided to spend a little time on this one since I happened to drive through Moore only a few short hours before the storm hit, and because I have a lot of family in the Oklahoma City area.

Melissa and I just got home from a big, week-long road-trip to Oklahoma. My cousin Thomas graduated high school in Lexington, Oklahoma, on Friday, and my other cousin James got married on Saturday in nearby Seminole. Photos of both events are coming soon (after I find some time to do some processing).

I have family near Lexington to the south and also in Oklahoma City to the north, all of whom are fine and escaped the storms without harm or any serious property damage. A less severe tornado struck Lake Thunderbird and Shawnee on Sunday, touching down after the storm system had already passed Norman (and while we were visiting with family in Lexington), and then the real monster struck Moore on Monday only six hours after we had left town on our way home.

We had been staying at a hotel in the city of Norman, which is about seven miles south of where the tornado crossed Interstate 35 in Moore. I remember, as we left on Monday morning, seeing the movie theater and hospital just off to the left of the freeway . . . and it was pretty surreal to see them later, badly damaged but still identifiable, during CNN’s tornado coverage.

If you want to help support the victims of the tornado disaster in Moore, I recommend donating to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City or the American Red Cross. These two, and others like them, send the money where it’s needed and offer much-needed assistance to anybody, “regardless of religion, race, creed, or socio-economic status” (to quote from the Catholic Charities web site).

Make sure you are donating to these or other reputable agencies; unfortunately, scammers seem to come out of the woodwork after big, newsworthy disasters.

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.