Random Thoughts 7

[Ibix]

Perhaps a case of ports not providing real-time estimates of when they'll have a space available? Then it would make sense for ships to get there ASAP and hang around. But if they can provide real-time estimation of when you can come in to dock you can adjust your speed to match.

It could just have been a matter of getting an industry-wide body together with the clout to issue demands and then just agreeing a data interchange format. Rising fuel prices and environmental concerns likely made cooperation really attractive.

 

[gleem]

I thought 'just-in-time' is the practice adopted by the different transportation companies.

I believe JIT was initiated decades ago by companies to reduce their inventory which is usually taxed by states and of course, transportation companies need to respond. For this to work the system must be finely tuned. When a major clod is thrown into the churn like Covid you have serious problems.

 

[gleem]

It doesn't make sense to arrive at a port, usually outside, e.g., off the coast, and sit idle for days.

But they do. In the Chesapeake Bay for example there is an anchorage outside of Annapolis where ships anchor waiting to get a berth in Baltimore. The same for Norfolk where ships anchor just outside the Bay tunnel. I don't know if all ships anchor before docking.

 

[WWGD]

Baltimore obviously didn't have it very together.

 

[gmax137]

But they do. In the Chesapeake Bay for example there is an anchorage outside of Annapolis where ships anchor waiting to get a berth in Baltimore. The same for Norfolk where ships anchor just outside the Bay tunnel. I don't know if all ships anchor before docking.

I was going to give the same example - Baltimore (or Ballmer, if you're a native). I have family on the eastern shore and see the freighters anchored outside the bay bridge. Nothing new, I've seen it since the 1970s.

 

[OmCheeto]

...inventory which is usually taxed by states...

I've never heard of such a thing. According to this Tax Foundation article, only 9 states fully tax inventory, 5 states partially tax inventory, while the rest do not.

 

[gleem]

According to this Tax Foundation article, only 9 states fully tax inventory, 5 states partially tax inventory, while the rest do not.

I made the statement based on what I heard many years ago without checking current regs. (mea culpa)

 

[OmCheeto]

I made the statement based on what I heard many years ago without checking current regs. (mea culpa)

No biggy. The tax foundation explanation didn't make much sense to me so I looked at a couple of other articles. One said that a good way to avoid the tax is to get a warehouse in an adjoining state that doesn't have such a tax and keep your inventory there.

Forbes has an excellent article, which explains the horrific complexities involved. Texas for example levies the tax at the local level; "To further complicate matters, Texas has 250 property appraisal districts, each employing its own valuation factors."

Blech!

 

[gmax137]

Around here (Nevada near Reno) there are lots and lots of warehouses. Just huge one-story buildings with tons of loading docks. I read a while back that they're here because of the state tax laws, something like "goods in transit are not taxed." Maybe that's true, or not?

EDIT: and they are building more of them every day.

 

[OmCheeto]

Around here (Nevada near Reno) there are lots and lots of warehouses. Just huge one-story buildings with tons of loading docks. I read a while back that they're here because of the state tax laws, something like "goods in transit are not taxed." Maybe that's true, or not?

EDIT: and they are building more of them every day.

Not a clue. But I get my cat food from a warehouse(Chewy) in the Reno neighborhood, 532 miles away, and it usually arrives within 48 hours from when I ordered it.

4/23/2024 18:25 ordered​

4/25/2024 11:10 arrived​

Not bad with free shipping, and cheaper than I can get it at the supermarket.

But that's just an example of how 500 miles is not that big a deal. Since there are no 'inventory tax' states near Nevada, I'm guessing it might be property taxes that are the reason. Along with Reno being almost perfectly aligned as a hub for the west coast money bucket cities:

705 miles to Seattle​

530 miles to Portland​

220 miles to San Francisco​

470 miles to Los Angeles​

560 miles to San Diego​

It's always something.

 

[DrGreg]

A glossy advertising leaflet pushed through my letter box has lots of photos with captions describing the photos. Except one of the captions is "Photo captions are the most read body type in a publication".

Oops!

 

[WWGD]

I politely refused a gift offer for a pair of Logitech headphones. I'd heard of many who had ended up with either hearing problems or even deaf from using them at high volumes. Not sure I trust myself, to both remember and to lower the volume to a reasonable level.

 

[Astronuc]

German robots hunting the sea for WW2 bombs​

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240621-the-robots-hunting-ww2-bombs-in-the-sea

A boxy robot crawls across the seabed off northern Germany, reaches through the murky water with a metal claw, and picks up its target: a rusting grenade, dumped into the sea after World War Two. Overhead, another robot swims along the surface, scanning the seabed for more munitions. More robot claws reach into the water from above, plucking bombs and mines from the sediment.

