It’s been many years since keacher.com got an overhaul, so I thought it was time to break out the editor and go for it.

As you can see, I’ve sold out and am now using WordPress. I could have written everything from scratch, but, frankly, WordPress is just too nice to pass up. I did put together a custom theme for the site, and I had to move my magic blogroll, so it wasn’t a completely painless transition.

I threw together a script to import the entries and comments from my old blog, so all of that content is available. The address and format of my RSS feed changed; you can find the new link at the bottom of this page.

I’m still working through some layout issues, but if you notice any bugs, please let me know.

A small vial holding “teaspoons or tablespoons” of mercury spilled a bit of its contents at a Minnesota school yesterday, and now 600 people are being tested for exposure. Haz-mat teams are collecting contaminated shoes, bags, and equipment for disposal at a toxic waste facility. The total cleaning bill could top $100,000.

I find the reaction amusing considering how nonchalantly we handled mercury spills when I was in high school. Back then, the mercury and its broken vessel were placed in a hazardous materials container at the school, and that was it. Now it’s a multi-agency, multi-day decontamination extravaganza. Ah, the good old days.

With what seems like increasing regularity, engineering trade publications have been publishing opinion pieces bemoaning the death of the American engineer. The scapegoat is sometimes off-shoring; other times, it is H-1B visa recipients. Yet other times, the source of gloom is nearby: some engineers claim that they would not recommend the profession to students making career choices.

I do not share these sentiments. Engineering has brought America prosperity, and the country will look to engineers to solve its future problems. Good engineers are vital to the continued success of the state.

Will off-shoring and outsourcing cause some American engineers to lose their jobs? Probably, but I find it unlikely that displaced engineers worth their salt will stay out of work for long. The good ones will find engineering employment or start their own ventures; the bad ones probably shouldn’t have been in engineering to begin with and should explore other fields.

What of H-1B visa recipients? Do they drive down wages for native-born engineers? Do they replace American engineers outright? Maybe, maybe not. If they are good at what they do, then I don’t see a problem with letting them contribute to the American industrial machine. They bring new ideas to the country, they pay taxes, and they have no less right to a happy life than anyone else. Almost all of us have immigrant ancestors; most of mine emigrated from Germany, Italy, and Belgium in the 1800s.

It really irritates me when people write that children should not pursue engineering as a career. The authors generally reason that children who are bright enough to be good engineers are also bright enough to be doctors and lawyers, and since those positions are better compensated financially, those should be the careers of pursuit. What corrosive words those are; to deny the world an engineer is to deny mankind its progress from the stones to the stars, the privilege of health and long life, the promise of prosperity itself. For an engineer at heart, only engineering will suffice. If an engineer desires wealth, he will find a way to achieve it — the richest man in the world was a de facto engineer.

I help encourage kids to pursue engineering, science, and math by volunteering for FIRST Lego League. I’ve served as a judge at several of the competitions, both for middle school and for high school, and I’ve always had a blast. Students do research on technology and build autonomous Lego Mindstorms-based robots that perform various feats. The more tasks that are completed in the allotted time, the more points are awarded (example). The passion that the students put into their creations and the competition is incredible. For these kids, engineering is not just books and long hours of problem solving — it’s fun!

I have great faith in the ability of America to produce and attract successful engineers. The rising competition from nations like China makes any alternative untenable.

Sorry about the downtime everybody. After 276 days of uptime, the server finally got restarted. A failing hard drive required immediate replacement, and that required the server to go down for a bit.

Let me know if you notice any problems.

UPDATE: Sorry about the additional downtime. I’m trying to track down what went wrong. Call me on my cell if you see the site down again for more than a few minutes. Thanks!

Deserts are not as I thought of them in my childhood. Instead of barren expanses of sand dunes and sun, some deserts are teeming with vegetation. I experienced that firsthand with my trip to the Sonoran Desert near Phoenix last week.

There is beauty in the efficiency of a desert environment. I can see why Frank Lloyd Wright chose to build his winter home, Taliesin West, near Scottsdale. Every plant and animal in the sand is a stalwart reminder of the perseverance of life. Every mountain towers over the arid desert floor in stoic testament to geologic power. The area is a very nice place to visit. Despite that, I did not feel connected to the land like I do in northern Minnesota and coastal northern California. I expect that I will visit the Phoenix area many times in my life, but I will never live there.

On my flight back to a frore Minnesota, I had the misfortune of sitting next to an unemployed airplane mechanic. I have nothing against airplane mechanics, but that guy was a real downer. His breath reeking of alcohol, he told me his tale of woe: how he lost his job, how he just had his identity stolen, how his wife called right before he boarded to tell him she wanted a divorce, and so on. I felt bad for him, but I didn’t want to listen to his rambling. I couldn’t bring myself to completely ignore him, but I limited my contribution to the conversation to an occasional “That’s too bad” or “Mmm-hmm.” A couple hours rolled by before things took a turn for the worse.

“I’m building a plane,” he said, “and all it needs to work is an anti-gravity device. Do you know where I can find one?” Oh no. He didn’t seem to accept my assertion that nobody has built an anti-gravity device. “The government is hiding one in Nevada that they got from the aliens,” he claimed. I gave him a raised-eyebrow look that said, “Are you insane or just really drunk?” He ignored my look and proceeded to tell me how his sister had an encounter with “the greys” before asking me if I believed in God.

Needless to say, I was uncomfortable, but how could I escape at 35,000 feet? Fortunately, I managed a radical swing in the conversation towards fast cars. Thank goodness for the American obsession with the automobile.

I had the opportunity to visit two auto auctions while in Phoenix. The first, Barrett-Jackson, featured about 1200 cars with an emphasis on late-60s and early-70s muscle at the enormous WestWorld complex. The second was an RM auction of about 100 fine cars at the historic Biltmore resort. They were both enjoyable, but I found the RM auction a much classier experience.

Not only did I see a million-dollar antique Rolls Royce and an equally-valuable 427 Cobra at the Biltmore, I got to see and hear a very rare Porsche RS61 Spyder too. None of the cars were behind velvet ropes, so I was able to inspect their beauty from a distance of mere inches. All of the finest marques, new and old, were represented: Porsche, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Auburn, Duesenberg, and Jaguar to name a few. Each vehicle was absolutely stunning.

Talk of the car auctions, combined with the guy’s odd insistence on giving me dap every few minutes, got me though the rest of the flight. When we landed, I quickly escaped into the boreal night.