PowerMenu adds a right click menu to each window’s title bar, adding the following features:
Priority
Transparency
Always on Top
Minimize to Tray.

Under Win98, the Transparency control is not supported.

While the Stay on Top feature was what I was looking for, I was surprised to also find a solution to an organization issue that has bothered me for some years: the inability to reorganize the order of the items in the task bar. When Firefox 2.0 added the ability to move the sequential ordering of tabs, it was a real breakthrough for users who wished to organize their browser’s windows.

With PowerMenu, by minimizing the various program windows to the tray, then strategically clicking on them in the order you wish them to reappear in the task bar, one is able to reorder task bar items!

This is definitely one of the handier utilities for Windows that I’ve seen: PowerMenu by Thong Nguyen.

In some respects, my prior post created more questions as well as providing some answers, but first. . . .

Disclaimers

Legal: Nothing below is intended for your repair use, but for informational purposes only. Information I learned, then logicized from, is provided as is: it is potentially flawed, and possibly highly flawed. This work has not been reviewed by any competent third party. If you make any attempt to repair or alter your fan after reading this post, and something bad or catastrophic happens, or less severely you end up wasting much time, consider yourself warned. I advised you not to repair or alter your fan.

If you decide to ignore my advice and do-it-yourself, then electrically appropriate precautions need to be followed, this includes turning off the circuit breaker so the fan’s wiring has no supplied power along with verification of this at the fan, and basic recording of wire colors and connections before disassembly, so that reassembly is not interrupted by confusion regarding what wire went where. It is also presumed you know that even with the power turned off, capacitors store electricity and can discharge this electricity at unexpected moments, so discharging them before handling any of the wiring is recommended using appropriately insulated tools.

Skip all the rigamarole with quick start to altering fan speeds.

Important: this post, the problem, the functions, the graphs, the spreadsheet, the replaced switch problem, the discussion, the installation, the final summary, and any other section or concept I’ve not mentioned: all apply only to one particular schematic, not reproduced on this page, but a likely candidate was found, a simplified three-capacitor ceiling-fan schematic, which uses one particular switch. If the fan uses another kind of switch from those two discussed herein, then my system of sorts won’t work as presented, at least not without some changes, possibly minor; or if the fan has two capacitors for three speeds, or is wired to any other schematic, my system of sorts also won’t work as presented.

Clearly, it is easiest and fastest to replace any blown capacitors with precisely equivalent values the factory used, if they are available; the same seems true of switches. This exact or precise replacement advice is, at the time of this writing, consistent with the vast majority of webpage ceiling fan FAQs easily found using search engines.

I must listen to the beat of a different drummer.

. . .  Introduction continued

After learning or realizing speeds could be altered, I decided that two fans in rather small rooms would be preferable running at somewhat slower than factory speeds, so making an informed guess as to which possible microfarad value capacitors to purchase took some study and spreadsheet creation time — quite a bit of time if one also includes writing about it. Not only did I want two of the fans slower overall, I particularly wanted to change medium speed’s relationship to high and low, from being rather close to high, to being closer to low, or at least be solidly in the middle judging from the breeze created. It’s possible to increase or decrease the range or distance, or fan-speed RPM variance, from high to low, and I decided I wanted less variance in those smaller rooms, high speed moved the air too fast and wasn’t used, and I wanted low to be slower.

Consequently, I needed to devise my own ideas regarding how these capacitors worked in the motor’s circuit for speed control purposes, and I needed to do this with all due haste, without becoming an electronic engineer, without spending years attempting to unravel the highly-complicated theories of hundreds of thousands of highly-precise past & present academics en masse, and without spending additional money beyond capacitor-module replacement. Fortunately, I was able to assemble other great web writers’ brief ideas, even if they were only presented in bits and pieces, into a system of sorts that allowed me to alter ceiling fan speeds by altering the capacitors values without needing to buy every available capacitor value and try them out by installation, followed by removal, and replacement with another, etcetera, until by sheer luck a combination of microfarad values were found that provided satisfactory fan speeds.

It’s rather ironic to remember that in my prior post I wrote I wanted a “quick and simple” solution.

This posting is intended for my own future reference. It has been through a number of revisions, as more information and further insights were added, at the time, to the only existing section which has now become the reorganized discussion section, the original post’s overall structure became more confusing, so a final (ha ha) restructuring seemed in order, and to some degree, is presented in the reverse order that it was originally written for inclusion. While the functions and graphs were one of these items added near the end during later revisions, included after I’d had several light-bulb moments due to the actual writing process, the spreadsheet was one of the first, and it uses the same functions or formulas. Much of the information presented is potentially confusing, some math is involved, and there are no guarantees that even the concept of my system of sorts has any basis in accepted or correct electronic theory, though it did work for my purposes.

Read at your own risk.

The nitty-gritty is found in the final summary at the end of the post, and should be accurate to the best of my knowledge; the replaced switch drawing of the chain-pull switches’ power-routing logistics should not be skipped, since there are multiple variations of switch logistics. Tracing the capacitors’ wires to the speed switch is also a good way to label capacitors one (C1), two (C2), and three (C3).

If you are formally trained and experienced in electronics, unlike myself, and you happen to read this post, any suggestions for improvement, or even a “You’re nuts!” followed by ‘the why’ rationale, would be appreciated. The spreadsheet calculations do seem to have one issue that I cannot resolve at this time, it’s explained below, and there may be others. Terminology I’ve used may not be what is typical when used by specialists.

The Problem

It’s always nice to know what one blown capacitor module looks like. The deformation on the side is quite visible, but there’s some on the left front as well. It’s understandable why, for ceiling fans, the capacitors are encased in injection-molded plastic and pourable epoxy. Unfortunately, the only way provided by the manufacturer to remove the module was to cut the wires. After the low-speed capacitor blew, this particular module continued to work on two remaining speeds before removal for well over a year of intermittent usage. It seems there are still two good capacitors in it.

