dave's blog

On Sunday I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

The exhibit was far larger than I had anticipated. Upon entry you must secure a free ticket before traveling to the fourth floor to begin your self-guided tour. The tickets are necessary to provide a smooth flow of people through the exhibit; it is very popular and quite crowded. It took me three hours to transit the galleries; I’m sure I could have taken several more hours if I’d seen every movie and read all of the documentation.

The Facts

The exhibits focus on the facts of the era, rather than trying to draw opinions of the leaders of that era. For example, when discussing the limitations for emigration from Germany to other countries, the exhibits reminded visitors that the world was still suffering from the depression with up to 25% unemployment. Many countries questioned if they could sustain themselves, let alone additional unemployed immigrants.

They also were careful to only quote verifiable figures – giving strong credence to the numbers that were supplied concerning the millions who were murdered for faith, genetics, or political standing.

The Media

The galleries made excellent use of photographs, video (from period motion pictures), authentic artifacts, and castings from original artifacts, to present a powerful presentation. Many of the videos are contained behind low walls, with warnings concerning their disturbing nature to warn-off the squeamish. Some of the more powerful elements, for me, included the artifacts from the prosecuted people – hair, toothbrushes, shoes – as well as the implements of their demise – an actual German rail car used in the relocation to death camps.

The Crowd

I made some crowd observations while walking the galleries:

• First, women significantly outnumbered men. I find myself analyzing for causality, but nothing is clear. To a certain extent, I found the lack of male participation disturbing – Lest we forget…
• Second, it was solemnly quiet throughout the galleries. Very rarely did anyone speak; the message of injustice and death is overwhelming.  
• Thirdly, some parents brought their children. I was really surprised to see children under the age of 12 in the museum. I would not recommend this for children under 12, although I would strongly support exposing it to young adults.
• Finally, it was very crowded. I was encouraged that the staff had to moderate the flow of people into the building to avoid overcrowding (and perhaps not exceed the fire marshal’s limits?). The crowd seemed to be of many nationalities, although primarily Americans.

Summary

If you haven't been, you should go. The museum provides a small glimpse into the horror that one man can inflict to another. Understanding this evil can help us to more quickly recognize it in ourselves, and in future events.

Today I took a day off during my DC trip to visit the Smithsonian. My first stop was the Air & Space Museum. It was exciting and also extremely sad. I spent a great deal of time in the US space program exhibits. They brought back a tremendous wealth of memories.

Dad was working under a NASA contract during the Gemini and Apollo programs. We lived in a small town (Friendswood) literally filled with rocket scientists. It was a sort-of Normal Rockwell painting of a town. I have many strong memories, which came flooding back as I looked at historical elements from that time.

The challenging element: it was one year ago that my dad passed away. Everywhere I looked today I saw bits of him.

Persian New Years

I then visited the Freer Galleries, which are also part of the Smithsonian. They have a good collection of international art, including art from the Middle East. Today they were celebrating Nowruz – the Persian New Year’s Celebration. They had examples of things shared during Nowruz, including food, sabzi (greens), gold fish, and dancing. It was a cool way to finish the end of the day.
 

Do we really need another way to stay in touch? Well, maybe not. However, if a daughter, who is 2,000 miles away, gives us a way to be part of her life we'll participate.

Twitter (established in 2006) is considered to be a "microblog" with "social networking" implications. It's similar to a cell phone text message with a broader audience of friends and longer lifespan. In fact, the messages (also known as, "tweets") are often sent from a person's cell phone. The "tweets" often contain random information from a person's day - what's for lunch, events that are fun, events that are challenging, etc. The message is limited to 140 characters.

Some large companies, such as Microsoft, actively use twitter as a method for distributing information to targetted audiences. They often send a short title, followed by a link to a website with more information. I haven't really begun to dig into very many of these feeds, but I can understand why some people find them infectiously interesting. We'll see over the next few weeks if it continues to hold my interest; with additional trips to Washington D.C. already schedules, it could prove to be a neat way to share daily events with Anne.

Anne gave me the title for this blog entry while watching me set up the camera to take the photo on the left. Certainly the subject of powerstrips is geeky, but dumb? Perhaps! I have a big ol' audio amplifier from 1982 that I use to drive our subwoofer. It has a power switch, but I really don't care to climb behind the TV stand to turn it on or off; it usually just stays on, gobbling up electrons. The always "on" state has bothered me for a while. Dedicated switching sockets, designed to interface with my Denon receiver often cost over $100. Being cheap thrifty, I wanted something less expensive. I found the Smart Switch SCG3 on sale at Amazon for $20. I plug the Denon receiver into the blue outlet and when it is turned on, the white outlets also get power. Turn off the Denon receiver and the white outlets lose power... works for me!

About a month ago my neighbor Harry casually remarked, "My son needs a computer for high school. What do you think of this one?" He then shared an advertisement from a local office supply store. Harry has grown to trust me for the majority of his computer maintenance – in exchange he does yard-work for me. It’s a great symbiotic relationship that I wistfully envision as how neighbors lived before electronics became our best friends.

After reviewing the advertisement I commented, “It’s not a bad deal Harry, but I could build you a far better machine for the same price.” I believe he was initially skeptical, but took a step of faith; we ordered the necessary parts later that day.

Since this was going to be Asher’s computer, Harry and I agreed that Asher should participate in the birthing process. Within hours, we had assembled the individual parts – routing wires, mounting the motherboard, hard drive, DVD burner, and other associate parts. We ordered the parts from New Egg, and even though they made a mistake in shipping (very rare for them), I must continue to sing their praises for fair prices and quick delivery.

The power supply came a couple days later, as did a memory card reader for Asher’s camera. In scant minutes we had the box ready for its first use. I decided to try the 64-bit version of the Windows 7 beta as his operating system; it’s been rock-solid stable and very quick.

The verdict: A speedy, solid machine with more than double the performance of the store close-out machine at nearly the same price. Asher is thrilled with the machine, as is Harry.

Oh, and the reference to “MBA”? Asher and Harry gave me a “Master Builder Award.” It’s a pretty cool certificate lauding my abilities to build computers; it makes me smile.
 

Employees at Intel, Google, and now Microsoft have found themselves receiving a pink slip in the past few weeks. When Microsoft announced their reduction in force today it brought up the altogether too-fresh memories of the Starbucks reduction in force that left me without a job. I'm pleased that my position at Microsoft is safe, but understand that others have not been so fortunate. This distraction has passed - back to work!