[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrmQB38aT5U[/youtube]

Procol Harum of Whiter Shade of Pale fame, whose genius is lost in history to all but the most musically anal … this is the instrumental Repent Walpurgis. 1967.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRpMVJrANdE[/youtube]

(yes, I’m cheating … a second song by Procol Harum … the wonderful and dramatic ‘A Salty Dog’)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6BzNEZxbiw[/youtube]

Randy Newman, I Think It’s Going To Rain Today. Not much I can say about this song other than it’s just one of the most beautiful things ever written and sung by another mostly under appreciated artist who will be looked back at as one of the great song writers of the 20th century.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4c54PAzXrM[/youtube]

There is no sadder song than the Paul’s Beatles song “For No One.” Even John Lennon supposedly said this was his favorites and Paul McCartney’s best song. I often have this song on repeat. I’m happy to report that I cannot relate to this song on a personal level, but I can still ‘feel’ it, which is the mark of a great song.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6iAykoKLog[/youtube]

Of course no post regarding music would be complete without a Dylan song, but a lot of his videos are blocked so I’ll go with Things Have Changed. Enjoy!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo[/youtube]

I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road
If the Bible is right, the world will explode
I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

The company has a large elevator is at Fulton, Illinois (across the Mississippi River from Clinton, Iowa), which is served by the Union Pacific. Another is at McGregor, Iowa on Canadian Pacific’s Dakota Minnesota & Eastern. Since UP rarely delivers grain trains to TZPR (the last I saw was in 1999!), any Agri-Bunge traffic to Peoria is probably from the McGregor facility (which would be routed to the Iowa Interstate at Davenport).

- David P. Jordan

Original post by Billy Dennis

Original post by Billy Dennis

I love my job.

Okay, yeah, it’s been cutting into my game design, because I’m solving design problems at work. I haven’t had the mental bandwidth to do much more. (Well, that’s some of it, at least.) But, on the other hand, I get to apply my game design lessons to business issues.

Here’s an example of what I mean. At GenCon 2008, in a late-night conversation with some other designers, I uttered a phrase that had been kicking around in my head for a while: “players are more than just emitters of moves”. A system–be it a game system or a business system– is composed of people, and people do more than just emit moves…or perform tasks. They are each one a complex individual, and a designer who fails to take that into account is being foolish.

(As an aside, I consider that to be the point that I diverged a bit from my strict interest in Eurogames and found myself giving Fantasy Flight Games a lot of money for games like Cosmic Encounter and Battlestar Galactica, which both require that you play the players, not just their mechanical positions.)

I’ve heard a related sentiment echoed by Mark Rosewater, Head Designer for Magic: The Gathering. He has said on several occasions that “you can’t fight human nature”. Sometimes, design simply needs to bow to the reality that people are a certain way, and, even though the designed method might be superior in the abstract, it fails because it runs counter to human nature.

But this cuts against the personality that I’ve seen present in designers (including myself). I mean, if it was written in the rules (or the SOP), shouldn’t people do it? I mean, it’s right there, right? And who cares if the method doesn’t make sense to the people who are using it? If the outcome is superior, that’s all that is important, right?

And then, today, at staff prayer, I had a sudden thought. God designed the universe, right? That means all the intricate order of physics and astronomy and chemistry was all originally orchestrated and designed by Him. So, when we look at nature, what do we see? Certainly, we see order. We see repeatable behavior and consistency. As an example, consider the states of matter: solid, liquid, gas (and plasma, right?). The solid form of a substance is more dense than its liquid form, which is in turn more dense than its gaseous form. Right?

But what about water? Ice, the solid form of water, is actually less dense than water, which is why ice floats in water.

Buh?

That doesn’t make any sense at all! Except, if ice sank in water, it would kill all the fish, who would not be sheltered from the cold winter air by the protective layer of ice that forms on top of the water.

A human designer might have applied the rule with a broad stroke, making ice sink in water. It would have been elegant, simple, even aesthetically pleasing to consider rationally.

It also would have been wrong.

God knows the value of the well-crafted exception in design. Because simplicity isn’t the goal.

I think I need to consider this further.

It’s good advice for citizen journalists, too.

Cross posted to TellPeoria.com. There’s an advertisement at the beginning.

Talk to anyone who has served on a jury. There’s always at least one person who seems to have decided from Day 1 that they are going [...]

Original post by Billy Dennis

“The burning is not only an insult to the holy Quran, but an insult to Islam and Muslims around the world,” said Muhammad Ismail, a spokesman for the hard-line Indonesian Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
With about 120,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops still battling al Qaeda and its allies [...]

Original post by Billy Dennis

Tomorrow school starts, piano starts; the day after Wednesday Night Dinner rides again. A couple weeks after that I jet off to Erie for the month of October. It’s gonna be crazy times.

On one level I’m sad to see it go, but on a deeper, saner level I’m happy the Sabbath is passing on. Times of rest are there so that you can leap back into the fray. I gotta say, I’m eager for the fray. I’ve missed teaching, missed the structure and the challenge of everyday life. I will need to remind myself of this fact in about a week, but today I will relish it.