Another module with a blown capacitor showed less-obvious case damage, but the purple wire was quite scorched, it’s color significantly darkened for about the first 1/2-3/4 of an inch measuring from the black epoxy. Apparently, before blowing, it seems capacitors get quite hot.

Replacement of the factory’s chosen microfarad values should be easy enough if those precise values are available, but how does one also alter the fan’s speed?

Functions

This section discloses the functions I conceived for ceiling fan speed alteration, after reading, and thinking about, web-based research fully disclosed in my prior post. I thought I could calculate the Capacitors’ Microfarad-Values Difference supplied to the two motor coils, what I have named Coils’ Δ (Δ = Delta or difference) in the tables below, and come up with an abstraction that relates, however imperfectly, to the fan’s speed. The formulas apply only to the schematic I used, though they could easily be altered for other typical ceiling fan circuits if the schematic is known.

These formulas have not been tested for accuracy by precise RPM measurement, but only a cursory, visual one mentioned briefly in the discussion section. Additionally, there is an incompatibility of High Δ to the other Δs, this is also discussed there. There may be and probably are other issues and flaws that I haven’t specifically identified.

These are the functions:

High Δ = f(C1)       =  C1
Low  Δ = f(C1,C3)    =  C3    -(1/((1/ C3    )+(1/C1)))
Med  Δ = f(C1,C2,C3) = (C2+C3)-(1/((1/(C2+C3))+(1/C1)))

How do I use these formulas?

Graphs

The graphs were created with Analysis 2.3 beta 3 (I don’t know why the copy I downloaded several years ago is a beta 3 and the latest version is beta 2, maybe the developer is counting down instead of up, or maybe there was a version rollback). I limited all graphs to 2D. 3D graphs just seemed to add another layer of abstraction without adding much additional understanding, and since most of us have had at least some exposure to 2D graphs, they seemed the easiest to understand.

How a 4D graph might look is a curiosity, since one should allow graphing all three capacitors as variables simultaneously, therefore (perhaps) needing only one graph for all effects upon Medium Δ. However, 4D graphs don’t seem to have been fully standardized yet, and in any case they are way beyond my nearly non-existent math skills. Would a 6D graph allow all variables and all Δs to be graphed simultaneously? Oops, back to reality. . . .

All y results are understood as microfarads, just as in the spreadsheet, and all x values are understood as the titled capacitor’s microfarad value. One of the following capacitor microfarad values is assigned as the x variable in all graphs below, and when not so assigned, they’re constants equivalent to one of the factory modules I removed:

C1 = 4
C2 = 4
C3 = 5

As a higher C1 capacitor or x-value is chosen, y or High Δ increases.

Increasing C1 to a greater value decreases both Low and Medium Δs.

As typical C3 values are increased, both Low and Medium Δ increases.

Considering a negative capacitor, if there is such a thing, goes well beyond my purpose of learning how to alter a ceiling fan’s speeds with typically available ceiling fan capacitors, which appear non-polarized, a type apparently expected in AC circuits.

This is the final effect I’ve graphed: as C2 increases, Medium Δ also increases.

These graphs present visually-based strategies to adjusting fan speeds that aren’t quite as apparent when looking at the spreadsheet. For instance, had I wanted low and medium speeds somewhat lower and either didn’t care if high would be somewhat faster, or specifically wanted high faster, then adjusting only C1 to a greater value, which lowers Medium and Low Δ, may have been all that was needed for the desired lower speeds.

This would perhaps have required buying fewer capacitors, but would have increased the high to low range, could have exceeded the +1 uf warning linked in my prior post which could potentially over-speed the fan, and even if not harmful to the motor itself (the medium speed circuit in one factory setup delivers 9uF total to the same coil that, if the schematic is accurate, C1 feeds when the switch is set to high), would likely have greater stresses on the ceiling mount and centrifugal forces on the blades, and potentially could be quite dangerous. In addition, faster speeds probably correlate to higher power consumption.

But I didn’t want high speed faster. . . . 

Spreadsheet

I used Calc, which is downloadable from OpenOffice.org, to calculate the coils’ capacitor Δs: Ceiling Fan Capacitor Calculation spreadsheet. Generally, it’s better to first save Internet-sourced files to the computer’s drive, then scan for viruses, both before opening the file. I did scan it before placing it on the server and it was clean at that time, but there’s no guarantee it’s still clean. Don’t forget the disclaimer!

Be sure to note there are two tabbed sheets included, the formulas are useful only for fans that use the wiring logic of the schematic I used, though it’s easy enough to alter the spreadsheet’s formulas for other ceiling fan wiring schemes if the reference link titled “Capacitors in series and parallel”, located in my prior post, is understood, and an accurate schematic of the fan is available.

How do I use the spreadsheet to alter speeds?

The spreadsheet does not attempt to convert the capacitors’ values into rotational fan speeds. It seems mostly useful for making a best guess regarding possible replacement capacitors’ microfarad values for speed-alteration purposes.

After some spreadsheet study time I chose 3uF, 2uF, and 4uF single capacitors to replace each factory module for the two fans I wanted to slow. The first fan’s speeds were about what I expected (the formulas seemed to have worked for their intended purpose), but the second fan moved much slower on the medium-speed setting, and no matter what combination of connections or reordering were tried, one speed was always too slow.

The Replaced Switch Problem

This is apparently another method to lower only medium’s speed, discovered by error. I had thought these two fans were identical, but the speed difference was found to be due to a switch I had replaced in that particular fan several years ago which routed power through the fan’s capacitors slightly differently, and which I had forgotten about having installed.

