7.3 powerstroke diesel cam position sensor replacment diagram

This site has pictures! Pictures of the steps to replace the cam sensor in the 7.3 liter powerstroke diesel. In Fords and Internationals? Like?

interesting political .sig

On the Democratic side, you have a bytch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, trying to defeat a lawyer who is married to a bytch who is a
lawyer.

On the other side, you have a true war hero married to an extremely wealthy woman with large breasts who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there a contest here?

Biofuels not cost effective

This OECD report criticizes subsidy of biofuels. Considering the earlier link about the USA subsidizing the export of biodiesel instead of using it domestically, this is good news. Maybe some congressman could look into it? I think my congressmember is Wm Jefferson, soon going to trial.

What does Microsoft want from Yahoo?

The link is to a great article about a patent that Yahoo owns, called the 361 patent. Yahoo bought Overture paid search and got a patent covering the whole nasty business of paying for search result placement.

Louisiana's science revolution?

Djes, Louisiana has passed a law allowing school boards to provide supplemental materials for science classes. "including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."

The inspiration seems to be some intelligent design wackos. May I suggest that Biblical mathematics be taught in math classes? Like, pi is equal to 3, not the egyptian/greek 22/7 or that decimal horror, 3.14159....

Or possibly evidence that the sun orbits the earth? There is ample testimony to this fact in the ancient testaments. Let's get supplementing!

Exporting american bio-diesel?

I'd seen mention of this before, but now it really gets my attention. American bio-diesel producers are exporting. To Europe. With USA tax subsidies. Why aren't they selling it here? Blending it here? Diesel is almost $5 a gallon in Louisiana and we are exporting subsidized bio diesel to Europe? This is pretty outragous and a trade violation. And we don't allow Brazilian ethanol to be imported to compete with our corn/maize ethanol. Brazilian sugar cane ethanol is the worlds cheapest. Comparative advantage. We don't believe in capitalism unless it means subjecting other countries to our dominance.

Here is another post on re-exporting south american biodiesel with a USA subsidy added. Incredible.

how many freewheelin' roads?

Today's Fresh Air was the story of the cover art for Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The wonderful woman on the cover with Dylan, that is. Suze Rotolo. I'd never heard who she was before. It has been 45 years and I'd never heard her name. We used to talk about her and no one knew if her identity was public knowledge. Was she an actual friend? Or just a cover shoot model?

So, she has written a book. A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. Good. I guess it is time to read such a memoir. That cover sure looked romantic to me in the 60's. Lesse, I was a sophomore in Provo High School when I bought that album. We put things on layaway back then. Pay for part of it, come back later when you could afford to pay the rest. A record album was a layaway item. It had been out a while when I bought it. I think I listened to Highway 61 Revisited in the booth of the record store in Provo.

Bob Dylan was a comfort to a misfit in a place like Provo, Utah.

Pascha, Pak, Paska

Otherwise known in English as Oester/Easter. Today is celebrated 'he is risen. Indeed he is risen'. We went to the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in New Orleans this morning. Last night was the Pascha Liturgy, but it was raining hard and the kids and I are sick. So we didn't go. The midnight Liturgy is very Kul.

The link above is not to Pascha, but to a Buddhist blog about Christianity in Tibet. Thomas the Apostle was sent to India by the risen Christ, and the Nestorian church was all throughout central asia and china. The Malankara church of India, founded by Thomas brother of Christ, was not Nestorian, but what is today called Oriental Orthodox, along with the Copts of Egypt and Ethiopia.

Grand Turismo 5

Came out last night at 11pm central time. On the Playstation network. For PS3. Like that.

So, I bought it. Took a long time to download, there were tons of people downloading. I played until 2:30 in the morning and there was someone playing online at that time with a Suzuki Cappuccino, tuned. Tuned means that it has been modified to make more power. Changing tires is about the only chassis work that might be needed, it handles wonderfully in the game.

Now, to get to modify a car in GT5 you have to have completed three separate levels of races, meeting a minimum standard in 8 or so races in each level. Within two hours someone had completed all these levels to be able to modify a Suzuki Cappuccino! Yikes. To race against boring Honda Integra's in the small car class.

It took me hours to get third place (minimum passing grade) in the B level toughy. That one starts from 16th place and one is required to pass everyone in one lap. Well, everyone but two, to qualify. The aim is to pass everyone. Cheating is required. Cheating in the sense of taking unorthodox racing lines, bouncing off walls and hip checking cars into turns.