Farewell, Summer Sabbath. Tonight I eat a slice of watermelon in your honor. Hello, New Year. If you be good to me I promise I’ll be good to you. We could definitely go far together.

Original post by Billy Dennis

Then-ADM Growmark Peoria terminal elevator and barge loadout is seen from the Cedar Street Bridge on a July 26, 2007 evening

ADM Grain Company’s largest local operation is the terminal elevator and barge loadout facility adjacent to parent Archer Daniels Midland’s Peoria distillery. Located at the Foot of Edmund Street, it served Hiram Walker & Sons for many years under the name “Riverside Elevator Co.” ADM subsidiary Tabor Grain Co. actually began leasing it in 1972. Then in March 1979, Tabor Grain Co. purchased it shortly after Hiram Walker & Sons announced that it would be closed. ADM went on to purchase the adjacent distillery, and began making ethanol there in June 1981. Tabor Grain quickly resumed elevator and barge dock operations.

To support the new operation, ADM in February 1981 purchased the bankrupt Rock Island’s 3.1-mile Belt Line, and purchased a locomotive (eventually, as many as three at a time would work at Peoria) to spot and pull empty covered hoppers at the barge loadout.

Tabor Grain Co.’s Peoria operation became “ADM Growmark” in fall 1985 as a result of a joint venture with Bloomington, Illinois-based Growmark Inc. A few years ago, the company adopted its present name.

For perhaps a decade following Tabor’s resumption of operations at the terminal elevator, rail deliveries were made directly to that facility. Expanded facilities along the Belt Line (renamed “River Track”), including a small “South Yard” constructed between Sanger and S. Darst Streets during 1993, rendered the elevator’s tracks redundant, and they were removed in 1994.

The Toledo Peoria & Western delivers carloads of corn directly to ADM Grain Company, via the South Yard. Corn from elevators in Indiana and Illinois is shipped to Peoria year-round, though fall and winter see the heaviest volume.

Inbound corn delivered by the Tazewell & Peoria Railroad originates on the Iowa Interstate Railroad (IAIS) in Iowa, and on occasion, at an elevator at Sheffield, Illinois. Some may also originate on Canadian Pacific’s Dakota Minnesota & Eastern Railway, which would be handled by the IAIS between Davenport and Peoria.

Most business is grain products, however. Covered hopper loads of corn screenings from ADM facilities in Cedar Rapids and Clinton, Iowa arrive year-round. Gluten feed pellets from those facilities are routed to Peoria or Creve Coeur during the winter months. Some distillers’ dried grain supplement (DDGS) may also arrive from these facilities. ADM recently opened a 275 Million-Gallon-a-Year ethanol plant adjacent the existing Cedar Rapids plant, and some DDGS from this facility may be making its way to Peoria.

Union Pacific also has access to ADM Grain’s Peoria facility via the River Track, but in recent years, has done very little business (TZPR switches UP’s outbound alcohol and DDGS business).

The River Track gives ADM Grain Co. a 225-car capacity, and ADM switch engines work all day.

- David P. Jordan

I have always had an unreasonable preparedness streak. When I first started carrying a purse, I hoped to someday have it stocked to the point that I would be prepared for any emergency. To be clear, in my list of things to prepare for, having a flat tire ranked somewhere below being abducted by aliens, and both of those where far outshadowed by the idea of being kidnapped by thugs, tied up, and thrown into a basement from which I would have to escape by constructing a ladder from broken orange crates and chewing gum, squeezing out of a tiny window and shoving rolled up socks into the thugs’ exhaust pipe on my way out so they couldn’t chase me.

In a way, this is connected to my obsession with fighting dragons. Life as it appears on the surface is boring. Really, who wants to work so you can eat and sleep so you can work some more until you die? But working, eating and sleeping as a slow process of destroying evil in the world, that I can get behind.

Lots of unexpected things happen in life. When I get up in the morning there’s very little chance that I will be attacked by a dragon or a zombie over the course of the day. But I could well have the van break down by the side of the road somewhere, get mugged on my morning walk, or have to kill some kind of rodent that showed up in the house. These things don’t *usually* happen, but they’re realistic concerns.

“Being attacked by zombies” is the more interesting way of saying “stuff happens”. And if I’m prepared for a zombie attack, I’m probably prepared for most of the weird stuff that actually will happen to me over the course of a day. Saying ‘zombie attack’ is just more fun.

News flash for Pastor Jones: I don’t want to live under his rule either. On Facebook
I have joined the group “Wear Hijab on 9/11, Defy ‘Burn a Quran Day,’” and volunteered–if a Muslim acquaintance will loan me a hajib– to don one for the day.
I admit I am a bit–anxious–about walking around Peoria on 9/11 in a hajib. I don’t know how to put one on. What if it falls off the back of my head or bunches up under my chin?

