Meador Manor

Old Media

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Granger Meador

September 20, 2013

Has Bond ever been this beautiful?

This is the end
Hold your breath and count to ten
Feel the earth move and then
Hear my heart burst again

There’s still life in the old boy.

The Skyfall Blu Ray disc sat beside the television set for two months, as I was unaware until tonight that it was the best Bond film in decades. Daniel Craig revived the James Bond franchise back in 2006 with a very serious take on Casino Royale, the Ian Fleming novel which got away from Broccoli and was a spoof back before I was potty trained. While it was invigorating to have a more vulnerable and gritty Bond, I found the film’s plot murky and the subsequent Quantum of Solace in 2008 a violent disappointment. So I didn’t make it to the cinema for Skyfall and took my sweet time about watching it on disc. But when I finally popped it in the player, I was in for a treat.

But I struggled with the Blu Ray disc, which wanted to bore me with mandatory previews and, of all things, a ludicrous commercial about Blu Ray disc features. Hey Columbia, disabling the menu and skip commands during previews and other unwanted junk is hardly a selling point for Blu Ray, especially when the disc lacks even rudimentary features like a director’s commentary and behind-the-scenes documentary. I finally had to resort to fast-forwarding through one piece of junk after another to get to the movie.

I was even more annoyed by a disc error which rendered a few minutes of the movie unwatchable. As I wrestled with the technology, I wished Hollywood would stop gouging me and put this film, which premiered almost a year ago, on the streaming services. Even better, throw in an option to stream a commentary and related documentaries. Eventually the physical discs will die out as bandwidth improves and younger viewers refuse to use optical media. But those days are not here yet.

Beautiful backdrop for assassin vs. assassin

One reason I still tolerate Blu Ray is the image quality, and thankfully Eon Production’s 23rd Bond film takes full advantage of it. Sam Mendes’ direction was superb and he made the most of a couple of visually stunning nighttime set pieces in Shanghai and an imagined Macao. Ridley Scott’s Los Angeles of Blade Runner has come to life, but 6500 miles to the west.

Blade Runner’s Los Angeles has appeared 6500 miles to the west in Skyfall’s Shangai

Early Bond films had legendary theme songs and titles, and Adele’s entry for Skyfall is top notch, married to a great title sequence which gives nods to some of Mendes’ most beautiful imagery. I hadn’t enjoyed a Bond title sequence so much since Goldeneye back in 1995, with its wonderful imagery of the collapse of Soviet Russia and its iconography.

Even better, the film gave some meaningful back story for Bond and was a great final bow for Judi Dench’s groundbreaking portrayal of M, with excellent supporting work from Ralph Fiennes and the grand old Albert Finney. The villain had some great scenes, and the film was replete with homages to the past 50 years of the franchise without seeming stale or too campy.

But what I enjoyed most was the melancholy air about the film, its bleak portrayal of a Bond whose vices and age are catching up with him. I have been feeling my age this week, having aggravated my problematic lower back, and the film’s references to 50 years of Bond films reminded me that I’ll be 50 myself in a few years. Strangely enough, the rather bleak Skyfall gives me hope: it reminds me that there is still quite a bit of fight left in us both.

“Skyfall”

This is the end
Hold your breath and count to ten
Feel the earth move and then
Hear my heart burst again

For this is the end
I’ve drowned and dreamt this moment
So overdue I owe them
Swept away, I’m stolen

Let the sky fall
When it crumbles
We will stand tall
Face it all together
Let the sky fall
When it crumbles
We will stand tall
Face it all together
At skyfall
That skyfall

Skyfall is where we start
A thousand miles and poles apart
Where worlds collide and days are dark
You may have my number, you can take my name
But you’ll never have my heartLet the sky fall (let the sky fall)
When it crumbles (when it crumbles)
We will stand tall (we will stand tall)
Face it all togetherLet the sky fall (let the sky fall)
When it crumbles (when it crumbles)
We will stand tall (we will stand tall)
Face it all together
At skyfall

(Let the sky fall
When it crumbles
We will stand tall)

Where you go I go
What you see I see
I know I’d never be me
Without the security
Of your loving arms
Keeping me from harm
Put your hand in my hand
And we’ll stand

Let the sky fall (let the sky fall)
When it crumbles (when it crumbles)
We will stand tall (we will stand tall)
Face it all together

Let the sky fall (let the sky fall)
When it crumbles (when it crumbles)
We will stand tall (we will stand tall)
Face it all together
At skyfall

Let the sky fall
We will stand tall
At skyfall
Oh

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Weary Workers Withdraw to Wichita

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Granger Meador

September 14, 2013

Wendy and I were weary from a week of work, so we withdrew to Wichita. She has been buried in Individualized Education Programs and other processes for her special education students, while for me Tuesday night was the culmination of years of committee work with a successful school bond election to finally address our secondary school facility needs.

