Still alive.

Not sure why I haven't felt like doing any journal posting lately but I do tend to do most things in streaks and its not like I have any pressure to avoid disappointing followers.

Spent most of last week near Cancun Mexico attending a conference for COCONet.    Not even sure what the acronym is.   It is countries bordering the Caribbean using GPS to monitor for geodetic hazards and also feeding that GPS PW into hurricane models to hopefully improve track and intensity forecasts.   A lot of these countries get the full suite of natural disaster hazards.   Earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis as well as the hurricanes one thinks about hitting Caribbean islands.

Conference was pretty good.  Some good ideas on getting students to use the GPS PW data to get a group of future proposal writers and bigwigs in their national weather communities interested in using GPS data.   It is a very good data source for countries that may not be able to follow through with maintainence  and calibration for doppler radars and don't have a lot of money to buy radiosondes and launch them twice daily.

I was avoiding internet until thursday night when I dined with liberal scientists and they were all excited that some polls (probably wishcast ones) showed even FL coming back into play for Barry.  Had to go to ace(.mu.nu) to see about this.  There was no gnashing of teeth there so must have been just wish casting polls they read about.  (please lord let the country be going to soundly reject another 4 years of the scoamt.)

Earlier on Thursday we toured some Mayan ruins.  I was a bad tourist and didn't buy so much as a beer from any of the venders at the site.   Pushy salesmen tick me off, and especially when the one guide hurried everyone back and then steered them to a little convenience type store extorting $4 for a bottle of beer  I was not going to cooperate with that crap.   But sitting at the table one of the project engineers was talking about the election and he was at bargaining/acceptance stage.  Expecting Romney to win but saying *Romney will surely veer moderate; stabbing his crazy tea party VEEP in the back*.    I know this could happen and I'm sure I will be dismayed with some of Romney's decisions,  but as the campaign has gone along I have a sense that he was more liberal in Massachusetts because that is what the majority there wanted and how he ran there.

   He understands how crippling the trillion plus dollar deficits are, and I believe he understands that regulations and the threat of big taxes on small businesses filing under the personal tax category are stalling growth.       I did take the opportunity to point out to the table, talking about how cheap it used to be to buy a beer in Mexico or other Latin American countries that part of that was the fact that $16 trillion debt has caused a real inflation. 

I need to download my pics from the ruins and make that a separate post.  The conference was good, it was held at an all inclusive resort so they didn't have to provide per diem for the sponsored attendees.   But I am just not comfortable in the role of highish end resort guest.   The first day a cleaning lady was finishing up in the hall where my room was, pushing the cart of towels and bedding to be washed.  She was going to get the door for me and seemed a bit flustered when I insisted on holding it for her.   ???   She was dealing with a big cart to get through the door,  what kind of rude beeyotch would not hold the door for her instead of expecting her to leave the cart to get the door?  I suppose the doors all have jambs so they can manage but it struck me so very odd to get any reaction for such a trivial bit of common courtesy.   Also they didn't just clean the rooms, they came back in, in the evenings and 'turned down the sheets' and turned on the TV and it was jarring to have seen things one way when I dropped off stuff before going to eat and then come back to TV on and bedding re-arranged.  They didn't even have 'do not disturb signs' available in the room.  I would have deployed one since I was not going to need more towels to make it through my 3 night stay and I prefer privacy over 'coddling'.