Loony Eclipse 2008

For those that didn't know, or didn't care, the ancient dragons were out and about devouring natural satellites of small, blue, backward planets. This is to punish us for evils such as "The View", reality TV, gas-guzzling SUVs, North Korea, the fur industry, artificial sweeteners that cause cancer in rats, cigarettes, government "by the people" and hard water.

There was a great, total, lunar eclipse on February 20th visible to us in the US starting after 9 pm that evening. At the behest of my father, I took some pictures with my decent digital camera...an older Sony DSC-W1, five megapixel outfit. It is a nice camera but only a 3x optical zoom. I'm coming from an SLR background and have lots of lenses and bodies from Minolta, so if I were smart I would have gotten some film out of the fridge and my tripod and did some long-time exposures...but I am apparently not that bright. Point-and-shoot cameras don't really do it for me, but I got it cheap and tax free on a trip to New Hampshire.

If I was even smarter than that, I would have bought a new Sony digital SLR body to go with all my Minolta lenses (Sony bought Minolta's DSLR business back in, like, 2006...Yay!). But I bought a fancy-schmancy tankless water heater instead. I guess we have to have priorities. I like taking hot showers.

So I apologize in advance for the crappy pictures...

Fig. 1: An attempted long-time exposure. 15s at f2.8, 22mm. 9:52 pm ET.

In the image above, the moon was about half-covered. The right was bright as normal, the left a very dark gray. The green-black mass on the left is a pine tree in my front yard, the streak on the right is an amateur radio antenna, a vertical for the 6-meter band, at my parent's house. It isn't too bad of an image...way underexposed...but you can only do so much with a point-and-shoot, and I was holding it at the time.

Fig. 2: About 1/3 covered, 9:20 pm ET

I took the pictures at the maximum optical zoom (3x). Digital zoom would have just made the image crappier. They really aren't too awful bad. I ramped up the quality to fine and 5 megapixels. The resulting images were pretty big, 2592px x 1944px and 1.7Mb in size. The camera takes JPEGs.

Fig. 3: About 1/2 covered, 9:43 pm ET.

I took a number of shots each time I went out hoping that at least one of the group would be decent. I didn't linger outside since it was about 18°! Brrr!

Fig. 4: About 3/4 covered, 9:53 pm ET.

As the moon continued to enter the shadow, it began to take on a definite reddish hue. It is too bad you can't see it in the images. I'm going to have to get a decent telescope and a real digital SLR so I can get good images of things like this.

Fig. 5: Nearing totality, 9:59 pm ET.

The closer to totality it got, the redder it became. It was an unusual and beautiful sight.

Fig. 6: Totality, at least as close as it went for me. 10:16 pm ET.

I whittled the images down to 640px x 480px to get them down to a reasonable size, and centered the moon. The rest of the image was black anyway.

It must have not agreed with the dragons, because it is back out there tonight.

Evil is a Long Distance call...

I have a big interest in the phones and the phone company. I have always wanted to work for the phone company in a central office, and I would love to get my hands on a central office switch...like an AT&T 5ESS or Nortel DMS-100. Sure, playing with my Nortel Meridian PBXes at work and my Asterisk VoIP switch at home is cool, but I want to learn how the big boys do it. I try to learn all that I can about telecommunications technology, and any time I come across any news about telecom issues, I try to find out as much as I can about what is happening and how things work so I can get a good idea of what is going on.

There is a minor news story circulating about a town in Louisiana that was assigned a telephone prefix of 666. This seemed to be upsetting to a number of people in this small town, so they forced the phone company to get a new prefix. Their justification is that the number "666" is the mark of the beast. That is, the Devil.

This is not an old* a new story. I remember some years back a bible college in a town, I think in Virginia, got new phone lines and were assigned a 666 prefix. They didn't want it, so they asked their phone company for a different prefix, and the telco obliged.

NANPA is the North American Numbering Plan Administration. This is the company that is tasked with keeping our phone numbers straight, assigning new NPAs (area codes), handing out new central office codes (prefixes), and making sure there are enough numbers in an area code to cover the explosive growth of cellular phone users and what to do if an area code starts to run out. Their website is chock full of interesting information, and if you have any interest in how phone numbers are made, this is where to get your info. While NANPA covers the US and its possessions, it works closely with the CNA, or Canadian Numbering Administrator, to make sure everything is kosher since Canada is a plain old long distance call and has been fully integrated with our dialing plan since the late '40s.

I was bored, so I went to NANPA and CNA and did a little research on where there are active 666 prefixes in the US and Canada. I was surprised to find that there are 107 places that have 666 prefixes that are actively assigned. There are 115 records in all. Most of the remaining records have a status of "Unassignable", for whatever reason. This could mean that the people under the telco that wanted it in the first place found the prefix to be distasteful, so the telco returned it to NANPA and had it marked unassignable to prevent this from happening again.

It is just strange to me that some people go ape over the numbers "666" appearing in places. Phone numbers are more or less permanent, so I can kinda understand the issue there for believers since they don't want to be associated with the beast. But there are a number of stories out there of people coming unglued over a purchase at the megamart coming to $6.66. It is strange to me how people attach such significance to a number and/or its appearance. If the mark of the beast is "666", even though some are now suggesting that it is in fact "616", does this mean that it is six hundred sixty-six? Or is it a collection of three individual sixes? Why, then would a number 6.66 be construed as being evil? How about 6 ³³/₅₀?

The UPC barcode was developed by NCR here in Dayton, Ohio** IBM and first used in a grocery store in Troy, Ohio...a town a few miles north of Dayton. The barcode has three check stripes, one on either end and one in the middle, that assure proper orientation of the barcode to the computer. It just so happens that the spacing of the check codes is the same as the number 6 in the rest of the code. This, of course, proves that barcodes are evil and they they will surely be used as the new, futuristic mark of the beast. I have even seen a Christian-themed movie about the rapture and second coming that depicted the use of tattooed barcodes as a tracking mark required by the antichrist. Of course, everyone knows that UPC barcodes are not evil because they contain "666", but simply because they were developed here in Dayton. Duh!

I have been in numerous buildings, especially hotels, where there is no floor 13. Here we have again another superstitious phenomena attaching some type of spiritual significance to a number. In Asian cultures, the number 4 is considered bad luck, whilst 9 is the greatest of luck. People in Asia and other parts of the world have been known to shell out huge fortunes for license plates for their cars featuring strings of lucky numbers..."9999999" and so forth.

It is just strange how such spiritual significance can be attached to a number. And it is stranger still how the concept of lucky and unlucky numbers vary from culture to culture. How long have we been programming ourselves to consider 13 quite unlucky, and that 666 is the number of the beast?

I could understand that someone might be a little perturbed if they moved to a new town and were assigned the Devil's old phone number. Imagine the wrong number calls you'd get to that number! It is, though, seemingly apropos that 666 is a prefix assigned for use in Salem, Massachusetts, the site of the Salem Witch Trials back in late 17th century.

For a list of the locations in the US and Canada of the most evil phone numbers, check out a synopsis of the NANPA and CNA prefix data I have compiled at http://www.sassie.net/snet/eviltel.txt.

EvilTel would be a great name for a phone company...

* not an old story? Then how have I heard of one before? Corrected 12/31/07. Duh...I'm such a dingleberry...I guess I need to start proofreading.
** it was not, in fact, developed by NCR as I found out. I guess I should check my facts, too!