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Planned books:
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Current books:
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Recent books:
- The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J. K. Rowling
- The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi
- Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
- The Town That Forgot How to Breathe: A Novel by Kenneth J. Harvey
“It’s morning in America. The nightmare is over.”
Congratulations to President Elect Barack Obama! Woo hoo!!!
One day more…
First off…go vote tomorrow. Preferably for Obama but just voting in principle is important.
Second I did my mock trial for Fire Debris this past wednesday and pending some paperwork being signed am officially done with fire training. Woo hoo! Soon enough I will get to start doing fire debris cases on a regular basis, with a sprinkling of Chemical Unknown cases still as they come in / are needed.
Ideally I will be done with training for a while. In theory I will eventually learn explosives analysis also but probably not for at least 6 months or so (or so I hope).
Speaking of work have tomorrow off in theory but am volunteering to go in, and by volunteering I mean I get time and a half plus a day back for later. Plan to stop on vote on my way in, which is easy since our polling place is all of about 200 feet down at the end of our street.
On a sad non work related note for what ever reason they tore up the little weed infested area of dirt and plants behind the building and cemented the whole thing. Granted it was a bit of a tangled mass of weeds and a few rose plants but *I* think at least it was something nicer to look at then a huge square of cement.
Got Forensic Science?
So back when I was at UNH I made a design for a T-shirt for the Forensic Science and Chemistry Club.
Later I edited the images some and made them into compute wallpapers of various sizes and put them up on my website. Over the years it’s been one of the more popular images on my page and has been linked to and used by a number of sites (I actually ended up just posting the files as a .zip to keep myspace and other leachers from hotlinking to the image).
Well about two weeks ago I got an email from someone at American Intercontinental University asking to use the image as part of a display in their School of Criminal Justice. After emailing back and forth a few times and making a few tweaks I sent along a better version of the image for them to use. Well about a week later I got a thank you letter in the mail from the university thanking me for letting them use the picture.
Just goes to show Captain Science is world famous! Now if only I could figure out a way to make money off my stuff and I will be set for life 
MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE
Last night Meg and I went into the city to see John Hodgman at the bookstore in Union Square. It was for the release of his new book :
I went down right after work and had Meg meet me there. We were really early but that got us good seats, which proved to be quite fortuitous. Because Hodgman was at a taping for the Daily Show he had Jonathan Coulton as an opening act. I had no idea and needless to say was quite excited, he is one of my favorite geeky singers! He opened with IKEA and treated the crowd to a half hour long set of his songs, ending with RE:Your Brains where the audience got to sing along as a crowd of zombies! A good time was had by all.
John Hodgman was funny, and did the usual author stuff. Told some stories and read some from his book. (For those who don’t know who he is I guess he is most famous as “The PC” on the Mac-PC adds. His book is sort of a almanac of made up facts and knowledge.
After I was able to get my book signed and got to shake hands and talk to both John Hodgman and Jonathan Coulton! All in all it was a really fun evening! We capped off the evening by going out for dinner and drinks at the Heartlan Brewery (Mmmm…. pumpkin ale!)
Flash over
flashover, originally uploaded by zombie_criminalist.
This is at just about the flash over point for the simulated room fire we got to observe today. It originally was a simulated room with a rug, fan, couch, recliner, and two smaller chairs. Now….not so much anymore. This photo is from about 2 minutes after they started the fire using about 2 cups of some ignitable liquid (we don’t know what one yet, thats part of the exercise) tomorrow we go back and will break into teams and process one of the 4 scenes they have. Try and collect evidence from where we think the fire may of started and then try and see what, if any, ignitable liquids are still detectable.
The heat from this thing was really impressive. You can see the pillow smoking which was a few feet outside the burn room. They had a fire team with a hose at the ready and they knocked it down pretty quickly, but what is sort of sobering to remember is that it was that big at 2 minutes. Mind you we had firefighters with a hose waiting and ready to go, if it was a real house fire they would probably be just getting the call still, if that.
Made it
I am in my room at the NY State Fire Academy. Woo for Wifi! It was a long drive, I left at 5 this morning and finally got here around 10:45. My first meeting doesn’t start till 1 but I was able to check in and unpack my stuff. I am staying in the doom here at the academy. Though the room is nicer then your typical dorm, 2 beds (though its supposed to be just me in here) and a bathroom/shower. It’s nice to be able to stretch out for a few minutes after a 5 hour drive.
I suppose I will unpack the rest of my stuff and then wonder around and try and find some food
fire time
We are back in NYC after yet another long weekend visit to my parents up in CT. We had a really fun time. Did the usual book barn trip but also got to go pick apples and visit the Berlin Fair. Meg was quite excited at getting to pet her first sheep!
Today was back to work for me (took last friday off) but it will be a short week. I am traveling up-state Wednesday for a conference/meeting about arson and fire debris. I am not exactly looking forward to the 5 hour drive I have to do to get up there but getting to see the “live burn” demonstration should more then make up for it!
Better than a lucky penny
When I was walking home from work yesterday I saw a small square of plastic with a slip of paper inside which had a name written on it. It peaked my interest but not enough to go and pick it up. On my way to work this morning along the same road I saw it was still there so I picked up only to find that it was actually a plastic coin holder which still contained a 1895-S BARBER HALF DOLLAR . It’s in VERY worn condition, most all the detail is rubbed off the portrait, but still how often do you find a 113 year old coin just sitting on the sidewalk?