This is the 'Prologue' to the full Grand Turismo 5, which is more than a year away yet. It costs $40 and well worth it. I'll be shopping for a wheel now. Racing with a play controller is rather tricky.

Last Testament

Michael Diebert wrote a good book about the excitement in Haiti this century. Some wacko in the pay of the terrorists wrote a newly dubious book, which Deibert debunks here. There has been amusing repartee back and forth.

some kinda recycling in New Orleans

This morning around 6:30, while picking up the Times-Picayune and letting Jacques Chien out to pee I saw a renegade garbage truck. Not one of the blue ones from Richards Disposal which comes twice a week and picks up huge trash cans. This was a white one. I waited for it to drive down Lowerline and found that PhoenixRecylingNOLA was painted on the side.

Ok, found the site. It is a full home and business pickup service for glass, plastic, metals and paper. But. It costs $15 a month for once a week pickup. I would fill maybe one milk crate sized recycling thingie a week when in California. Course, I couldn't fill a 30 gallon trash can for a weekly pickup either, while here we get a 55 gallon can which is picked up twice weekly. That service is mandatory, a city contract.

Why is every household given trash pickup service sufficient for a small restaurant, but no recycling service? There are not even any drop off recycling centers and Louisiana has no bottle/can deposit system. There is lots of trash compared to Kalifornya.

Songwriter's Notebook: If I Can't Dance...

Songwriter's Notebook: If I Can't Dance...

daylite sucking time

I hate daylight savings time. this time of year is about the only thing i like about arizona; they do not honor daylite savings time there. It saves no daylite. It makes the school bus start pickups in the dark. It makes the sun set go way past dinner time.

In Swahili land noon is numbered as the sixth hour. Because it is the sixth hour of the day. The day meaning actual daytime, starting at daylight. And Galileo used the Egyptian year with a full 365 days inside 13 months, same as Ptolemy and 4000 years of astronomers before him.

No daylite is saved. It is sucked out of the morning and vomited up at vespers.

Louisiana Educational Assessment Program

Louisiana has something called a LEAP test for fourth and eighth graders. Students are required to pass it to graduate and attain the next grade. I am currently unclear if this is part of No Child Left Behind or if it was implemented separately. Louisiana Educational Assessment Program

On friday I went in to Roxanne's school Bauduit Elementary to deliver her backpack (supplied by the school) and pay $32 for field trips next week. Every day there is a field trip because the whole school will be given over to conducting tests for the LEAP. I have been paying attention to elementary school lately and the LEAP is what everyone at Bauduit has been talking about since we got there. All the schools are talking about it and articles in the newspaper abound.

As I left schoool there was a pep rally for the fourth graders in the hallway. The big gurls were dressed in cheerleader outfits (sixth grade cheerleaders?) and the classes had prepared chants to root on their LEAP testing teams. Interesting. It might have seemed bizarre, but producing a social imperative to do well on an academic test may be pedagogically sound. I like that, pedagogically sound.

Rather than social pressure to wear flashy clothes (they use uniforms at Bauduit) or acting tough they substitute an entire manufactured enthusiasm for passing a test.

Lusher School

Settling in to New Orleans has involved searching for a school for Roxanne. She started kindergarten in Trinidad this past Sept 2007. She was out of school for two months, joining Agnes Bauduit Elementary in early February. Just this past week we got a form from Bauduit asking whether she would be attending next year. That was a problem. It is a long way, but we have bus service. I've submitted an application to International School of Louisiana for the french program next year and we did apply to Audubon Charter trying to get into french language kindergarten this year. They wouldn't let her in; they may allow her into french language kindergarten next year. That would make her a six year old starting kindergarten. For the second time.

Well, this all has been weighing on my mind; what to do? What to do? So I stopped by my actual local school on friday to drop off an application. That school is Lusher School. It is a charter school about four blocks away. Turns out we are in fact within the attendance district, which functions as a normal school; if you live there, you get into the school.

Lusher is one of the few schools in New Orleans which gets good ratings and good test results. People resort to blackmail and bribes to get their kids in there. But it does not have a french program. We wanted to get into Audubon french program or the International School program so that Roxanne could claim her birthright Haitian citizenship and run for Prezidan d'Repiblik.

