How Was Your Morning Commute?

For those of you who have no morning commute, I am jealous. For those who commute in the Twin Cities Metro Area, Tuesday was a joy. My 23 mile venture to work today was a bit different after yesterday's snowfall and this mornings wake up temperature of -14 F. Only took me an extra 30 minutes, but I have a few alternate routes I can take once I am over the river bridge. The first five miles of my commute took me about 40 minutes, the last 18 miles was much quicker. After passing four cars in the ditch in the first four miles of my trip I decided to get my camera out for some photos as I was expecting more. I personally saw 13 cars in the ditch today, three of them were over turned. Most of these are poor quality shots, but I had to drive a bit more cautious today with the slippery conditions.

From the news reports, there was 360 accidents reported today. I'm guessing that number includes the spin outs and cars in the ditch too? That is a very high number, even with the snow. The sudden drop in below zero temperatures really forced people to slow down, or at least those who realized it before it was too late.

  
  

Happy Birthday America

Have a safe Independence Day America. Land of the free, home of the brave. I'm proud to be an American. Thank you to our founding fathers and those that fought for our freedom so I can post my beliefs in a free country without fear of death.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
In Congress Assembled, July 4, 1776
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

Read the entire Declaration Of Independence here

Portable Clusters And Pride In My Work

We rolled out a new product at my work on Tuesday, Earth Day 2008, it was purely coincidence. What you you're looking at is a portable cluster that is made in the Twin Cities. What is a cluster? Essentially it is a super computer that is used for doing massive calculations in a short time frame. For example, we sent a cluster to another customer of ours last week. The program that they run, on their old system took a day and a half to run through all the calculations. We received feedback on their new cluster that we built for them shorted that time frame down to 30 minutes!

Myself and a fellow co-worker did a good portion of the assembly and software setup. The engineering team did the research and development, while my server builders built the nodes. This was a time consuming project with huge results and it's something I wanted to share with you all today.

What's unique about our portable clusters, aside from it being portable, is it runs on only one 120 Volt, 20 AMP circuit. This is the same power plug that your home computer is plugged into the wall outlet. This is a huge deal when you need a product like this , you bring it to a new work site and all you have is standard power. Typically a cluster needs a lot of power to run. I've seen 30 AMP plugs, 230 Volt plus, or separate power for each node. The power savings we have engineered into this product to keep it running on one standard outlet is how this post all ties into Earth Day 2008 in the Twin Cities

  

It's A Madhouse

Now I'm sure you've always wondered, unless you're from the Twin Cities, what it's like to drive through a snow storm....Wonder no longer. I risked myself, with plenty of distance between the car in front of me, to take this action shot of a snow storm just for you warm climate people. Remember, I'm a professional snow storm driver....do not try this at home.

My Daily Photo Favorites: Rabaul, Papua New Guinea | Stouffville, Canada | Virginia Beach, Verginia

Interesting Links Of the Day: