Peruvian Salkanty and the State of the BBotE Address

In my continuing efforts to find new and interesting things, I decided to head a little further in South America to try a new distinctive dark roast. Brazil has generally been a bit of a let down for roast consistency but I hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to play with the coffees of Peru. Considering that the country is on par with Sumatra for straight up stratovolcanism, though not quite the same geology and geochemistry, I figured it was worth a try.

The Peruvian Salkanty, or Salkantay depending on your preferred spelling (NOTE: it is not “Salty Carny” as Test Subject Broken Tongue called it), is a dark roasted high altitude coffee that surprisingly kept that bright citrus flavor as a hot brew. When made into BBotE, that changed entirely. The citrus changed to pepper. I am not quite used to a strong black pepper warmth in my coffee, not that it was bad just surprising, but Test Subject General Antagonist claims it reminded him of the pepper notes he gets from the chicory in Nawlins coffee. There was also a vote for “cakey brownie”. Test Subject NO experienced an almost minute delayed aftertaste of more pepper that rather surprised him. The rest off us felt it was a rather long palate, but no second spike like he had. Vodka addition, muted the peppery burn a bit, blending it more with the brownie flavor. Chipotle brownies?

Sadly, Test Subject Broken Tongue had no special input beyond, “This doesn’t taste like any carnies I’ve ever licked.” I recommended he go find a Peruvian circus for proper comparison.

So, I think it makes the cut to be worth sharing as a short run. If it strikes a chord with people, it’ll stay until it the roaster runs out.

In other news, there is likely to be a bit of a hiatus on Mundo Nuvo as the roaster that makes it happen at Caffe Vita is currently on walkabout in Ethiopia hunting up new and interesting small farm sourcing. I have high hopes he’ll be returning with delicious treats in addition to making more of my heart’s delight, Guatemala Mundo Nuvo. When the current inventory is gone, it’ll probably be out of stock for a month or two.

The nice folks at Death Wish have expanded their roasting capacity so there is near to no reason that I should ever run out of stock again for you eXXXtreme caffeine sports afficianados. The Rwanda Abakundakawa supplies remain strong for the foreseeable future.

The Colombia Paez that I’m fond of remains, sadly, intermittent despite my encouragement of the roaster. I try to lay in supplies when I can. Don’t be surprised when that goes out of stock for short stretches.

And, of course, the hunt for new things, and the return of some old favorites, goes on. Don’t think for a minute I’ve stopped haranguing my old supplier of Panama to get that back. The standards (Ethiopia, Kenya, Kona, Malabar, Sumatra) remain standards and are in no danger of going away.

Lastly, in response to a request from Test Subjects Kristobek & Thornber, there is a smaller sized 350ml “Rugged FMJ” Stein of Science more appropriate to coffee or Trappist ale consumption than the full imperial pint, yet up to their clumsy antics. I made two of the textured style a while back (as that’s what the luck of the draw gave me) but these are nice smooth metal shields. They’re going to remain a part of the regular line up I think.

Further Q&A – The Ego Feeding Edition

A reminder: over the last weekend there was a swap of back end for the store which means, unfortunately, you cannot access your old pre-February 24th, 2012 orders to chat with me. The database should remember who you are but you’ll have to drop me a line the conventional way. Alas.

I get some personal questions from time to time in the ol’ Ask Herr Direktor bucket and the most popular is… Question: “What the hell is a health physicist and why are you one?” Answer: The completely uninformative TL;DR version is “a safety professional that specializes in ionizing radiation”.

Now, would you like to know what that means? This is a bit of a ramble, so brace yourself.

For a moment, please try to imagine ALL of Science. All of it, even the bits that you feel uncomfortable referring to as Science, perhaps you call it *finger quotes* “Science”, or squishy science, even perhaps pseudoscience. Are you holding all of that in your head? Okay, now take absolutely any topic in that ball of knowledge you’re holding and add ionizing radiation to further explore a hypothesis in the topic. In my experience, there is absolutely no field of human thought or endeavor that someone hasn’t found a way to add some kind of radioactive material tracer to or bombard with x-rays to prove a point.