The replaced switch fan, when the switch was set on medium, routed power through only two capacitors, Med Δ = f(C1,C2), instead of the factory’s design of all three, Med Δ = f(C1,C2,C3), and my spreadsheet formulas hadn’t been intended for that logistic. I recall that after the switch’s installation some years ago, the wiring going to it had to be reordered so high was on chain pull one, medium on pull two, and low on pull three. I also recall simply being happy enough that its prior broken switch was replaced and that the fan seemed to work again with three reasonably acceptable speeds, even though I didn’t understand why medium speed had slowed down.

Here’s how the original and replacement switches work, presented in semi-schematic form that is accurate for the two fan switches we have according to continuity testing. Note the differences, especially with regard to the column under “Medium”. The innermost circle and four dots represent potential connection points, lines between those dots indicate connections or continuity. Moving outward, the next circle with numbers indicates printing on the case of the switch housing near each wire insertion point, and the area just outside any circle may indicate the color of the factory wire connected to it.

If the fan has different switch-to-capacitors-to-motor coils’ logistics, then the coil difference formulas won’t necessarily work without some rather minor modifications, nor would these switches necessarily work.

Ultimately, this project has also taught me that it doesn’t matter a great deal what kind of switch the fan has provided it’s all wired logically. I’ve even conceived of how to adapt our fans’ inner wiring to the two-capacitor, three-speed ceiling fan wiring scheme, but I don’t have one of those kinds of switches to play with, so I think I’ll let that conception pass, for now, but trying and testing it could shed further understanding upon the spreadsheet issue explained below. Why buy a switch if one isn’t needed? But it’s nice to know that if it was the only kind of switch available, with sufficient forethought and rewiring time, perhaps additional capacitor microfarad changes, it could probably be made to work pretty much the same.

Discussion

I used the spreadsheet by first inputting the values of the factory capacitor (which should be printed on each capacitor case), noting the calculated answers, and then comparing those answers to other possible capacitor combinations’ answers. I then used simple if-then formulas, such as testing for medium values being lower than low values, then sorting the answers and making appropriate row deletions, as well as coloring and cut & paste features quite a bit to pare down the vast number of potential choices. However, there is an even simpler way to make these decisions, but I didn’t know what it was until after writing out, then revising, what I had learned, an iterative process which seemed to provide further insights.

One issue to be aware of is the need to get each capacitor’s respective value into the appropriate C1, C2, or C3 spreadsheet cell: wire colors, where those wires go, and schematic diagrams are all useful for this, but the single best way to locate and identify them seems to be following the wires to and from the chain-pull speed-switch wire-insertion number (switch terminal).

Skip all the rigamarole and jump to the next table entry.

One identified spreadsheet issue is seen in the light green column, which represents high. This column’s answers cannot be directly compared to the answers in the light blue columns: a lower value in High’s Δ may result in a faster fan speed than a higher value for Med’s Δ, or the next one which represents Low’s Δ. For example, using the data for the factory module, the “4″ is faster in the high-speed circuit than “6.23″ is in the medium-speed circuit. However, it seems the two light blue columns can be compared to each other, these represent “medium” and “low”, respectively. It is not clear whether medium and low values associated with one high Δ (in the same row) can be compared to other medium and low values with a numerically different high Δ existing in their respective rows, though that is a presumption I made both at first and in the table above.

C1 entered values are included in the function or calculation of medium and low Δs of the same row, as well as simply echoed for the high circuit. Since a shorted or solid wire apparently approaches infinite capacitancesee prior post for reference link, it’s possible it’s in error, then if one coil is supplied with infinite capacitance, and the other with C1’s value, then high Δ is the difference between these two coils. I’m not sure how to mathematically deal with the infinity concept correctly, there are several possibilities that I can conceive, two of which are ∞-C1 or C1-∞, but how does one convert that into a practical number unless infinity and zero can be substituted for each other on the number line?

One potential rationale for the error is that C1 feeds one coil in the high circuit, in the other two circuits, it appears to feed the other coil, judging from the schematic. Perhaps these two coils have different angles with respect to each other and or the motor’s magnets. Anyway . . . if high’s value could be compared to the medium and low circuits, then the high to low range could easily be calculated, and a spreadsheet formula such as (med-low)/(high-low) could give an accurate abstraction of the relationship of medium to high and low, and which could also help to filter the many possible capacitor combinations down to a smaller subset of preferred values.

It seems the best way to use the spreadsheet to select capacitor values, for the particular wiring schematic under discussion and using the factory switch, is to choose the high value that results in an acceptable high speed either by noting the spreadsheet value’s percentage change, installing that value capacitor and testing the high speed, or a combination of both. Then, keep only those rows that include that particular high column’s capacitor value, deleting all the other rows that have different values in that same column; then select low speed values only from those remaining rows, and thirdly or lastly, select medium speed capacitor values. My reasoning for this is due to the fact that the high speed circuit uses only this one single capacitor (C1): the other two slower circuits also use this same capacitor in addition to others, therefore, all circuits are dependent upon C1 to one degree or another. Following this reasoning, the slow circuit uses two capacitors, C1 and C3, so it seems selection of C3 is the next logical choice. Finally, medium speed uses all three capacitors.

Another way of stating this is: if medium speed is unsatisfactory, changing capacitors C2, C3, and/or C1 will change medium’s speed, but changing any capacitor other than C2 will also change other speed settings; if low speed is unsatisfactory, changing C3 and/or C1 will change low’s speed, but changing C3 will also effect medium speed while changing C1 will effect all three speeds; and finally, if high speed is unsatisfactory, changing C1 will change high’s speed, but changing it also effects all other speeds. Thinking of it this way is somewhat more complicated than as-simple-as-it-can-be construed.