Wichita Day Trip (click image for slideshow)

We Finally Passed a Bond Issue for Secondary School Facilities

Campaigners after the successful bond election

Election night was more a moment of relief than exultation for me. I liked the February 2012 bond issue plan better, but it was rejected by the voters. So I worked hard to help get a stop-gap bond passed in August 2012 to meet the district’s basic capital needs for seven years.

Months more of committee work with dozens of dedicated community leaders would craft a new proposal for the secondary schools. But after enduring many years of construction at Bartlesville High School, I didn’t look forward to more years of work to expand it to add freshmen and sophomores. However, unlike our dysfunctional Congress, I know that compromise is how we get things done. So, despite my distaste for doubling the size of the student body at our site, I created a fresh bruinbond.com website about the bond issue, drafted and edited the flyer with help from the campaign subcommittee, and created the slideshow which other volunteers used in community presentations. All of the work by dozens of individual volunteers paid off with a landslide vote of approval…which means my work on this project will continue through at least two more years of planning and construction, with the first transition committee meeting coming a week after the election.

Whither Wichita?

So, like Wendy, I truly needed a break from Bartlesville. She had loved the Poco Pollo Magnifico at Jose Pepper’s in Wichita when we were returning from Colorado in late July, while I knew we could enjoy strolling through a couple of the cow town’s museums.

Magnificent Little Chicken

Caterpillar in Rose

Jose Pepper’s east side location was our first stop, with Wendy examining the rose bush outside. She was alerting on the symptoms of the rose rosette virus, while I admired a caterpillar nestled in one of the blooms. Inside the restaurant, she enjoyed her magnificent little chicken while I enjoyed the tasty steak fajitas. Then we headed to Old Town for the Museum of World Treasures.

The Museum of World Treasures

What am I going to do with all of this hair?

I had discovered this odd trove when my colleague Betty Henderson and I visited Wichita in June 2009. It is an assemblage of collections, arising from the artifacts collected by Dr. Jon and Lorna Kardatzke. So it has everything from dinosaur skeletons to Egyptian mummies to Roman coins to autographs from every President, uniforms from various wars, and so forth. I cracked Wendy up when I commented that the owner of one Egyptian coffin must have wondered, “What am I going to do with all of this hair?”

We spent a few hours perusing the collection, apprehended a couple of times by an enthusiastic docent who showed us a Christmas card from Hitler and told us about a Civil War night attack which was foiled by donkeys.

Wichita Art Museum

By the time we left the museum, it was 4 p.m. Most of the city attractions close at 5 p.m. on Saturdays. So we drove over to the nearby Wichita Art Museum, pleasantly surprised that admission is free on Saturdays, and saw what we could before they closed.

Complementary pieces

Wendy liked James Penney’s Industrial Structures; I liked how they complemented it with the nearby sculpture Space Densities by Ibram Lassaw. She also enjoyed delving into the dark complexities in George Grosz’s The Pit.

Lately I find myself often preferring sculptures to paintings, and I was taken with Hiram Powers’ Ginevra.

Ginevra

The Old Mill Tasty Shop

We headed back to Old Town for dinner at The Old Mill Tasty Shop, which has operated for over 80 years. Wendy enjoyed her Seafood Crab Salad with their homemade dressing, while I feasted on BBQ beef brisket on rye. The soda fountain meant she simply had to order a chocolate soda, while I had a chocolate shake.

We zigzagged our way home across southeastern Kansas, pausing along the highway when the clouds briefly parted to admit a red sunset shining through the guy wires of a cell tower. This day trip was sorely needed by us both, and will help us make it through another work week.

Click here for a slideshow from this day trip

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My search for a better light bulb

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Granger Meador

August 11, 2013

My experiments in 2700 kelvin home lighting

A bright blue flash and a POP! greeted me when I flipped the switch in the utility room this morning, followed by a dimmer light than normal. Yes, one of two 60 watt incandescent bulbs in the ceiling fixture blew out. I screwed in one of my newer compact fluorescent (CFL) replacements, and was appalled by the dim, sickly green color it started out with. I knew that if I waited 30 seconds or so, it would brighten up and look okay. I have tolerated crummy CFL bulb start-ups in my home office, since they eliminated a problem with short-lived bulbs. But I hate their start-up behavior when used in a bathroom, closet, or utility room where I want instant, warm, and bright light.

