At
              long last I have an update!  The LOX
              Tunnels and Loading Vents section is now complete.  My
              humblest apologies for taking so long.  Work has continued to
              demand more and more of my time.  I will continue work on the
              site no matter how long it may take for updates to be
              completed.  Unless you read that I have abandoned the site,
              you will continue to see updates here.
               
              I
              plan to have more updates soon as I should have time over the
              holidays for more additions.  Please keep checking back, and
              thanks to all the good folks who have written with kind things to
              say about the site.  Please don't hesitate to write if you
              have questions or comments.  I respond to all emails as
              quickly as I can.
               
              Senseless
              Ads - A Little Tirade If I May
               
              Some
              of you may have noticed that back in October that ads appeared on
              the web site.  This was no accident as I finally submitted to
              the advice of a number of folks that I could perhaps underwrite my
              costs of operating the site with some simple and hopefully
              unobtrusive banner ads.
               
              I
              had resisted this for over a year because I absolutely loathe most
              advertising.  I also loathe Google.  If you're not aware
              of it, Google represents a terrible threat to your privacy every
              time you use it or one of its services.  They collect and
              aggregate every datum that passes through their servers and store
              it indefinitely looking for ways to sell it, or use it to market
              to you or otherwise profit.  This is how they have become an
              unstoppable behemoth that thrives off of you whether you like it or
              not.  They are by no means the only game in town--no,
              everyone else in the field wants to emulate them because of the
              crazy amount of money they can make exploiting you.
               
              AdSense is Google's web advertising arm and this was just the
              service my friends urged me to try.  AdSense claims to
              tailor ads to your website for you and find appropriate content to
              market there.  Also, they tell you that you can easily review
              and omit ads you don't like etc. etc.  Okay, I thought, I
              will give it a shot and see how it goes.
               
              I
              set up the service, which was rather unnecessarily confusing I
              thought, and allowed ads to  contaminate my site.  
               
              To
              my extreme displeasure, the ads that appeared had absolutely nothing to do with
              my web site.  I foresaw this, thinking "what the heck
              could anyone sell that's really related to Cold War
              missiles?"  But after some thinking, I figured maybe
              military surplus and collectibles or something of that sort. 
              I didn't think that would be so bad.  
               
              However,
              I saw nothing of the sort and to my horror even found ads for
              tombstones appearing.  No doubt Ad Sense in its infinite wisdom had
              seized on the word "Epitaph" from my site as
              contextually appropriate and pegged me for a marketing niche for
              the death care industry.
               
              I
              found that I was completely unable to review ads at all and that
              despite reassurances from AdSense that the "context" of
              the ads would improve after being up for a week or so, that not
              one damn thing changed and nothing improved at all.  An
              appeal to customer service was given a useless automated
              reply.  I did what I could to fix the problem but nothing
              seemed to change anything at all.  It was like they just
              ignored any attempt by me to have a hand in what was advertised so
              I pulled the plug completely.  The hell with them.
               
              Even
              worse, and what was in large part the final straw, was a banner
              with huge letters shouting:
               
               WWW.SEMENTANKS.COM
               
              at
              the top of the propellant terminals section, no doubt clueing in
              on the stainless steel tanks described there.  Now I'm sure
              that SEMENTANKS serves a real need to agricultural clients in the
              livestock industry, but that is no consolation.  That crap
              had to go, so after a few weeks of trial I pulled every last
              one.  I received no payment for placing the ads on my site
              whatsoever.
               
              Now
              I am placing ads again, but this time I know what they are for and
              who they represent.  The ads have nothing to do with missiles
              but they do support a service I use and endorse: secure hosting,
              aka co-location.  For years I have used InfoBunker
              to host my site ever since it first went online and never once
              have I lost service.  Not for a second.
               
              If
              you are an IT professional seeking highly secure and reliable
              co-location with a track record of 100% uptime, excellent customer
              service and competitive rates, I recommend InfoBunker
              highly.  They have my endorsement along with that of
              associates of mine who also use their services.
               
              For
              now, these are the only ads you will see on my site because it is
              a service I trust and know.  I am never going to allow some
              uncaring entity to slap random ads all over my site ever again.