This is also, apparently, determined from the formula functions:

High Δ = f(C1)
Low  Δ = f(C1,C3)
Med  Δ = f(C1,C3,C2)

In the search for the perfect combination of fan speeds, it may be necessary to compromise to some degree, due to space limitations and capacitor values that are available, though if the capacitors are small enough and there is enough space for more than three, then by using multiple capacitors in series and or parallel, and substituted for each single capacitor in the basic schematic, speed choices would seem quite numerous and adaptable.

With one set of medium and low Δs, I found that multiplying them by “4″ resulted in a close prediction of the fan’s respective speeds over a 10-second time period, the speeds that in some cases I could count visually by timing with a stopwatch. However, that relationship did not hold with some other capacitor values I checked, so I concluded I either made an observation error or the relationship of coils’ Δ to fan’s RPM, if one exists (it certainly seems to), is not linear.

Installation

A removed and fully-functional module is seen next to the new and, except for the 4uF in the front, lower-value single capacitors on the right. The reason the module is both still functional and removed is the fans I wanted to slow were not the fans with blown capacitors. It was my intent to move these good modules to the broken fans, to minimize the number of capacitors purchased. However, there was another problem, the factory module had five wires, these replacement capacitors had six wires.

When I wired the capacitors into the fans, I used male and female insulated crimp connectors. I thought this would make the process of switching their ordering, or future replacements, that much easier. The harness simulates the schematic printed on the factory’s modules. There may have been a cleaner or simpler way to do this, but this was what I happened to think of at the time.

With respect to the mini-harness, I was worried about the wire’s insulation, so I additionally wrapped it with electrical tape.

This is a photo of the factory switch fan’s control housing or case with the new capacitors installed. Some of the model numbers on the switch can be seen.

Final Summary

Pulling it all together, and in spite of some initial confusion, spreadsheet issues, seemingly needless complications, and errors, this is the final installation outcome for the fan with the factory switch. Does it look familiar?

To summarize the ordered and incremental steps to alter the fan’s speeds, with respect only to the simplified three-capacitor ceiling fan schematic, using the factory switch to identify each particular capacitor (C2 and C3, C1 is the sole remainder), then:

1. Set high speed first by altering C1’s value if high speed is unsatisfactory. Changing C1’s value changes all speeds.
2. Set low speed second by altering C3’s value if low speed is unsatisfactory. Changing C3’s value also changes medium’s speed.
3. Set medium speed last by altering C2’s value if medium speed is unsatisfactory. Changing C2’s value only effects medium speed.

How much does changing the microfarad values effect other speeds?

Writing this post out sure helped me to understand how the capacitors effect different speeds. Remember, I do not advise you to repair or alter your own fan!

While on our monthly grocery shopping trip, we stopped by the store where we purchased the fans. They either no longer carried these replacement capacitors, or never carried them in the first place.

The home center, sometimes referred to as a mega-store, did have wall-mount speed controls, and had I desired to cut a hole in the wall, install an electrical box, the necessary wiring to the fan, patch the drywall and paint, as well as spend the additional time to accomplish all of that, then perhaps those types of speed controls could be retrofitted into the existing system, but I just wanted a replacement module for the burned out capacitor so the repair was quick and simple, nor involved replacing the rest of the perfectly fine ceiling fan.

At the mega-store, after looking for replacements on the shelf and not being able to locate them, I then spoke to the employee in the fan department, who said, “No, we don’t carry them,” but added that he’d been trying to get management to stock them and hadn’t had any luck.

I went to the customer service desk, and looked through their supply book for some period of time, checking multiple cross-references in its index. Nope, there were no in-the-fan-housing capacitor modules to be found.

Later that evening after we got back home and unpacked the groceries, I searched the Internet, and found several online suppliers.

1. Replacement ceiling fan capacitors supplier site 1.

2. Replacement ceiling fan capacitors supplier site 2.

In studying those two sites above, it is apparent from the latter one that even though the modules are rated by the two, three, or four capacitors they contain, the schematics and internal wiring also have several variations. This would affect installation of a replacement. Since the type we need has two wires internally connected to one side of all three capacitors according to the on-the-module schematic, some of the four-wire type that don’t appear to match should work provided I wire them into the rest of the fan’s wiring in such a way to simulate that internal connection.

It appears that a number of differently rated modules could be installed. The exact same values as the failed unit are probably best provided those values are printed on the outside of the bad module. In our case they were: 5-wire, 4uf + 4uf + 5uf; the second fan is 4uf + 5uf + 5uf; “uf” means micro farad, a value of capacitance. No module replacements seem to match those values exactly in 5-wire, and it’s cautioned that the capacitance value can only vary by +/- 1uf. The repair question morphs again, complicating matters: do we want a slightly slower fan speed, or slightly faster, and which farad value, either an increase or a decrease, achieves each?

For a slightly slower speed it appears we’ll need a lower capacitance value: for a higher speed, a higher capacitance value. Apparently, a shorted or solid wire approaches infinite capacitance (MS word doc).

This is confirmed by the schematic logic in the links below. Perhaps it would be better to just replace the single one that has blown:

1. Single ceiling fan capacitors supplier site 3.

This is an interesting repair option, and in our fan’s case of a factory three-in-one module, it would likely and initially require installation of three single capacitors due to the fan-case space limitation of keeping the old module in addition to the replacement: the bad one can’t singly be removed. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, these “single capacitors” may not have the correct rating, their catalog is using an “m” (milli) instead of a “u” (micro). This is possibly a typo related to the computer age’s typical use of ASCII, the actual, old-fashioned character for micro is “µ”.