A pilot project backed by the German government will be deploying these and other technologies in a bay in the Baltic Sea this summer, to test a fast, industrial-scale process for clearing dumped munitions that are polluting the North and Baltic Seas. The project is part of a wider €100m (£84.6m/$106.9m) programme by the German government that aims to develop a way to safely remove and destroy munitions littering the German parts of the North and Baltic Seas – a toxic legacy that amounts to an estimated 1.6 million tonnes of dumped explosives and weapons.

"These munitions are rusting, and our research has shown that over time, they're releasing more and more carcinogenic [and other toxic] substances, traces of which have been found in fish and mussels," Greinert says. "The longer we wait, the more they're going to rust, and the concentration of harmful substances in the water is going to rise. So now is the moment to figure out what to do with this stuff, while the munitions are still intact enough to be grabbed."

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b06974

Underwater munitions containing millions of tons of toxic explosives are present worldwide in coastal marine waters as a result of unexploded ordnance and intentional dumping. The dissolution flux of solid explosives following corrosion of metal munition housings controls the exposure of biological receptors to toxic munition compounds (MC), including TNT: 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, RDX: 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazinane, and DNB: 1,3-dinitrobenzene.

 

[Tom.G]

It doesn't make sense to arrive at a port, usually outside, e.g., off the coast, and sit idle for days.

Here is a quote from this weeks local newspaper in an article about ships waiting to dock:
[...the port] "continued to have the fastest truck turnaround times, the shortest berth stays and the lowest anchorage rates of any terminal in" [the bay].

The theme of the overall article seems to indicate that the holdup is the port unloading process not meeting their time targets. Although it is rare, I have seen two freeway lanes backed up with trailer trucks for about 1.5 miles in each direction trying to get into the port. So occasionally something does go wrong to trigger this.

I don't know any truck drivers hauling from/to the port, but I expect there was a lot of strong language THAT day!

Cheers,
Tom

 

[WWGD]

Saw a sign on a building on a seminar on " Building Resilience". Couldn't tell if it was about therapy or about civil engineering.

 

[nsaspook]

Life is good.

My 'baby' girls first year at PSU (second year academically due to HS credits)

 

[pinball1970]

Life is good.

View attachment 347522
View attachment 347523
My 'baby' girls first year at PSU (second year academically due to HS credits)

Fantastic results, you should be very proud of her.

 

[WWGD]

My friend applied to a job where he was supposed to have experience working with Autistic people ( kind of strange for an IT job). He cited his experience with programming and databases as experience; you leave out a single comma , or a single letter from a 50 word query, and it won't run. Not sure HR will be too amused.

 

[ergospherical]

Bittersweet graduating university and moving to a new city to start a new job, whereas my partner is about to head far across the globe for a year abroad. It'll be a great experience for her, and at the same time it'll be so strange not having her here. But if you love someone then let them go, they say -- I wonder what we'll both be like in a year's time.

 

[Frabjous]

Bittersweet graduating university and moving to a new city to start a new job, whereas my partner is about to head far across the globe for a year abroad. It'll be a great experience for her, and at the same time it'll be so strange not having her here. But if you love someone then let them go, they say -- I wonder what we'll both be like in a year's time.

What’s the job?

 

[ergospherical]

What’s the job?

Regulated gambling, pretty much! Looking forward.

 

[Frabjous]

Good luck!

 

[WWGD]

So, is there really something to this Cobol thing, the high demand for programmers so many claim
there is? Some make it sound as the next Gold Rush.
Edit: Along similar lines, British Guyana( Guiana, Sp?) Is supposed to be experiencing an oil rush, from recently discovered oil sources.

 

[WWGD]

I saw a place offering to trade in Chevys. Maybe for a Cadillacaca.

 

[WWGD]

How many practprs are there in Cairo?

 

[Mayhem]

Research projects really teach you more about your mental state than the thing you are studying.

 

[WWGD]

My phone lights up after amount of light goes below a threshold. Time when it happened used to be 6:38 p.m, almost on the dot. It's moved up to 6:52 p.m the last month or so.

 

[WWGD]

Mistery solved. I had been hearing of the name " Silly Ann Murphy", only to find it's " Cyllian Murphy".

 

[WWGD]

So, I guess I will have to do without those manifest files. Not intended as a boot up drive.

 

[Rive]

Today's 'winner of bragging' is a noname battery with a promised 6800mAh capacity: measured as 900mAh.

The same equipment measured a proper 3500mAh one as 3450mAh.

 

[Borg]

I cracked open an egg this morning and it was black inside. Never saw that before.

 

[OmCheeto]

Today's 'winner of bragging' is a noname battery with a promised 6800mAh capacity: measured as 900mAh.

The same equipment measured a proper 3500mAh one as 3450mAh.

This seems to be a trend in online advertisement. I was quite gullible and thought I was buying a pair of flexible solar panels for 10¢/watt. Turns out the seller either conveniently added a zero or left out a decimal point from the wattage as the panels were actually 100¢ per watt. I wasn't too upset as I was quite impressed by their watts to volume and weight ratios.

 

[WWGD]

This seemed interesting. A study of stupidity:

 

[WWGD]

I cracked open an egg this morning and it was black inside. Never saw that before.

