My Tennessee Trip: Day 3

I am having a blast visiting my sister (Mary) and my brother-in-law (Jeff) and playing with my two youngest nieces (Lilly and Vivian). The girls have a new name for me, “Uncle Tooty”. After the Indian feast we had my first night there I was more than a bit gassy in my sleep and apparently they were in my room the next morning giggling and laughing as Uncle Dennis farted in his sleep. If they weren’t so damn cute and the name wasn’t so darn funny when they said it, my feelings might be hurt.
(Nah!  How cool is it to have a nickname like that? Pretty freakin’ cool!)

On my first day, we went to the East Tennessee Discover Center in the morning (all of us) and the UT Arboretum in the afternoon (me, Jeff, and the two girls). At the Discovery Center we got to play with some neat science toys, hear an interesting lecture about the night sky over Tennessee in their planetarium, check out their small collection of reptiles and lizards, and look at all the pretty fishes and corals in the various salt-water fish tanks they had on display. The afternoon consisted of a leisurely walk around one of the trails at the Arboretum—Everything with the girls is done in a “leisurely” fashion; It took us over one hour to walk slightly over one mile—followed up by some time spent playing hide-n-seek in the dwarf pine tree section. They have this huge dwarf hemlock tree that grows out across the ground instead of growing up. The branches on this tree are only 4 feet above the ground but it covers an area 20 feet in diameter, so it is perfect for little girls to “hide” under the tree.

Saturday we took a little tour (me, Jeff, and the two girls) around Oak Ridge, Tennessee’s former “Secret City”, and saw some of the historic sites around town related to the Manhattan Project. (The national lab in Oak Ridge was involved in processing the uranium for the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan.) There is a little visitor center overlooking the national lab complex that explained the history of the uranium enrichment work done in Oak Ridge. They had one bulding there (K-25) which was over one mile long but is now unused and is in the process of being torn down. Now the Oak Ridge National Lab does enrichment only for the nuclear energy industry and not the weapons industry. The “Secret City” appellation is due to the city being built during the early part of WWII to work on the Manhattan Project; Its existence was not acknowledged until 1949. There are these old concrete buildings on either side of the main roads leading to the town and they served as check-points for getting in, or out, of the City. Pretty cool to think about the history that took place in this sleepy little town (now city) in Eastern Tennessee. (What’s fascinating is that the grounds of the national lab are spread out over a large, large area. So, when you drive through the lab on the local roads it is like driving through a national park with wilderness all around you with only the occasional locked gate with Do Not Enter warning signs on the side of the road giving away that you are in a nuclear energy research complex.)

This morning was church followed by lunch and a lazy afternoon—Jeff had to work part of the afternoon. Then we had dinner at a good local Thai restaurant followed by some more playing with the girls. Tomorrow I am renting a car to drive to Nashville to see my friend Allison R. who I haven’t seen in more than five years. We’re going to hang out, get caught up, and see some live music tomorrow night and I will come back to Knoxville on Tuesday afternoon.

I Made It To Tennessee

After 24.5 hours of travel, with 22 of those hours spent riding on a bus, I arrived in Tennessee this afternoon for a week-long visit with my sister’s family. Uncle Dennis has already spent time as a dog, a horse, read a couple stories, and been called a “baby butt” (my two nieces favorite new giggle-inducing put-down). I am exhausted from traveling—I will get a good night’s sleep tonight—but am having a blast and am SO glad to be here.

I Still Don’t Like Facebook

After the huge uproar over their revised Terms of Service, Facebook has “decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.” HA! So instead of owning the rights to your submissions forever—even if you leave the Facebook community—they only assert ownership rights over everything you submit while you are a member. Isn’t that nice of them: If you want to be a member of Facebook, you have to give away rights to one’s personal thoughts and photographs. Bah! I’m sticking with my WordPress blog where they assert I own the rights to everything I post unless I specify otherwise.

Consumerist – Facebook Reverts Back to Old Terms of Service

NYT - Facebook Withdraws Changes in Data Use

I Saw Orion Tonight

Walking back from the book store I looked up into the sky and there he was, bright and bold—It was a bitterly cold, clear night. I could see his belt, scabbard (for his sword), his bow, the star marking his left knee, and the two stars marking his feet. This was about 10:00pm EST (GMT 03:00 +1) looking west-southwest in the sky.

It was beautiful to see on my walk home.

You Wonder Why I Don’t Like Facebook

This is why.

Consumerist - Facebook’s New Terms Of Service Say It Can Do Anything It Wants With Your Content. Forever.

Prior to this change in their terms of service, Facebook said it could do whatever it wanted with your uploaded content up to and until the point you deleted your Facebook account. Now they have changed the Terms Of Service such that they assert the right that they can continue to do whatever they want with your uploaded content even after you delete your Facebook account.

That pic of you with a former boy-/girl-friend you take down after the relationship ends, they keep it and can keep using it long after you take down the pic. The comments posted on your job that you thought would only be seen by your friends, they keep even after you have deleted them. Anything you post on Facebook they keep and can use it for their own purposes without having to get permission from you to do so.

All my friends with Facebook are giving away, forever, their rights to all the content they upload to Facebook. And some of them are quite tech and/or law savvy. I just don’t get the willingness to completely give up all legal rights to one’s personal thoughts and photographs. It boggles my mind.

 

As for me and my blog here on WordPress, I own the copyright to all the personal content I post here. Unless I post something here from someone else’s website, all the content on this blog is copyrighted to me. (Except for the various WordPress icons, logos, and links automatically generated when I make a blog posting; Those copyrights belong to WordPress.)