Another question arises: is there enough room in the fan’s case, or, what physical size are these single capacitors? One attraction of these is that once the three-in-one module is replaced with three single ones, and properly wired into the rest of the fan, should any ever blow again in the future, only the single blown ones will require replacement. One downside of this is that they are not available in fractional microfarad values, should one of those be desired for any reason. Another downside is that the supplier only has values of 1-5 “m”fd, no 6 or 7, so this will not work for one of the fans which I want to very slightly increase the hi speed, and increase the low and medium speed, unless an extra one is added in parallel: then there would be additional housing-space requirements.

For those who may need additional ceiling-fan repair instruction:

1. General ceiling fan repair with photos, repair information, and wiring schematic.

2. Schematic diagram of reversible 3-speed ceiling-fans.

While I won’t be installing a variable speed controller, it is nice to know one could be built from scratch, if desired:

1. Variable speed ceiling fan control.

Some online sources claim the variable type of speed controller sometimes cause humming or buzzing while the fan is in operation.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but I spent several hours online learning more about ceiling fan capacitors than I ever wanted to know! I’ve actually created a spreadsheet and, assuming the generic schematic (scroll down, two different ones on page) that may match our fan, attempted to mathematically simulate the capacitance difference between the two motor inductance coils, since there are so many possible capacitance value combinations possible that feed these coils.

While it’s always nice to learn something new, if you have the time, these blown speed-control modules should have been a simple-to-replace item, but it’s become slightly more complicated than simple!

This has become a two-part topic, the next post is a continuation: Ceiling Fan Capacitor Solutions.

I’m sure there are a lot of other sources of ceiling-fan capacitors, and if I didn’t find yours: so sorry.

General electronic references:
Capacitors in series and parallel.
Schematic Symbols site 1.
Schematic Symbols site 2.
Capacitors.

Electronic Abbreviations site 1.
Electronic Abbreviations site 2.

Capacitor suppliers not listed above:
Ceiling Fan Capacitor supplier site 4.

Ceiling fan capacitor manufacturer information:
PDF - NTE ceiling fan capacitors

In the middle of the devastation, it appears there is a grain silo, or perhaps some other type of building, that escaped relatively unharmed. A sequentially earlier photo, in the upper right quadrant, shows some less-damaged commercial (presumably) buildings, on what may be a main street, judging by the street’s apparent greater width, running diagonally towards the grain silo. It appears to me the two photos are taken from opposite sides of the silo.

In areas subject to tornadoes, perhaps all buildings should be constructed similarly to those that were less damaged. From the photos, it appears the worst damaged buildings were possibly people’s homes, judging from cars amidst the timber debris (that suggest former garages).

The cynic in me says that nothing will likely change, local building codes will probably continue to approve the same types of construction for rebuilt homes, possibly because, while tragic, rebuilding is good for certain business sectors.

It is quite curious that what seems to be business or commercial buildings seem less damaged. Perhaps those were buildings constructed in an earlier era.

‘The proposal states that “no action shall lie . . . in any court, and no penalty . . . shall be imposed . . . against any person” for giving the government information, including customer records, in connection with alleged intelligence activity the attorney general certifies “is, was, would be or would have been” intended to protect the United States from terrorist attack. The measure, which has not yet been filed, is contained in a proposed amendment to the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill.’ read the full story…

Surely this must be another form of Corporate Welfare. If phone companies broke the law, and cooperated with a portion of the government illegally, then shouldn’t they be held both financially and criminally liable? The Executive Branch doesn’t play legislative interference when a person has shoplifted by declaring there should be no penalty for having doing so; by similar logic, why should telephone corporations be granted special legal exemption from laws they were supposed to follow?

On January 17, 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrote a letter stating that, in the future, all intelligence gathering of targeted communications will be conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (PDF link via Wikipedia). Unfortunately, the story detailed by the Washington Post news item referenced above, if true, shows that the Executive Branch wishes to excuse the past illegalities of its co-conspirators.

Why is it constitutional for the Justice Department, which is under the Executive Branch, to write legislation, when Article 1 of the Constitution grants legislative authority to the Legislative Branch, otherwise known as Congress?

It appears that phone companies that may have illegally complied with past Executive Branch requests for intelligence on phone conversations have left the companies with a rather large legal liability. In turn, the Executive Branch appears to be attempting to mitigate these liabilities by legislating retroactively. If it was illegal then, then why declare that no penalties or punishments can be assigned for those acts?

This appears to me to be ultimately all about money, and the ability of certain wealthy entities to be above law in effect at the time. In order to achieve this the Executive Branch simply attempts to change the law for the benefit of very few. Shouldn’t there be a penalty for breaking the law?

As usual, citizens lose when the government doesn’t advocate for them, but instead for a few wealthy entities that have interests that oppose the Constitution and the law. Congress needs to severely limit the power of the Executive Branch to legislate.

A good first step would be to impeach the current occupants of the White House.

The viewpoint of the simulator has been set as earth, meaning this series of images are geocentric.

This next one interests me the most:

I marked the one above where the rings align with earth. I spent some time studying a number of books about Western astrology some years ago, but I’ve never read of anything that places importance on the day when earth intersects with a plane that represents an imaginary extension of Saturn’s rings.

The date that appears to correlate with the coming alignment, September 1, 2009, puts Saturn at 22Virgo55 when using a tropical zodiac; when using sidereal, 28Leo02. However, there’s a window of about +/- 2 days where Saturn’s rings similarly appear to disappear, and since I’ve judged the date of 9/1/2007 visually, the precise zodiacal degree mentioned has a little variance.