I could have just screwed in a traditional bulb, since a few weeks ago I bought a dozen of the old-style long-life 60 watt soft-white incandescent bulbs. I had done so as a cheap precaution, since they only cost 56 cents each and I knew that they would be phased out in 2014, along with traditional 40 watt bulbs. The traditional 75 and 100 watt bulbs are already history. The phase out makes sense, given that compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs are four times more efficient and some light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs are more efficient still.

General Electric, which dates back to Thomas Edison himself, responded to the legal ban on inefficient lighting by producing slightly more efficient incandescent bulbs to squeeze under the new efficiency bar. For example, they now offer a substitute for the traditional 60 watt bulb: a 43 watt bulb which produces 750 lumens, for about 17.4 lumens/watt versus 13 lumens/watt in a traditional long-life bulb. But that still pales in comparison to CFL and LED bulb efficiencies. Halogen bulbs are also still around, offering greater efficiency and longer life than traditional incandescents, but they run very hot and don’t approach CFL or LED efficiencies.

So rather than screw in another old-style bulb from my stash, I decided to think long-term and see if I could buy some bulbs which immediately produced a nice light, were far more efficient, and would last for decades, making their high up-front purchase price quite reasonable for a person who plans to keep using them for the long haul.

I’ve had mixed luck with CFL bulbs. My early purchases, such as the triple U-tube 15 watt GE CFL bulb pictured here, were too long for some fixtures, not dimmable, and produced low, off-color light for a minute or more after being turned on. But the spiral Ecosmart CFL bulbs from Home Depot, which Consumer Reports recommended a few years back, are much more compact and brighten up faster, although they are still not dimmable. They run much cooler and eliminated the problem in my office ceiling fixture of frequent bulb burn-outs.

LED bulbs have taken a long time to mature, but I already use two nice Philips Ambient LED 8 watt bulbs in a living room table lamp as replacements for 40 watt incandescents. They look a bit strange if you peer under the shade, with their triple yellow lenses and large metal heat sink, but they produce a warm color of light and are dimmable. They are four times more efficient than an incandescent bulb, but the sticker shock is that each bulb cost over $20!

That might sound crazy, but you have to bear in mind that they last over 12 times longer than a long-life incandescent bulb. That’s about three times the capital cost per hour, but their operating cost is four times less. So they still pay for themselves if you use them long enough, and I won’t have to replace them for decades to come.

I looked into buying some 60-watt-equivalent Philips Ambient LED bulbs, but they are not cleared for enclosed fixtures. Then I remembered that Cree recently began selling relatively cheap LED bulbs at Home Depot. The bulbs have received great reviews and the company was featured in Forbes. Their 9.5 watt warm-white LED bulbs are $13 each, so their capital cost per hour over their lifetime is only about twice that of long-life incandescent bulbs. They are even more efficient than CFLs, with an operating cost that is almost six times less than long-life incandescent bulbs. So, if I use them for a couple of decades, my annual operating cost for them is cheaper than for any of my previous bulbs. I dropped in at Home Depot and purchased six of the suckers.

Here are the specs on each of the bulbs pictured above, which all produce warm 2700 kelvin light:

Bulb:	GE incandescent	GE CFL	Ecosmart CFL	Philips LED	Cree LED
Power (watts)	60.0	15.0	14.0	8.0	9.5
Luminous Flux (lumens)	780	900	900	470	800
Luminous Flux/Power (lumens/watt)	13	60	64	59	84
Bulb Life (hours)	2,000	12,000	10,000	25,000	25,000
Purchase Price	$0.56	N/A	$1.25	$20.69	$12.97
Capital Cost/Year*	$0.31	N/A	$0.14	$0.92	$0.57
Annual Operating Cost**	$7.23	$1.81	$1.69	$0.96	$1.15
Total Annual Cost	$7.54	N/A	$1.83	$1.88	$1.72

*Purchase price divided by hours of life times 3 hours per day times 365.25 days per year
**Based on 3 hours per day at 11 cents per kilowatt*hour

If you decide to purchase the Cree bulbs at Home Depot as a replacement for traditional soft-white incandescents, check that you are getting the warm-white bulbs, which have a color temperature of 2700 kelvin. They have similarly-packaged and slightly cheaper Daylight bulbs which, at 5000 kelvin, produce a harsher bluer light similar to that of fluorescent lighting in commercial buildings and schools.

I screwed in the new Cree bulbs in my utility room and was rewarded with instant, warm, bright light. I don’t plan on purchasing another CFL bulb for home, ever. For now I’ll still use incandescent bulbs in a few decorative light fixtures where the glass is clear to show the glowing filament. But for everything else it will be LED for me.