It is vitally important to have someone around to say, “Okay, you could do that, but would you mind putting some shielding behind your target so you don’t irradiate the Chemistry 1A lab bench on the other side of the wall? At the very least, can you wait until after the students are gone?” One of the sayings about health physics is that it is a topic “an inch wide and a mile deep”. Understanding what radiation does is relatively easy; understanding what EVERYTHING ELSE does in the presence of radiation is another matter.

As a matter of history, x-rays were discovered by Roentgen in November 1895 and radioactive materials by Becquerel in July of 1896. The first recorded radiation injury happened due to an x-ray over exposure in August 1896; medical use of x-rays medical began shorty after the discovery. The term “health physics” entered parlance during the Manhattan Project to describe all those people doing radiation protection and biological research (mainly focused on their fellow workers/researchers handling radioactive materials) to protect us from their work and, sometimes, their work from them. On organizational charts and pay stubs “health physicist” was less informative to foreign intelligence services than “radiation protection professional/researcher”. In my opinion, the field as a whole has suffered from this obfuscation in the public eye ever since.

The effects of ionizing radiation, be it x-rays from a machine or radioactive materials, are pretty straightforward. We have an excellent idea of how much it takes to hurt people, how it hurts, and how to protect against it. In fact, ionizing radiation is wonderful because there are actually meters that can detect radiation directly. Biosafety and industrial hygiene (chemical safety) have been greatly hampered by the fact that tricorders don’t exist yet. But we’re getting there.

So what is it that I *do* exactly? Mostly paperwork. At the moment, I am responsible for the radiation producing machine (read: x-ray) and radiation detection instrument calibration program at UC Berkeley, which means I shuffle a lot of paper making sure everyone is playing nicely. This means making sure that machines are properly registered with the state (much like a registering a car with the DMV but you have 30 days instead of 7), that all the controls actually work AND are followed, that instruments stay in calibration and good repair, and that everything is used in a sane manner. The last thing in the world I want to see is “BABY’S FACE SCORCHED TO BONE BY ROGUE ACCELERATOR” because life doing radiation safety is difficult enough.

Are You Sure Building A Tunnel Through A Fault Is A Good Idea?
Lawson Adit - Are You Sure Building A Tunnel Through A Fault Is A Good Idea? Do really think they put any radioactive material down here?

Another old adage is “The more interesting the job, the more paperwork they make you do.” I’d say a good 90% of my day is devoted to writing reports and reading regulations. But that 10% where I get to help a researcher build their experiment such that they expand human knowledge but don’t dramatically shorten their grad students’ lifespans, or go down into the mine that I didn’t know was there just to make sure radioactive materials weren’t stored there, or play Scooby Doo Adventures trying to figure out what happened in a lab 70 years ago to make that spot of mysterious contamination…THAT is what I love about being a health physicist.

In addition to all that above, I’m a teacher. I teach radiation safety at a local community college and a train people how to work with radioactive material & machines. I try, as much as I can, to try to get people to think about the world around them and appreciate it’s beauty and wonder, the electromagnetic spectrum being one of the most wondrous things to me. That’s the thing every scientist has in common, no matter how highly specialized they are, is that some part of the world is wonderful and they need to know more about it. At some level, the health physicist is the interface between people intensely interested in the world using radiation but not necessarily thinking of consequences and a public absolutely terrified of the very word. I think the phrase I used in my interview was “A health physicist has to be an ambassador for the isotopes.”

So, if you notice me trying to sneak the occasional tidbit of information about working with radiation to you, that’s part of my subversive effort to diminish some knee jerk ignorance in the world. Ionizing radiation is no different than fire: useful, beautiful, dangerous, deserving of respect. A health physicist is here to remind you to be respectful, play nice with the toys and the other children. In a way, we’re the recess yard duties of radiation.