In viewing the series of images, the rings appear to oscillate up then down. This is most apparent in the image of 2008.12.01, where Saturn’s rings almost disappear, but then the next image’s leading edge of the rings appear to move back ‘upward’ for a period of time. I believe that is likely due to the earth’s orbit around the sun, the periodicity of the oscillation appears to be based upon an earth year. I’ve been meaning to run a set with the sun as the viewpoint, but this post has been sitting here in the blog for some time, and I just don’t have much time right now. Maybe later.

This post shows how to have more than one Post Preview section on the Write Post page in 2+ versions. It involves slightly altering the /wp-admin/post.php file with a small portion of ever-so-slightly altered code that was originally included in the same file from the earlier 1.5.2 versions. If you decide to try this, any WordPress upgrade you perform will overwrite these changes, and the programmers occasionally make changes to this file (version 2.0.5 to 2.1.2 had changes), so saving it from version to version is not a very good idea. You’ll also want to make sure you save a backup copy of the original file so you can easily undo these changes.

These instructions are specific to WordPress 2.1.2. This has also been tested to work in WordPress 2.0.5. Portions of this may seem redundant with the last post, which was specific for 1.5+, other portions will not, but it’s probably a good idea to read Improved Proofreading In Wordpress anyway, as that’s the post where I explain why this is a valuable technique.

Let’s get on with it.

Download post.php from your /wp-admin/ directory, and open the file in a text editor. After line number 69’s (explicitly specific to v2.1.2) close php, which reads as:

?>

Or right at the beginning of line 70, or the two lines that read as:

<div id='preview' class='wrap'> <h2 id="preview-post"><?php _e('Post Preview (updated when post is saved)'); ?></h2>

add two or three carriage returns (hit enter a few times). Please note the ‘less than’ and ‘greater than’ characters above are encoded, so you generally can’t copy them into search and expect to find the matching text.

Next, copy all the code in the text file named post.php212.modifications.txt and paste it into the blank line or lines you just added to the post.php open in your text editor. Save the file, then upload it to the /wp-admin/ directory of your weblog. This code is from the relevant section from WordPress 1.5.2’s post.php, except for a couple of small changes.

Because ‘post.php212.modifications.txt’ includes two nearly but not precisely identical sections, the changes to the CSS are slightly different than in my previous post.

Next, download wp-admin.css, located in the /wp-admin/ directory, then open it in a text editor. Find the line that reads as:

p, li, dl, dd, dt { line-height: 130%; }

Delete the “p” so it reads as:

li, dl, dd, dt { line-height: 130%; }

Find the line that reads, “textarea, input, select” (should be next). Skip to the bottom of that section, after the closing “}”, and add a few carriage returns or blank lines.

Copy the following:

/alteration/ .storycontentmonospace { font-family: “Courier New”, Courier, monospace; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: .1em; line-height: 2.1em; }

/alteration/ .storycontentsansserif { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; letter-spacing: .07em; line-height: 2.0em; }

and paste it into the blank lines you just added. Save that file, and upload it back to your /wp-admin/ weblog directory.

That’s it. It is useful to remember that the font families listed in the CSS, as well as the order they appear in and whether your machine has them, control which one displays on your workstation. If you don’t have the first one listed on your local machine, it looks for the next one listed until it finds a matching font. Consequently, you may need to either download fonts onto your machine, or change the first font listed (with respect to the added CSS commands) to a complete set (regular, bold, italic regular, and italic bold) that you do have.

Regarding the additions you just made to post.php (the single cut and paste described above), note there are two sections added plus the default iframe section. This allows you to have a total of three (3) Post Preview sections displayed in your Write Post page, each one of which will have a different font for proofreading. This may be overkill for you. If so, you can delete all or either of those two added sections.

As a final note, the WP 2.1.2 modified Post Preview display shows the ‘read more’ tag, as well as the ‘code’ tag, which didn’t appear in earlier 1.5.2+ versions. I don’t know why this is, I’m not particularly familiar with the ‘under the hood’ changes to the 2.0+ series codebase.

Therefore, I wanted WordPress to show me the post text in several different fonts on the Write Post page as a proofreading aid. The following How To applies to WordPress 1.5.2. This will not work in the newer 2+ series because the Write Post page, specifically post.php, has been completely reworked in the newer version. It is possible to recode post.php to do this (I’ve tested it in 2.0.5); however, that goes beyond the scope of this post which is limited to a simple CSS formatting change.

This was first implemented as a project on another 1.5.2 blog that I participate in as co-administrator, and it seemed like it had been quite awhile since I had posted anything here, so I thought why not share the template modification. The WordPress 1.5.2 Write Post page in the administration area offers the ability to see the written post in two separate fonts, yet the default CSS is not set up to show more than one font. In both the textarea box where a post is written, and in the Post Preview area where the whole text is visible after a save, the default font is Georgia. Additionally, the title in Post Preview is an active hyperlink that applies the blog’s template regardless of whether the post is a draft, published, or private post. So, because of the three separate areas where the draft can be viewed, the blogger or writer has the ability to have three separate fonts for quick proofreading without needing to do anything more than write, save, read, click again, and read again — this last proofread uses the font assigned to the blog template.

I decided I wanted the Post Preview area to show in Courier with increased whitespace and letter spacing, both for readability. Courier, an old-fashioned font that came with many typewriters in the pre-computer era, has the proofreading advantage of being non-proportional or monospaced. So I went into the wp-admin directory, downloaded wp-admin.css (note that this is not the themes or templates directory), then opened it in a text editor. I looked (or searched) for “textarea”, it was around line 145. Beneath it I added: .storycontent { font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: .1em; line-height: 2.1em; }

Your eyes may not require as large a font as 14px, if so reduce it to a smaller number such as 10, or 12, or some other choice. Play around with the letter-spacing and line-height as well if you wish.

