How Millennial are you? A quiz.

Pew Research Center has put together a quiz with a few carefully selected questions based on their survey research that they feel will allow you to determine how similar to the millennial generation you are. I scored a 51 while a typical millennial would score a 73 and a typical GenXer, of which I am supposedly a part, would score 33. So I am slightly ahead of the curve of my generation.

I suppose that the score moving me further along than my age or generation would suggest is because I have taken active measures to keep up with the new stuff. This blog, my twitter and other similar accounts being one example, and the requirements of my profession being another. I still think that in many cases I am behind the curve in adoption of these new technologies, but then I often encounter others who have never even heard of the thing that I am adopting.

I have often thought of myself as old-fashioned about some things because I am a GenXer whose parents were in the Silent Generation, not baby-boomers, and who was also raised in part by my grandmother, who lived with us my whole life. Yet I know I have to keep up with the new.

My wife and I had a related discussion when she said that our parents hadn't continued to change their tastes in music as the music world had changed but that we were still doing our best to remain current. That is because I actively seek out new artists and songs in music and the latest thing in everything not just technology. I think my generation and succeeding generations need to learn to learn and adapt.

You can take the quiz yourself here.

Freaking out about flash mobs and the war on children

I heard a story on WHYY this morning that a Philadelphia city official wants to restrict the use of Septa TransPasses to before 4:30pm to stop students from being able to cause mischief after school. It turns out this story is true. City Controller Alan Butkovitz yesterday called for a crackdown on student TransPasses. He thinks that the TransPasses, which allow students to travel an unlimited number of times in center city between 5:30 a.m. and 7 p.m., let students travel to areas to cause mischief and especially refers to flash mobs.

The other half of the story is that a flash mob of 150 students gathered on Tuesday Feb 16th for a snowball fight got out of hand and resulted in vandalism and theft in Center City Philadelphia. Apparently there have been several flash mobs in Philadelphia supposedly organized using social media. So many that Philadelphia police and some council members are suggested that any online media social network be sued if it is found they were used to organize the mobs. From the article:

Councilmen Frank DiCicco and Jim Kenney both witnessed the chaos from their City Hall offices and called the act "appalling" and "disheartening" in a letter to Mayor Nutter and Council President Anna Verna.

In the letter, Kenney and DiCicco requested "cooperation in pursuing the possibility of a lawsuit against Facebook, MySpace and Twitter" - if it turns out that the teens arranged their mob gathering through one or more of the Web sites.

Good luck with that.

In a small victory for the vast majority of students (57,600 vs. ~200 at flash mob) that were not involved, though City Controller Butkovitz urged SEPTA general manager Joseph M. Casey to curtail the time on the TransPasses, Casy retorted (from the article)

In a letter responding to the controller, Casey wrote that there was no "correlation between the issuance of TransPasses and the incident involving the students who rampaged through Center City last week."

He also said:

In a statement, SEPTA General Manager Joseph Casey disagreed with Butkovitz's correlation and said school attendance has increased, truancy has decreased and juvenile vandalism on SEPTA is down 50 percent since institution of the TransPass in summer 2007.

Restricting the passes punishes the many for the few that are committing crimes and is a classic tactic in the war on children that sees all children as scary out of control things to be controlled rather than taught. I would even contend that not even all who attended the flash mob were guilty of bad behavior. I also doubt that suing the social media sites is a workable idea. If in fact they know that the mobs are planned that way then monitoring the sites is the approach to use. The groups essentially announce the mob on the network, find a way to get on the distribution list. Be clever and thoughtful, rather than reactive and fearful.

This morning's Shellpot Creek is calmer

The creek this morrning is lower than last night's high but still flowing. Now it is also filled with flood borne branches. I suspect that some of the branches that broke off of trees due to the heavy snow got the chance for a trip down the creek and got stuck on these rocks.

Last Night's Shellpot Creek was raging

As predicted, the creek rose as the rain and melting snow filled it. This short video is from last night.

Melting snow and rain fill Shellpot Creek - video

Think of the snow as a few inches of rain sitting on the ground and then add the rain that is falling to it. The creek isn't too high today, but I expect it to get higher.

The snow is melting slowly - Shellpot creek goes up and down

The USGS has a hydrological station on Shellpot Creek in Delaware near Wilmington down stream from my area of the creek. I have noticed the creek rising during the day the last few days. But don;t just take my word for it. Here is the chart from the station.

Up, as the snow melts during the day, and down, as the melting slows. It is interesting that the stream lags the day. I suppose the sun has to rise and melt some snow and the water must travel to the creek before it registers, and the warm part of the day isn't even getting started until noon or later. It is supposed to rain this week, so that will obliterate this nice chart. Add to the rain the snow melt that will accompany it and this might be a high creek week.

How to and not to drill in glass tile

Eventually I hope to post about the bathroom remodel that Lynn performed on second bathroom on the second floor. It had been my bathroom and will remain my bathroom and Linus' as he gets old enough to use it. It turned out wonderfully.

One of the defining characteristics of the new bathroom is 1 inch blue glass tile in various shades in the tub surround and as an accent back splash all the way up the wall behind the sinks. It looks beautiful. So beautiful that I was nervous about installing the show curtain.

I needed to drill through that beautiful glass tile and I had never done that before. I was very concerned that I would break the tile when I drilled it and and deface this work of art. Thus a little practice was in order.



Guess which tile I drilled first and which I drilled second. The tile on the right was the first attempt and I learned not to press too hard when drilling. The directions which the drill bit (example drill bit) suggested using a nail to mark the surface so that the bit would have something to hold it in the place where you wanted to drill. I had to tape these tiles to some wood for the testing so I couldn't see if I actually may have broken the tile making the nail mark rather than drilling. In any case I left off the nail marking step when I found that I could drill precisely without it.

I drilled two more tiles successfully before I started on the actual wall. It went well if a bit slowly. To use the bit it recommends that it be lubricated with water through the whole process. If you are drilling and you hear the squeak of the bit on the glass that means there isn't enough water. I actually used a clean squeeze bulb (called a nasal bulb syringe) that you might use to clear a babies nose to squirt water as I drilled. The difficulty was squirting constantly to keep water on a vertical wall surface while drilling with the other hand. I also found that gently and very slightly tilting the drill bit from side to side while drilling at a reasonable speed helped the bit to bite into the material and help to speed up the drilling. High RPM's do not help to make the drilling faster and is not recommended.

The holes were drilled perfectly though it took some time because I was being cautious. I actually think I cracked one tile inserting the screw anchor after the drilling, but the drilled tiles were covered completely by the bracket for the show curtain rod. I would be more gentle the next time I need to insert anchors in glass tile.