10/6/2013 UPDATE: A month after I published this post, Cree released a new TW Series of 2700 kelvin LED bulbs which have an improved Color Rendering Index. Today I ordered 12 of them from Home Depot for free delivery to my home, enough to replace all of the remaining 60 watt incandescent bulbs at Meador Manor. I’m going to purchase one of their LED spotlights for my kitchen. I look forward to the day they offer 100-watt-equivalent bulbs to replace the incandescents in my bathrooms, closet, and garage.

1/14/2018 UPDATE: Over the following four years, many of the first generation of Cree bulbs I purchased died, especially in a fixture that had three of them. I would guess the heat got to them. The second-generation ones did better, and now we have a mix of various brands in the Manor. Here’s a nice video teardown of a 60-watt equivalent LED bulb, which is dimmable and rated for enclosed fixtures, with a decent 3000 kelvin color temperature, which has been sold for only $1 at some Dollar Tree stores:

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July Escape 2013

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Granger Meador

Here are links to the posts for the trip to New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas in July 2013:

July Escape 2013 Map

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Day 9, July Escape 2013: Gettin’ Out of Dodge

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Granger Meador

Trip Date: July 18, 2013

The penultimate day of our vacation was spent driving 450 miles eastward; Wendy and I still had another 300 miles to go on the final day of July Escape 2013.

DAY 9: DODGE CITY

Day 9 Map (click map for slideshow)

Our trip home across the prairies was dogged by smells. We were grateful there was no feedlot near our hotel in Dodge City, but the adjacent IHOP where we had breakfast had its own aroma, which Wendy said was like a dirty diaper with soap. At least there was soap in there somewhere.

Front Street

I took Wendy to the Boot Hill Museum, a recreation of Front Street from 1876 complete with its own version of the Long Branch Saloon, renowned from the tales of Wyatt Earp and television’s long-running Gunsmoke. The museum started in 1947 as project of the Dodge City Jaycees and has steadily improved, with a large collection of artifacts and displays.

Front Street

We walked through the line of buildings, with Wendy liking the saloon gal, piano player, and big-mustachioed bartender at the Long Branch. Years ago I ordered a sarsaparilla at their bar, and thankfully was not mocked, but this time we moseyed on through, browsing past the artifacts from Dodge City’s past. We liked the Hardesty House the best, a genuine 1878 Victorian cattleman’s home which transported one back to that era.

Gunfight

Then we waited out front for the noon gunfight, staged in front of the Long Branch Saloon with real guns loaded with blanks. Wendy and I enjoyed this all the more since we recently watched Tombstone, the mixed-accuracy portrayal of the famous gunfight in Arizona between outlaw Cowboys and the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday. That incident was in 1881, a few years after Wyatt Earp had been an assistant marshall in Dodge City; he would return to Dodge in 1883 for the bloodless Dodge City War. Wendy thought Kurt Russell’s appearance in the movie was a good match for the pictures of the real Wyatt Earp we saw in Dodge.

In reality, there was a gunfight inside the Long Branch Saloon on April 5, 1879 when Frank Loving killed fellow gambler Levi Richardson. In the mock version, a group of Cowboys, complete with red sashes, outside of the saloon, refused to obey orders to disarm from the marshall and his deputies, with violent results.

Trouble on Front Street

After the gunfight we walked over to Boot Hill and went through the People of the Plains exhibits in the original museum building, where Wendy liked the life-size stuffed longhorn and buffalo.

Homeward

Only in Dodge would a feedlot be a scenic stop

As we drove out of town we saw a nice sign with cowboy silhouettes, but were amazed that they actually have a feedlot scenic overlook, complete with fancy signage and yes, a quite authentic smell.

The wind can be your friend or your enemy out there, depending on if you are upwind or downwind of a feedlot. We saw many modern wind turbines, especially outside of Spearville, which boasts 67 GE Energy 1.5 MW wind turbines and is the third largest wind farm in the state.

We ate at a Jose Peppers in Wichita, with me having my usual beef fajitas while Wendy enjoyed “Poco Pollo” – three chicken burrito pillows covered in jalapeño cream cheese, melted Colby Jack, and pico de gallo. She loved it, along with their Spanish rice and masa.

A great partnership

It was good to finally reach Bartlesville, over 800 miles east of Mesa Verde. Wendy was a splendid partner on the trip, helping with logistics, photos, and the blog posts. And I’m thrilled to note that we did not turn on a television even once; our vacation was far too interesting for that vast wasteland. The West has much to offer and I am certain future summers will find us in fun cities like Santa Fe and Durango, as well as rural places far from the madding crowd.

Click here for a slideshow from this day

< Day 8 of July Escape 2013