However, this was not the only change I needed to make. The line-height command was being overwritten by, or conflicted with, another section a few lines above that read as: p, li, dl, dd, dt { line-height: 130%; } I deleted the “p” so it reads as: li, dl, dd, dt { line-height: 130%; } So far I have noted no undesired effects from deleting the p, though there are likely other ways of approaching this conflict, possibly including deleting the whole command or changing the sequential ordering (but I haven’t tested these latter ideas, it works well enough for me as explained). I saved this file and uploaded it back to its original location. It’s always a good idea to save the original, unaltered file somewhere.

Now, the Post Preview section reads in Courier New with the individual characters slightly spread out on each line, as well as each line appearing to be double spaced. Since the template on this blog uses the proportional Verdana or sans-serif font family as it’s main display font, and since the textarea box where a post is written is assigned Georgia or serif font family, I can quickly proofread a post in three distinctly different fonts including a non-proportional one before pressing the final “publish” post button.

As a warning, Courier New, a True Type font, also comes in italic and bold font versions. If your workstation only has Courier, your italics will possibly be simulated, and quite unclear, or they won’t show that formatting at all. If that’s the case and you use italics and or bold in your posts, you may wish to choose another non-proportional or monospaced font set that you know you have on your system.

On Nov 7, 2006, upon arrival at the polling place with completed sample ballot in hand, unfamiliar voting machines were visible from the doorway. I asked the poll workers if paper ballots were available. They were! They asked me if I would like one. No, I decided, I wanted to experience the computerized system first hand.

Most elections I’ve participated in over the years have used the punch card machine, the one made infamous by the hanging chads of the presidential contest of 2000 between Bush and Gore. Since that time, our district of San Diego County has sometimes used a paper ballot and pen that was optically scanned as a last step before the voter left the polling location. This time, and for the first time, our district used DRE machines made by Diebold.

I don’t intend to vote using one again.

The process of entering one’s sample ballot selections into the machine was easy and straightforward enough, but auditing ones results was a study of frustration. While I didn’t think to measure the total time used to vote, I estimate it took at least four times longer than any other method I’ve used in the past, and most of this extra time is spent to insure the machine has recorded and will cast the vote as intended.

Double checking never seemed an issue with the punch card machines after the pin had been pressed into the correct hole, though evidently chads not fully punched are an issue. The other system, a paper ballot and pen, can be doubled checked when it’s initially filled out while the sample ballot is open to the contest page in question.

Here are some things I noticed as problems when using the Diebold DRE with a voter verified paper trail:

The initial vote screens seemed to match up with the pages of the sample ballot until about page six, where one contest from the sample ballot appeared on another page of the DRE device. This problem seemed somewhat minor, but it does seem somewhat confusing and perhaps slightly time consuming.

Once all votes had been cast, the computer built a summary page view. This was arranged into three columns. The voter must go back to page one of the sample ballot unless they have all the contest choices memorized. Another flaw is that all candidates’ full names were not always visible in the summary view, in some cases only their first names were presented. One must scroll downward to complete column one’s sequence, then one must scroll up to find the top of column two, followed by scroll downs to complete column two, then a scroll up to the top of column three, followed by scroll downs to complete the summary audit. The arrangement didn’t match the sample ballot at all, and it seems fewer scrolls could have easily been designed by sequencing the contest data in rows instead of columns.

One time I accidentally touched the summary screen while using my fingers to help track a particular line while my eyes darted between the screen and sample ballot. The machine decided to take me back to the initial vote casting screen that correlated to that contest, presumably so I could change it. I had to press the summary button again, and the machine’s screen said something to the effect of “building summary file”. Whoops.

I asked a poll worker if that meant I had to go back and double check the answers I’d already checked, and he said no (all the poll workers were different this year, and predominately of the younger, computer-literate generation) This advice I promptly judged as naive or computer illiterate at best, and likely coached at worst. The computer was clear, it had built a new summary file, so I needed to start back at the beginning of column one of the summary view and page back in my sample ballot again, unless I was willing to gamble that the computer hadn’t made any errors.

I can only imagine how much time voting might have taken had there been errors that needed correcting. The summary view was user unfriendly. There was something wrong with the scrolling, so after the device had completed the scroll, finding the next line to focus upon was an issue.

When the summary self-audit was completed, there was a paper printout that I could not touch but could see through a small glass window. This printout appeared to be thermal paper with dark print. I can’t tell you how stupid I think that decision was, if the paper was in fact thermal paper, given that the voter-verified printout is intended as a permanent record of each voter’s intent. There have been years when I’ve had receipts printed on thermal paper that I’ve had to discard from my end-of-year accounting because I could not read them, as time and or heat had rendered the print unreadable on darkened paper. All some election fraud perpetrator would need to do is leave the paper ballots in a warm enough location, such as a closed vehicle parked in the sun light on a warm day, or perhaps stored inside a non-climate controlled facility, and the thermal paper record’s usefulness is likely destroyed.

The printout was much shorter than the summary screen, two lines for each contest. Many of the lines were self-explanatory, unfortunately, the judicial section was not. Our election had about fifteen choices for judicial positions. On the paper printout, every line that titled twelve of those contests appeared precisely the same, they all read “Associate justice court of AP…”, that line was followed by another line indicating the yes or no vote: No candidate name appeared in any of this judicial sequence. The only way I was able to discern what candidate those lines correlated to was to count the lines and assume the ordering was the same as that presented in the sample ballot. Great, I need to assume something for a self-audit? To make matters worse, all fifteen contests did not appear at once under the limited glass size. The first presented readout needed to be accepted somewhere in the middle of the fifteen choices, afterward the next page printed and scrolled. The scroll itself caused issues with this counting to determine the contest, several of the bottom lines of the previous printout remained at the top of the glass screen. If I had not been watching very closely during the scroll itself, this would have caused me to get lost in the counted sequence that I correlated to the sample ballot ordering.