Maintenance Upgrades

This weekend, in response to some long standing grumbles, the store side of the website will be going into maintenance mode as it undergoes a major upgrade. During this time, you may be redirected to read my blithering rather than being able to buy wonderful shiny preciouses. What will this mean to you, The Viewing Public: very little. The front end will be identical but the back side, well, it’s gonna be a pretty sweet tuckus.

The most important change for you folks that frequently forget passwords is that your reset message will finally not be plaintext.

Unfortunately, I won’t be ably to import all the conversations I’ve had with people that went with orders from the old store architecture. This is actually quite a bummer as I’ve had some great chats with you folks and I like to be able to quickly reference them as I assess the level of caffeine consumption you’re likely at as you ramble at me. I’ll be saving them to read on lonely nights with mood lighting and a nice Chianti, but they won’t translate over to the new store.

People with gift certificate codes that are still outstanding will get a fresh missive stating that it has been reissued with the exact same code. Honestly, how have you people resisted redeeming them yet?

The One Where I Play Sherlock Holmes

It’s been quiet here for a bit, so I figured it’s time to tell you about my super power.

Some people know the fire and electrical codes inside and out. I swear to booze that there’s this one guy at LLNL who is the goddamn Cement Listener and can tell where subsidence is going to occur and what’s been poured with bad concrete mix through carpeting. While I may know a thing or two about radiation, nuclear weapons, coffee, and booze, my true gift seems to lie in walking into empty rooms and figuring out what it had been previously used for and where to find all the fuck ups. This makes house hunting with me fun too.

A couple years ago, I walked into a former chemistry lab that was being decontaminated and about to be released with my co-worker.  He’d found some very low level contamination and wanted my opinion as to what it was.  So, I brought my gamma spectroscopy unit along and set it up for a 15 minute count. Scan running and with some time to kill, I started looking around the mostly empty room and, since he’d been doing the decon, asked my co-worker what this lab was formerly used for (the idea being that if I could figure out what it was used for, I could make a more educated guess as to what the low level contamination was). Unfortunately, he had no idea.  His response: “Umm…chemistry?”  Not helpful.

So, I started looking around a bit more closely.

Five minutes later, I announced that this lab used to have a custom built wooden fume hood (AKA a “Berkeley box”) where they did uranyl gluconate chemistry, had an electron microscope, and likely did nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging with the samples as well.  I declared the contamination to be naturally occurring uranium and its daughter products.  Ten minutes after that, the gamma spec unit confirmed my declaration.

Of course, this prompted my co-worker to ask how in the fucking fuckity fuck fuck did I do that.  It goes like this:

There was very worn and faded tape in a strange pattern on the floor next to some major electrical hook ups. This normally indicates the 5 Gauss line for a big magnet where people with pacemakers aren’t allowed to get any closer.  Also, there were several cracked up tiles all in one spot right outside the the tape line.  Floor tiles don’t like having liquid nitrogen spilled on them over and over again, something students who’ve never played with a cryostat receiver before often do as they nervously jiggle a transfer dewar.  To me, that adds up to an NMR unit.

One of the lab benches along the wall had a hole in the ceiling above it and several large drilled holes in the front counter. Clean spots told me something had been sitting in one place on the counter below the hole in the ceiling. The holes in the counter are where the knobs for gas, compressed air, and house vacuum used to be installed. The clean spots were from where the sides and sash of the makeshift fume hood used to rest.

There is a room within the room full of grad student sardine can workstation dividers with no windows, a sliding door, and a whole lot of terminated pipes for pluming on the walls.  This in and of itself is not a big hint, but the small pass through door in the wall combined with the sliding door (which replaced a previous door based on paint jobs) told me that room used to be a dark room. Dark rooms mean films are being developed and the only film developing I’m familiar with that involve something radioactive at a very low level are those of electron microscopes. Depending on the application, they like to use uranium, lead, and osmium acetate for contrast media in sample preparation. This means they used to have at least one electron microscope. An x-ray diffraction unit is also a possibility, but you generally wouldn’t find working in tandem with an NMR unit.