Strangest I've found were those with two yokes. Or two of the yellow ones.

 

[OmCheeto]

This seemed interesting. A study of stupidity:

Reminds me of:

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”​

― George Carlin

 

[WWGD]

Is there anything more annoying than voice messages, other than 12- second voice messages?

 

[fresh_42]

Is there anything more annoying than voice messages, other than 12- second voice messages?

I find TV ads most annoying. Don't get me wrong, I am a capitalist (not Adam-Smith-like, but in general) and accept ads.

But they are always louder than the program they are in. So I switch the channel or mute the tv.
How stupid can one be to provoke such a behavior?

I also tend to read the news ticker at the bottom of a news channel. Often more than an entire circle because I missed something. Now, if the ads kick in, they turn off that ticker line, i.e. I switch to another channel that doesn't have ads at that time, or I read it elsewhere.
How stupid can one be to provoke such a behavior?

I am annoyed by the stupidity that causes me to leave their ads instead of just letting them calmly run in the background. One would think that a background ad is still more valuable than no ad.
It is their stupidity that annoys me. TV channels and ad-agencies.

 

[WWGD]

I find TV ads most annoying. Don't get me wrong, I am a capitalist (not Adam-Smith-like, but in general) and accept ads.

But they are always louder than the program they are in. So I switch the channel or mute the tv.
How stupid can one be to provoke such a behavior?

I also tend to read the news ticker at the bottom of a news channel. Often more than an entire circle because I missed something. Now, if the ads kick in, they turn off that ticker line, i.e. I switch to another channel that doesn't have ads at that time, or I read it elsewhere.
How stupid can one be to provoke such a behavior?

I am annoyed by the stupidity that causes me to leave their ads instead of just letting them calmly run in the background. One would think that a background ad is still more valuable than no ad.
It is their stupidity that annoys me. TV channels and ad-agencies.

What's puzzling, funny at times, annoying, or all, is trying to figure out just what the ad is about and which company it's from. Food? a Movie? What the $#@n is the ad about??

 

[fresh_42]

What's puzzling, funny at times, annoying, or all, is trying to figure out just what the ad is about and which company it's from. Food? a Movie? What the $#@n is the ad about??

True. Shouldn't they at least place their logo somewhere?

 

[Tom.G]

True. Shouldn't they at least place their logo somewhere?

WHAT! And get known for messing up a perfectly good program?

Heresy, I say. Heresy!

 

[WWGD]

True. Shouldn't they at least place their logo somewhere?

Hopefully it's not a Logo Fail ;).

 

[Rive]

I find TV ads most annoying

It's already for almost 15 years now that we no longer have a TV. Partly due the increasing amount of ADs and the decreasing general quality.

Every time we stay in a hotel and switch on the one for the room we conclude that we were sooo right to give it up

 

[OmCheeto]

It's already for almost 15 years now that we no longer have a TV. Partly due the increasing amount of ADs and the decreasing general quality.

Every time we stay in a hotel and switch on the one for the room we conclude that we were sooo right to give it up

Weird. That's when I gave up TV. Being single, it's just as easy to watch programs on my laptop. One of my lady friends used to own a spare house at the coast and a bunch of us would spend a week there every year. On one occasion I got the deluxe room with a tv and cable. 500 channels, and nothing worth watching. I do still have a TV, but haven't turned it on in probably a decade. It's one of those old fashioned tube types.

 

[WWGD]

Weird. That's when I gave up TV. Being single, it's just as easy to watch programs on my laptop. One of my lady friends used to own a spare house at the coast and a bunch of us would spend a week there every year. On one occasion I got the deluxe room with a tv and cable. 500 channels, and nothing worth watching. I do still have a TV, but haven't turned it on in probably a decade. It's one of those old fashioned tube types.

There was too, this weird situation that you have some 500 channels and a TV guide. You start browsing through the guide, and by the time you find something you like, you're a good 10-15 minutes into the hour , and so any show is ruined for you until the end of the hour.

 

[WWGD]

It seems when I try to instruct newcomers on wrapping text, I run into a " Do not say the name Jehova" type of situation when giving examples on the wrapping.

 

[Mayhem]

Quit my project today. Well, I decided that I was done. Now I just have to write a report. Then I got moderately drunk.

God I am never doing work for the engineering faculty again. Nearly killed me.

 

[WWGD]

It read " Caitlin's Fever wins!"
Ok, weird, but "Fever" is the name of a team.

 

[WWGD]

Statisticians' favorite Florida road:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_Road

 

[DrGreg]

Statisticians' favorite Florida road:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_Road

The map looks quite straight, not much deviation.

 

[fresh_42]

The map looks quite straight, not much deviation.

Not by what I get from ...

...

The expectation value is a blueish red (195 red, 60 blue), like

with a standard deviation of 52.6/255 on red and 94.3/255 on blue. The grey data were insufficient so I neglected them.