I surreptitiously observed two ladies at Cub Food the other day. Their hair was completely covered. Most of their foreheads were covered. The scarves fit around their heads like bandannas but then poofed out and wrapped around their shoulders. In pictures I’ve seen–like on the Facebook page (above)–it just seems…draped…gracefully…a more substantial adornment than a wispy, Audrie Hepburn, bouffanty scarf but simple. Not like the ladies at Cub. I think I own two ornamental bobby pins. Somehow I think they would be inadequate. If I am going to look like a fool in public, I so do not want to look like a fool, you know?

And, of course, I don’t want to be confronted in public for wearing something so confrontational. It’s 9/11, for Goddess’s sake, and everybody is stirred up about the community-center-that-isn’t-a-mosque-that-isn’t-actually-at-Ground-Zero in New York City. But if I am nervous about appearing in on the street on 9/11 in a hajib, what about the women who wear them everyday? Will they stay at home to avoid a confrontation with some flag-waving jackass? Oh, give me that hajib! I just hope somebody says something!

But I especially don’t want to offend Muslims! Ack! Life is so complicated…and I’m Pagan… All of the Big Three–Jews, Christians, and Muslims–are “People of the Book.” Pagans are “People of the Library,” always searching for answers, searching for bits of the past, searching for lost cultural heritage, mixing it all up in a contemporary ragout. But if I won’t stand up for a Muslim woman’s right to dress according to her religion’s standard, then I can’t very well ask people to respect my pentacle.

Gluten feed cars await unloading at ADM Grain Company’s Creve Coeur elevator on a wintry January 18, 2009

In 1958, United Grain Corporation opened an elevator just across then-Peoria & Pekin Union Railway tracks from Central Illinois Dock Company’s barge dock. The next year, an enclosed overhead conveyor was installed to connect the elevator with a barge loadout. Eventually, the facility came under control of Illinois Grain Corporation, and then Growmark, Inc. following the November 1979 merger with FS Services. In late 1985, a partnership with ADM transferred control of this elevator to that company, which operated it under the “ADM Growmark” name. A few years ago, that name was retired in favor of “ADM Grain Company.”

By late 1996, ADM began re-arranging the elevator’s tracks to increase capacity and efficiency for expected higher volume due to the Chicago Board of Trade’s decision to shift grain delivery points to Illinois River locations. The old McNally Fertilizer spur was extended to one of the elevator’s two stub tracks, and a new switch was built to provide a connection with the other. A “tail track” used to assist in switching cars was removed. Increased rail-to-barge transloading began in late 1997.

Like the barge dock across the now-TZPR tracks, most grain arrives from Iowa Interstate and Toledo Peoria & Western origins. In the recent past, some corn or soybeans have originated on the Dakota Minnesota & Eastern “Corn Lines” in northern Iowa or southern Minnesota (via the Iowa Interstate). In 2008, some grain was loaded for a Norfolk Southern destination.

This facility can load or unload 25 cars at a time.

- David P. Jordan

Original post by Billy Dennis

       An

ADM Grain Company, a subsidiary of Decatur, Illinois-based agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co., operates a rail- and truck- to barge transfer facility along the Illinois River on Wesley Road in Creve Coeur. Served by the Tazewell & Peoria Railroad (TZPR), it receives carloads of corn, soybeans, gluten feed pellets (durng the winter months) and DDGS (for weighing). Grain typically arrives from the Iowa Interstate Railroad and also Toledo Peoria & Western origins, but DDGS loads are from ADM’s Peoria distillery across the river.

Central Illinois Dock Company (CIDCO) opened a barge terminal at this site in 1956 to handle coal, fertilizer, road salt and other commodities. Eventually, CIDCO handled a large quantity of steel products for Caterpillar. Four decades later, changes in CIDCO’s markets prompted sale in early Fall 1996 of the Wesley Road barge dock property to ADM Growmark (ADM Grain Co. predecessor). ADM Growmark purchased the facility to increase grain-handling capacity along the Illinois River because the Chicago Board of Trade had shifted grain delivery points away from Toledo, Ohio to Illinois River locations.

After reconstruction of the property’s track infrastructure (one long spur and a short stub were removed and replaced with three new tracks) and installation of under track dump pits, a conveyor system and other supporting facilities, operations began around December 1, 1997. My recollection is that this facility was for its first several years used on a seasonal basis – late fall and through the winter – but for the past several years at least, rail-related business has been off and on, year-round.

ADM Grain Co.’s Creve Coeur barge dock can handle 25 cars at a time.

Central Illinois Dock Company retained the right to use a portion of its former facility to continue unloading steel products from barges. It now appears that this company has gone out of business.

- David P. Jordan

Update (9/7) from Peoria.com:

Apparently just the building is for sale and is only leased by Gander Mountain. This was confirmed by a phone call to Gander Mountain (that had no idea the building is for sale) and to Maloof, who told me that the building is for sale, but the business is staying put.

Original post by Billy Dennis

Original post by Billy Dennis

From Wikipedia:
Matthew Wayne Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyoming, in October 1998. [...]

Original post by Billy Dennis