My co-worker nodded and boggled at this for a bit and then frowned. “Wait a minute…you said electron microscopes use uranyl acetate as a contrast agent. Why do you think that it’s uranyl gluconate instead?”

I smiled, nodded sagely, and pointed at a piece paper thoroughly taped to some unistrut in the middle of the room.  “Elementary, dear Watson. On that piece of paper are all the IP addresses for this lab to map to their former servers and printers. Note that the network written there is ‘glucose’ and the not-at-all-secure network password next to it is ‘Glucose1’.  I suspect glucose and glucose compounds were rather important to this lab.  Besides, the stains in the bottom of the cabinet where you’re seeing contamination look a lot like long dried Kool Aid on wood. Thus, uranyl gluconate.”

It’s not about knowing what all the equipment does. Most of it is understanding people, particularly what happens when there’s not enough time, money, and/or interest to do things right the first time.

Caffeinating PAX East & Other Sundry Information

Soon, PAX East will descend upon Boston like the plague of locusts that it is, consuming all the Cheetos, Pocky, and Mountain Dew within that fair Commonwealth. I won’t be there, but Black Blood of the Earth will be. Test Subject & Steinwielder ECT has kindly volunteered himself as The Mule to PAX East as he is driving there and has room to fit cases in his trunk. Note how I used the plural term there. The point is that you, the caffeinated public, have a chance to have ultracoffee and not have to screw around with BBotE in your checked luggage AND avoid shipping charges.

How much ECT brings with him is up to you. If you want me to send along something in the case for him to bring up for you, you need to drop me a line and tell me what you want and give me your contact info. I will then pass this along to ECT so he can get ahold of you at PAX, git yer money, and give you your caffeinated delights. 750ml bottles will run $45 and 1000ml will be $60 for direct hand off. I’ll probably arm him with sampler vials too. If you really, really want a Jug of Madness schlepped for you…we’ll talk.

Moving on to other hard learned lessons, remember when I long ago declared that the flavor of BBotE is stable for about three months if kept refrigerated? Some folks have reported that it has stayed stable longer but I’m sticking with my three months to stay on the conservative side. However, if you were born in a barn and insist on drinking directly from the bottle and backwashing your filthy monkey germs into it, I’ll be surprised if it lasts longer than a couple of weeks after your first swig even if you keep it cold. Your mother would be ashamed of you.

Monkey Assesses The Threat
IMMINENT MONKEY - Monkey Assesses The Threat, Could Bite At ANY MOMENT (taken at the San Francisco Zoo, 2008)

If you have no idea what kind of a cesspit the human mouth is, just wait until you get bit by a young child for the first time. I am also recalling the month or so one police officer went on medical leave after being bitten by a homeless man and the long hard fight to find some …any… antibiotic that would actually work for his infection. This is why it is vitally important to bite a chunk out of people who attack you; they will probably run away because they will, rightfully, see you as too crazy to be worth the effort, plus you’ll be able to tell the police to check the hospitals for the person with the recognizable bite marks who is dying of a fever, with amputation imminent for gangrene.

That’s your free self-defense and sanitation tip for today!

Lest Ye Become Arrogant In Your Knowledge

In my continuing efforts to make sure that world becomes a More Awesome place, always remain aware that you don’t know everything. When someone says, “Pffft, no…[sotto voce] dumbass” to one of your proclamations, remain humble and take a moment to consider if everything you’ve ever known is wrong.

My favorite exemplar of this is the Tale of the Pickle Bush.

Once upon a time, friends from a previous tale went down to Safeway to go grocery shopping. There was a general declaration that there was a need for condiments, so the intrepid band went to that aisle. Now, it is important to note I wasn’t actually there, so this is the best recreation of the conversation I’ve been able to piece together from the parties that were present. Liberties have most definitely been taken.

Stef: I’ve always wandered how they grow pickles.

(the rest of the assembled party chuckles a bit)

Stef: What?