What to do?

Kosovo Polje

This week sees more absurdity in the management of the american empire. An independent Albanian Kosovo. See Balkan Analysis or this Counterpunch article or, for less nuanced views, some Serb Blog or view the many YouTube Kosovo videos and you'll see what a disaster this will be. Here is a Diana Johnstone article on Counterpunch on the subject as well.

This battle is between the Orthodox and Western Churches. All the Eastern tradition countries are opposed to this wacky US/British idea. The Roman and Protestant countries are still trying to dismantle Constantinople. Actually it was after the Saxons took over the Bishopric of Rome that they started to forbid Liturgy in the people's language.

I had never heard of Camp Bondsteel before this week. Is it an Iraqi style monster base for the future of the empire in Eastern Evropa and the middle east? I dunno, but they sure wanted to destroy Jugoslavia and hand it to the Nazi's. Like the Croatian nazi's and the Albanian Nazi's. Slovenes cannot be tarred with that I suppose, they just wanted to re-join Austria-Hungary.

That crazy John Bolton who tried to dismantle the U.N. is opposed to Kosovo even. He may have gotten an excessively bad rap in that UN deal; trying to shake up a bureaucracy steps on lots of toes.

I got turned off Counterpunch after they jumped on the Aristide bandwagon in 2003-04. For someone who was there, and thinking, the picture was a little different. Glad to see they are on Yugoslavia's side here tho.

Firefox 3

I just downloaded Firefox 3, the beta. It is pretty nice on first appearance. I've heard Dvorak complain about it but on thie, my first hour of use I rather like it.

Agnes Bauduit playground

Yesterday, Saturday the 16th there was a playground building scenario at the Bauduit school. Our Recovery School District school. There were signs requesting 200 or so adults to help build the playground. I showed up around 9:30 and there was a good crowd assembling playground equipment and building planter/bench thingies. The strange thing was that seemingly all the brown folks were staff of the school and the civilians were all blan. This seems out of order because I haven't seen any blan students here, so I assume that the parents are mostly noir as well.

There were a ton of young blan with Americorps and a volunteer organization (name forgotten) and old folks who looked like church volunteers. There were some brown ladies who cooked a fine red beans and rice lunch, but no noir parents working on the digging or assembling or hammering that I could see. Disappointing.

Roxie is starting to like the school after one week. Kindergarted lasts from 8am till 3:15pm, quite a contrast to the 8:30 to 12:30 hours of the Trinidad Union School kindergarten.

Finding kindergarden in New Orleans

The public school system here in New Orleans is a confused mess. All the schools around us, the Carrollton district, are charter schools and application is required way in advance. We are here now, re-locating from Kalifornya, and need to get Roxanne into a kindergarten.

We've been to the Audubon school which has a Montessori system and a French system. We want to get Roxanne into the French school so she can become fluent in real French, not just Kreyol. Then she can claim her Haitian citizenship some time in the future and become Prezidan d'Repiblik. They give a real run-around there tho, and are unable to give advice on how to find 'just a school'.

Friday the 8th of February we submitted a full application to Audubon after finally getting all the required proofs of residence. Then they tell me that two full years of schooling in French is required before 1st grade. They didn't say that before.

So after tooling around the various school district web sites (no one will answer a telephone here) I discovered something called the 'Welcome School' on Poydras. There are two separate school districts within the same boundary; Recovery School district is run directly by the State, and NOLA Schools seems to have nothing but Charter schools which one must apply to a year in advance.

I went over to the Welcome School (no one at the local schools ever mentioned this place) and after explaining that I want to transfer into kindergarden, they actually found me a school and gave me a yellow sheet of paper. This yellow sheet is important; it actually gets you into school. Went over to the Agnes Bauduit elementary school with the majik yellow sheet and presto! Roxie is going to school on monday. It is a long way away, but they will have bus service for her in about a week.

The transportation system for these schools scattered all over the city must be crazy.

the generals of New Orleans

General Pershing, General Taylor, General Collins (who is he?), General DeGaulle. Do other cities have so many streets named for military persons? General Haig, marshall Foch. We have battles too: Austerlitz and some other Napoleonic battles. Oh, Napoleon is a major street as well, but he was a Field Marshall, or First Counsel or Emperor or something.