Is this judicial obfuscation deliberate? How can this possibly provide a paper trail of the voter’s intent if the name of the candidate isn’t printed on the paper trail?

The only good thing I can say is I did not experience any problems with the machine changing my vote, or making the voting for any of the candidates I intended to vote for hard to select, so far as I could tell, and as has been reported in the news at times.

In past years, once contest choices had been decided and the sample ballot marked, I remember spending no more than 2-5 minutes zipping through all the choices on the ballot at the polling place, though standing in line and waiting for a voting booth added to that time. I conservatively estimate that I spent at least 20 minutes actually voting on this DRE device. Since the process of voting on these machines takes about four times longer due to all the self-auditing and matching up of different presentational formats (that I truly felt needed to be checked), it’s no surprise that some voting districts that use these machines are reported as having long lines. The reported move by some other districts towards voting super centers in favor of the familiar neighborhood polling places will only exacerbate this problem. The mixing of formats in the summary view and separate printout view lead to a definite lack-of-clarity: another term for that could be obfuscation, certainly the failure to provide any of the candidates’ names on the judicial section of the paper trail is some type of obfuscation.

The process of filling out the ballot has been rendered much more difficult and complicated with this particular machine than it used to be with other ballot types.

Prior to this experience, I was open to the idea of electronic voting on a DRE machine so long as it had an unalterable paper record of the vote cast, this is seen in a willingness to try the system once our polling place offered it. Now that I’ve seen and experienced its implementation first hand, the thermal alterable paper that also fails to show my complete intent, the formatting confusion between the initial vote screens versus summary view versus the paper printout, even the polling place worker who claimed that I didn’t need to re-check when the machine built a new summary file, never again will I choose to vote with such a machine.

Of all the types of voting systems I’ve experienced, paper and pen seems the clearest, simplest, and fastest. Why make voting apparatus more complicated than it needs to be?

Randy Wooten, a mayoral candidate in Arkansas found out that his vote for himself wasn’t counted, official results showed him with a vote count of zero. Reports seem to indicate the voting machine was not from Diebold.

I have never once observed or experienced the actual counting of the votes. Counting the votes openly seems even more important than the type of voting system used, and how the votes are counted in machines using proprietary code owned by private corporations can never be known by the majority of citizens.

It seems to me that we need not only paper ballots and pens, but local hand counting by citizen volunteers at the polling locations and observable by concerned voters, with results posted immediately, publicly, and openly.

Until then we can kiss our democratic republic farewell. I was wrong to ever believe that computerized voting could be a good thing.

The punch card systems were counted by computers, except when they needed close examination. Paper ballots marked by pens and followed by optical scanning are essentially computers counting the vote, but once again the ballots might be counted by hand if there’s suspicion surrounding the results. DRE and their complicated system is perhaps the epitome of computerized vote aggregating, if equipped with one, their paper trail also can be recounted if necessary, but then there’s the little problem I noted above of the paper trail not always including all candidates’ names, and a potential temporal record issue if thermal paper was used. Lawyers seeking access to these paper records for purposes of recount have reportedly been experiencing cooperation difficulties.

For my entire life computers have been involved in counting votes. The computers apparently run proprietary, private code under the control of a few corporations, therefore it is not surprising that over the longer term such a ‘democracy’ has found itself living as a corporatist system.

During the time that I traded, which I no longer do, it became apparent to me that volume, one technical measure of how many shares changed hands in the given time period, seemed artificially inflated at times. It was nothing in my view that could be proven using only pure technical analysis, but it was more of a gut feeling based upon studies of price and volume movement contrasted against how it moved historically.

Options? Today we learn:

“One of the nation’s highest-paid executives has left his job after becoming ensnared in a stock options scandal that already has forced dozens of companies across the country to wipe out billions in combined profits.” read more…

I’m continually amazed by the apparent corruption that seems to exist in business and at the top of many hierarchical pyramids that exist all around us, whether it is legal or not. While I’m not privy to any information about this particular scandal beyond what I read in the news, the following phrase caught my attention, “… has forced dozens of companies across the country to wipe out billions in combined profits.” Does this mean that those employees, companies, and investors who owned stock in the unnamed companies were lied to before the “profits” were wiped out?

From the same article:

“The company’s review didn’t reach any conclusion about whether there was intentional wrongdoing….”

Why does our society teach most of us little citizens to be honest, and punishes us severely when we’re not, often with zero tolerance, but that people at the top of hierarchy seem to get minor punishments, if any, when they’re either dishonest or seem to be? If it’s true that only the dishonest rise to the top, then why as a society do we teach our children to be honest and punish them when they’re not? (I’m not personally convinced that ‘only’ the dishonest rise to the top, it just often seems that way). Perhaps the question that should be asked is why do any of the dishonest ever rise to the top?

It’s curious that those with so much income seem to so easily escape the severe punishment so commonly prescribed for the rest of us. Why is stealing a candy bar such a heinous offense that it requires jail time, or at the very least a court appearance; but if you’re a CEO and take millions with the stroke of a pen are you allowed to resign if discovered, maybe pay back a small portion of it, perhaps continue to collect an astronomical retirement, indeed, simply have your act deemed “an error”.

We have a serious inequity of justice in the United States and we also appear to have a serious inequity of income distribution, both appear deep and entrenched, and lately these two groups seem to intersect in the title of CEO.

There’s an old saying, “Those with the gold make the rules.”

Why isn’t that rule enshrined in the text of the Declaration of Independence, and observed within the governmental structure delineated by the U.S. Constitution? Perhaps because it isn’t supposed to be that way?

Reality is hard to dismiss, even with a dreamy statement of principals that contradicts it.