Joe: Seriously? You don’t know how they’re made?

Stef: What do you mean *made*?

Joe: They’re cucumbers that have been soaked in brine water for a while.

Matt: Pickling is a process. You can pickle anything, even Joe.

Stef: Nuh-uh.

Joe: Shut up, Matt. How did you think pickles were made, Stef?

Stef: I, you know, kinda thought they (voice becomes hesitant as certainty in the world fades) grew on…a…pickle bush.

(Matt & Joe explode in laughter)

Stef: You *CANNOT* tell Phil about this.

 

I think I got a phone call before they even left the parking lot.

Now this is not just a amusing story of what happens when children grow up with a sheltered upbringing in Utah, well separated from any agriculture or food production, but rather of someone getting a chance to spin on a dime and understand the world like they never had before. Cherish those moments.

The example from my life is the word “torward” (NOTE: not “toward”). I couldn’t tell you when I learned the word or who taught it to me but I can tell you when I learned important lessons about linguistics due to being wrong, wrong, WRONG. You see, up until this moment in my life in my freshman year of college no one had ever corrected me on my spelling and I’d been in advanced placement composition, grammar, and rhetoric classes all my life. What amazing professor showed me the error of my ways? What helpful friend took me aside to say “Pssst, Dumbass! There’s no “R” in toward.”

No one did. I learned my lesson from Microsoft Word 5 and their first iteration of grammar checker.

Word didn’t tell me that I was spelling “toward” wrong using  “torward”, rather the error it was giving me said that I was archaic. At first I was sort of pleased by this as one of the highest compliments I’d been paid as a writer at age 18 was, “You write like a 18th century essayist. I love it, but you’re going to utterly fail in college with people who like The Format.” The idea that I was unconsciously using words that hadn’t been in common parlance since before Samuel Johnson really appealed to me. Then the panic caught up with me and, oh god, what else am saying/writing that makes me look like a throwback from the 1700s.

In the end, it helped kindle a deep appreciation of the evolution of language itself and the beauty of the our many, many Englishes. “Torward” may have disappeared from the King’s English with Johnson, but it happily lived on in the English of the West Country. It also lived on in Appalachia and the American South where so many people from the West Country immigrated, along with their fun and perfectly valid constructions such as “ain’t”, “y’all”, and “at the *NOUN*” indirect verbs, which is how I presume I picked it up.

Image Courtesy of Archie McPhee http://www.mcphee.com/shop/products/Yodelling-Pickle.html
Yodeling Pickle, courtesy of Archie McPhee. I still can’t believe I lost out on two of these in the departmental White Elephant gift exchange

Learning you are fundamentally wrong can cause some truly awesome learning. Don’t just try to learn something new everyday, see if you can prove something you were certain of wrong. For all I know, Stef may be a mad pickling machine now with her new found knowledge.

New Art For BBotE

When I began making BBotE and Steins of Sceince, I had no idea that the best thing that was going to happen was the collection of awesome people I was going to accumulate. A dedication to More Awesome is not just physical goods but trying to generally improve my life and the lives of people around me. BBotE & Steins, while generally nifty, started with the goals to improve my health and the enjoyment of particular beverages. It just so happens that many other folks agree that they’re awesome too.

One of the bits that’s happened that I’ve truly appreciated is getting to meet and talk to artists that I might not ever otherwise meet. I’m not going to argue what an artist is here, but let’s just say that I have always marveled at people who can draw and paint. My own skills extend about as far as graphing and diagrams for physics problems and squiggly maps for D&D. It isn’t pretty, trust me.

Last year, a bearded English madman who shall remain anonymous asked if I could send BBotE to several of his favorite people in America just to see what wonders emerged from them under it’s influence. One of them was the artist Molly Crabapple, who is also the perpetrator of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School upon the world. Last month, likely in a fit of caffeine high and well mixed holiday spirits, Molly asked me if I’d mind if she drew a new bit of art for the BBotE label.

The smile that refused to remove itself from my face as I read the email said the answer was very much yes.