Random updates…
Yesterday, we pretty much ended up hanging out at home thanks to the on-and-off rain. The humidity made it really gross feeling so I broke down and put on the AC for most of the day. Meg was elated to say the least. We also ended up watching the first episode of Season 3 of Dexter, thanks to the magic of bittorrent. It is still REALLY good. My only major complaint was the semi-needless foreshadowing we got all though the episode, granted I didn’t perdict the semi-twist at the end exactly, other then SOMETHING was going to happen with Dexter and Rita. Still, a good episode. I can’t wait for the rest of the season to start. So far it looks like this one will be totally un-related to any of the books which is good because it will be a total surprise for me.
Today has been a nice lazy Sunday. The car is alright-ish. The Verizon guy came by this morning to look at it and exchange info with me. His insurance will get in touch with me this week and we will go from there. For the moment I have the bumper pushed/wedged back on the front of the car (with the help of some clear tape to keep the side light in) and the car is drivable. And by drivable I mean the front bumper didn’t fall off in the 5 min trip we took to Atlas Park to do a little shopping this afternoon. I don’t know if I would want to take it up to highway speeds but it all seems pretty stable for now.
Broken Car
So I get home from work ready for a nice relaxing weekend and instead see this. When I left for work this morning the bumper was quite well attached….9 hours later…not so much.
Amazingly enough there was actually a note on the windshield. Seems it was damaged by a verizon work truck. All I can assume at this point was that he backed into me and caught the bumper on a trailer hitch or something. The note had some Mgr.’s name and phone number so at least there’s that. I called the police around 5, its 930 and they still haven’t show up. I know a hit parked car isn’t exactly high priority but still. I also called my insurance CO and the number on the note.
The verizon guy was nice and apologetic, said he would call me back on Sunday (which I was fine with since we are supposed to have downpours all day tomorrow) to come out and look at the damage and work on getting my reimbursed. Lucky for me I don’t have any huge need to drive it this weekend, getting it across the street for the stupid alternate side parking might be tricky, I may need to invest in some duct tape and bungee cords so I can at least move the thing until I can deal with getting it fixed.
To celebrate my misery we got pizza for dinner…it did help some given by the time I ate I was super starving. Now I am just waiting on the NYPD to show up. Supposedly the 911 lady has all my information and they should know to call my cell or ring my apartment, I am not going to sit outside all night long when the car is parked across the street from my building. To be extra safe we left a note on the outer door with my name, and number for them to call if/when they get here.
Wish me luck!
Got to love NY…
For all the hassles inherent in living in NYC I do have to admit that there are probably very few other places in the US where one can find a square glass loaf pan less than a block away from your appt. at 5:45 on labor day!
Phony Guards
TIGARD, Ore. (AP) - Tigard police say two men dressed as security guards fooled a pair of bank customers into giving them deposits. Police spokesman Jim Wolf says the phony guards stood outside a night deposit slot at the Wells Fargo Bank at 9200 S.W. Washington Square Road on Friday evening and and told the victims it was out of order. The men offered to take the money and make the deposits when the bank reopened.Wolf says the men wore uniforms and had badges and guns. The night deposit slot was covered by a sign saying it was out of service. Police learned of the crimes when a business contacted the branch to ask about its deposit. The bank says it has never had a problem with the slot.
I have always been interested in reading about all the classic Scams and Con games. The really interesting thing is that most of them have been around for over a hundred years and yet still work today. The above article is a case in point. The bank guard scam has been around for as long as there have been night deposit slots or ATM’s. For the price of a cardboard sign and a uniform rental these guys were able to get people to willingly hand over their money to them. The victims probably even thanked them for it, thinking it was saving them a trip back to the bank the next day. No need for guns and violence, instead they just rely on peoples blind trust of authority figures and inherent laziness of not wanting to drive around all night looking for another branch or holding on to the money till the morning.
I totally recommend:
It’s a really good book on all sorts of scams and cons. My all time favorite is the section on Carnival games which shows you exactly how the games are rigged to best part you from your money.
Myrtle ave 1951
So they are re-paving Myrtle ave this week and as part of that they have scraped off the top layers of asphalt. What is interesting (to me at least) is that in doing so they have uncovered parts of the original road surface. In some areas you can see the trolly rails, which they apparently chose to just pave over instead of remove, and even the original cobble stone style road surface.
I included the scanned slide I have of Myrtle from 1951 which shows the rails and stones in question.
Other then random musings on the history of paving the local streets, which probably no one finds interesting but me, not too much has been going on. Work is going good, still doing fire debris training. We are working on some practice cases where we get the data and have to figure out what if any ignitable liquids were present. This is the second level of practice cases, which are quite a bit harder then the first set as one could imagine. Still it’s interesting work. Tomorrow I will start testing the first can of soil+gasoline that I had talked about in my last post. I ended up making 4 cans of soil, so will do 1 a week and see what if any changes occur in the gasoline patterns. The science geek in me is really interested to see what sort of results I get.
Yeah I am THAT big a nerd that I am excited to see what science I can do on dirt.