And so, I should receive the first of the new labels this week. I’ll be slapping them on bottles somewhat at random and for special occasions. For example, if I’d had them last year I most definitely would have slapped them on the bottles that went out for this Kickstarter project.

So, you never know, when you open your box it might contain the Ineffable Mustachio’d Goat of SCIENCE! staring back at you. Behold!

The Ineffable Goat of SCIENCE!

The Ineffable Goat of SCIENCE! – By Molly Crabapple

In other news, a trial case is on it’s way to Canberra. If all goes well, BBotE pimpery service for BBotE will soon be established. Or, to quote Test Subject British Nick who lives in Sydney, “HOORAY! A reason to actually go to Canberra.” Depending on things and stuff, might have a little something for Singapore soon as well.

I’m Not Ashamed To Admit This

But I emitted a squeal of schoolgirlish delight upon getting the phone call from UPS letting me know that more Guatemala Mundo Nuvo had arrived from Caffe Vita. So my previous declaration that I had to bid farewell to my favorite Central American roast was premature. It’s back, for a little while at least. Also, the Pimp of Chicago will be receiving his resupply this Friday which will include Colombia, Rwanda, and Death Wish for you folks in the heartland.

Since prematurely heralding the end of my Guatemalans, I have been receiving single farm Colombian offerings for my evaluation from everywhere. I’ll let you all know how those pan out as I see a great deal of coffee consumption in the near future. Which leads me to a question I get from time to time that I feel is worth answering: “I don’t see a lot of negative reviews of coffees you’ve tested here. Is there anything you’ve worked with you don’t like?”

Answer: Lots, but generally if I don’t like it, I won’t make more of it and thus won’t offer it to you. That’s just hospitality, man.

Actually, I do offer one BBotE that I’m not very fond of, Death Wish, and I do that for two reasons:

  1. You people asked for it and, hey, who am I to argue with the The People?
  2. I fully recognize that my flavor preferences are not the same as everyone else’s, particularly with regard to Death Wish. Some folks really, really love the taste. Go figure.

This is one reason that I keep going back to try things I don’t like again and again, in all spheres of my life. I’ll be the first to admit that some of my tastes have changed over the years, others have not, but it’s important to check. For example, since Antarctica I make a point to eat a green salad at any opportunity; Herr Direktor from 10 years ago would be horrified by this. In terms of BBotE, it took five attempts over the span of a year before I finally decided I liked the Malabar and had the process for it down.

So, for another example of “needs more testing”, over the holidays I did some tinkering with a Guatemalan Huehuetenago because I can’t leave the coffees of Guatemala alone. The results were…odd. Strong front flavor like a chocolate orange and a loooooong roasted nut finish. The middle was strangely hollow for flavor and, as one astute Test Subject described it, “ashy”. For a light roast, it definitely hit some char flavors like a deep dark roast. With vodka addition, it was heavenly, but the straight and cold left me going hrmph.

And, just because I can and had it on hand, mixing 50/50 with Malabar BBotE filled in that hollow middle nicely. More testing is necessary.

Anyway, welcome to 2012, everybody. Eat, drink, and make merry for tomorrow is another day to do it all again but different!

Hard Life Lessons from the Land of Q Clearances

In an ongoing effort to share helpful things in life about topics other than delicious coffee & beer, I want to take a moment to discuss something that effects all of us, every day.

Mt. Lassen, Bumpass Hell - I try to display more serenity than the heart of volcano that exploded, but it's hard sometimes
Mt. Lassen, Bumpass Hell – I try to display more serenity than the heart of a volcano that exploded, but it’s hard sometimes.

First, let us review the two fundamental pieces of wisdom that can so easily be forgotten in a moment of blinding internet rage:

  1. NEVER read the comment threads.
  2. NEVER feed the trolls.
You know these moments of blinding internet rage. It is unbecoming of you to lie and say they’ve never happened. They happen when someone, somewhere, on the internet is wrong and you need to correct them. Generally, you forget Rule #1 first, then Rule #2 goes out the window as you read, and then you need to call your doctor to up the dosage of your blood pressure medication (maybe get you some of that nice thorazine too to take the edge off). And if that troll was directed at you, well, it takes a truly serene Buddhesque state to resist their bait.
 
Let me discuss in a bit more detail why you need to heed Rule #2, in particular, as it relates to folks that work in a land of nuclear secrets.

 

When you have been entrusted with secrets, it is your obligation to not divulge them. If you are working at a rather secretive, tight lipped company, you are bound by some rather brutal Non-Disclosure Agreements and the breach of contract lawsuit can get nasty. In the Gub’mint, be it military or cleared personnel in other departments, the punishments can go all the way up through treason. In particular, The Man takes a very, very, very dim view of people who can’t keep their lips sealed when entrusted with the keys to the nuclear arsenal.

 

Now, you may feel that too many things have been classified or that things that have absolutely no reason to be classified, like the amount of toilet paper a given facility purchased, have been. Or that transparency is the only way to keep people honest as corruption breeds in the dark. I’ve lost more than a few friends on the topic of Wikileaks because, for the rest of my natural life or until 10CFR1016 changes, I am obligated to not read ANY of it until it appears in the media whereupon I still can’t comment on it as I am an “Informed Individual”. I am inclined to agree with transparency, declassification, and lack of classification in the first place, in general, but there are some things that I would prefer not be shared willy nilly such as nuclear secrets. And, unfortunately, I am all too aware of the intelligence value of a toilet paper order.

 

Is you brain hurting yet? Good, you are starting to understand what an NDA or clearance really means if you actually intend to honor your word.

 

A clearance is a way to verify that people are trustworthy and will not divulge secrets. This is not to say that secrets can’t be gleaned from cleared personnel. We have spent an inordinate amount of money over the last decade to “harden” our security infrastructure but we still have one weak link: people. In America, much of this money has been spent to try to engineer people out of security because people are seen as a source of error. I have seen this time and time again, where the after incident root cause analysis almost always comes to the conclusion that the problem was “a training issue”. Not that Jimbo here is too much of a goddamn idiot to not electrocute himself drooling on his keyboard, but that we just didn’t give him enough training. But that is a separate rant about how America has destroyed our bureaucracy through a lack of trust.

 

Back to people being a weak link in security. Going through the DOE, FBI, and CIA archives of turned agents and convicted violators, the most amazing part is how easy and how cheaply it has been been to get information from people at the most secured of facilities. Sure, you could try to blackmail them with sexual indiscretions, foster drug addictions, take advantage of the same in their family members, or just outright bribe them, but really that’s a lot of work and expense. The easiest way is to just ask, earnestly and with great interest, for someone to explain their work. People want others to be interested in what they do and it is crushing to be unable to share. To find someone genuinely interested with an inkling of the classified information you already know…conversation is almost too much to resist. This is doubly hard for those of us who also teach because we WANT to share.

 

Of course, that’s the nice way of doing it. The nastier way is an ego attack (or, if you are the kind of nerd that had the AD&D psionics handbook, an ego whip). It is very easy, with a modicum of knowledge about a person’s work, to level a broadside attack on the work and/or the person. Now, to defend yourself fully you may have to disclose information that you shouldn’t, but, but you know better than this…this fucking troll and YOU HAVE TO AND YOU CAN GODDAMN WIN, RIGHT?!?!

 

No, you can’t. This is what is so infuriating to cleared personnel, the inability to respond. To get a doctorate, to be willing to put yourself in harm’s way, or to be willing to work with the things no sane person wants to touch? This all takes hubris. To have this hubris is to also be so very vulnerable to ego attacks. Several times I had to go smack someone upside the head for going on a forum and putting the puzzle pieces together. Yes, the individual puzzle pieces weren’t classified, but the full picture is and numbskull had no reason to do so other than, really, showing off.

 

So, the next time you are tempted to respond to a troll, take a moment to realize that it is bait. No matter how you respond, any response gives up a little bit of your life to the troll. Once you have made that investment, it is hard not to compound it because you need the initial investment to be worthwhile. It takes almost no effort on their part to play out the line to get you to divulge more information.

 

Take a moment to be sure of yourself. Before you so much as type a word in reply to something that has pissed you off, walk away from the computer and other media that might let you respond. Go to the beach, go to a bar, huff a cat, walk in the woods, give your baby a noogie, whatever. Realize you have better things to do than argue with trolls and that you cannot win this fight, ever.

 

This message brought to you by Herr Direktor Funranium’s +3 whiskey of troll resistance.

The Wire

At this point, the only things that have any hope of getting to folks in time for Christmas are the Steins of Science that I currently have on hand and the BBotE production runs due to complete by Tuesday. There’s a few batches of Ethiopia and Kona slated to finish on Wednesday, but unless you live near a major metropolitan area of the continental US, the odds of something I ship priority mail on Thursday getting to you on Xmas Eve are slim.

Of course, there’s always express mail if you want to live dangerously and expensively. Sorry international folks, your last minute was last Saturday.

So, as I’ve been asked, what’s still on hand? The current Stein selection is here. There’s a handful of BBotE Sampler Sets, both I & II. There’s a few bottles of Death Wish, Rwanda, and Colombia. There is roughly 6L of Kona, 4L of Ethiopia, 1.5L of Sumatra, 1L of Malabar, and 1L of Kenya on hand that could be divvied in any number of bottle sizes, but if someone pounces on that last bit before you do, you probably get to wait until 2012.

Why would you have to wait? Because shipping in the week between Christmas and New Year’s in the US is a damn near lost cause. I may try to make a bit and get some BBotE to help people party through the night on New Year’s Eve, but the postal service may be a bit challenging.

It’s been fun, but this roller coaster is almost at an end for 2011. Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride until it comes to a complete stop.

Blue Babe, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Museum - I'm feeling about this exhausted after a month straight of maximum production
Blue Babe, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Museum - I'm feeling about this exhausted after a month straight of maximum production

See you in 2012.

You Know A Building Is Awesome When…

You walk up to the door and this NFPA diamond is posted prominently on the wall above it so that approaching first responders can know to hit the brakes from a very, very long way away.

I love my job. I now return you to your regularly scheduled Twinkie eating, porn surfing, and LOLcats.

Exciting Diamond
Exciting NFPA Diamond - If only it had "NO WATER" and "OX" too like my favorite building at LLNL

Crunchtime and HOORAY!

As the days grow shorter, so to do the opportunities to grab a little dab of the ol’ Scientific Drinking. The Steins of Science on hand right now are the only ones that I’ll be able to ship in time for Christmas. The last international shipment to make sure everything (Steins or BBotE) gets out in time will be on December 17th, the last domestic shipment US is the 20th. Domestic orders for BBotE placed after December 15th may not make it into the production queue. If the production queue suddenly exceeds my ability to crank your swag out in a timely, notifications will start popping up in the store stating that on items.

Of course, the gift certificates always work if that special test subject in your life can take some delayed gratification.

NEW SCOTT BASE BEANIE!
NEW SCOTT BASE BEANIE! - Such Is The Power Of BBotE That I Can Summon Clothing From 14000mi Away

In other news, I would like to congratulate Ms. Katherine Bushman, currently residing at McMurdo Station, for making the arduous trek over the hill to the other side of Ross Island and getting me a NEW SCOTT BASE BEANIE!!! Sadly, fashion marches on and my old buddy is no longer in vogue but I’ve gotten over that and come to love the new style. More importantly, My Lovely Assistant got to hear me make the giddy giggle that everyone should make when they receive an package with a return address that says “Antarctica” Katherine’s caffeinated prize will be on it’s way shortly and should grace Christchurch by Xmas Eve. Christchurchers, especially the Forces of KAOS, please refrain from mugging her for it. Enjoy and thank you!