Bats [Formerly] in Canada, Eh?

Où sont les ordinateurs d'antan...

2010-11-02T18:39:00.010-04:00

One of my ongoing projects has been to empty out my sweetie's spare room... basically, Sarah's roommate moved out a while back, and since then, it has been a pile of storage and languishing boxes. The big hulking presence in the room was a desktop computer--Sarah wrote her PhD thesis on this machine... whoah...

Windows me, check it... with Pentium II action... yeah!

[Yes, sweetie, I'm mocking you. Phhpftt!]

When we powered it up--hey, it still works!--we were amused by this warning message:

Trust EZ Antivirus

Your twelve month license subscription for this product expired 2729 days ago.

It will no longer operate.

If I'm doing my math right, this means that the software was installed circa April 2002. Whoah. So as a decrapification service, I took on the job of getting this computer out of the place. We removed any relevant files via USB stick... one amusement was that a 4 GB USB stick was larger than one of the two hard drives installed in the machine. There was also a case of, "Oh, hey, I didn't lose those photos! Cool!" I pulled the hard drives, to keep a copy of the data available in a small form factor.

Then it became a case of, "How do I get rid of this stuff?" Some online research and word of mouth turned up Earthworm Recycling--they are over in Somerville. They charge for drop-offs of items like CRT monitors and printers, but hey, it seems worthwhile. So one e-waste run later, which included a monitor, a 27" TV, a printer, CPU, two dead laptops, and two boxes of random electronic bits and pieces ...

The computer was gone! Earthworm is a pretty neat operation... they are only a reshipper--the actual electronics stripping is done somewhere out on 495. But they are very adamant on making sure the end use is actual recycling, as opposed to being set-on-fire-to-collect-metals in Nigeria or something like that. They charged $20 per CRT, and $10 for the printer... the rest was free.

And just to complete the recycling work... I broke down the computer desk into particle board pieces. I spent a bit of this weekend making a cheap-and-fast shelf for more of my tools. More recycling!

BTW--as a reward for reading this far, in case you don't know French, the title is meant to be "Where are the computers of yesteryear." My knowledge of this phrase is only from Catch 22... nothing more sophisticated than that, alas.

A Weekend on the Cape

2010-10-12T21:20:00.014-04:00

For the past three years, my sweetie has been following a tradition: instead of getting stuff from her parents for her birthday, she asks for a "birthday experience." Her parents take her out on a nice weekend trip, typically involving staying at bed & breakfasts, outdoor photography, and nice dinners out. This year's much belated (January birthday!) experience was Cape Cod--and I was invited along!

We all piled into Sarah's folks' minivan, and drove down late on Friday night in a constant rain. However, Saturday's weather turned out beautifully--we had to check out the beach near our B&B (a house attached to An English Garden in Dennisport). Next up was Marconi Beach on Cape Cod National Seashore.

We then went on a a guided tour of a working Cape Cod Cranberry bog and farm. All of us are geeks (Sarah's dad is a retired GE steam turbine engineer), so we all had a fun time figuring out how things worked, checking out the machinery, and the irrigation system. It was really fun and informative... the farming couple were a great bunch of characters, with classic thick New England accents.

One thing I did not realize--that classic image you see of a flooded cranberry bog--is only one of two ways to harvest cranberries: that is a "wet harvest." You're unlikely to catch that event on a random visit--they have to move fast once they flood, so it's only happening one day out of 365 in a given bog. They flood the fields, have a machine that beats the cranberries off the plants, they float to the surface, and they gather them up and suck them out with a giant truck-mounted vacuum cleaner. Then they go straight to a processing plant--frozen, canned, craisins, etc.

However, the berries do not last once they have gotten soaked in a wet harvest. So any time you get a bag of fresh cranberries, they have been "dry harvested." It's a big machine that thrashes on the plants, and scoops them up:

We got to walk out on one of the bogs, which had already been harvested (dry picked). One surprise is that the "bog" is pretty dry.. the plants kinda "crunch" underfoot. Also, cranberry plants are low creeping vines--when they are harvesting, you have to carefully make sure you are driving your machine along the correct "nap" direction--or else you'll make a disastrous mess.

We swung up to Chatham Light... there's a sign on a pole that says: DANGER: ROUGH BAR, with a flashing yellow light:

Huh... the Hell's Angels are in town? Actually, it is an indicator of the condition of the inlet into the harbor, which is a break in the sand bar. The Coast Guard has established a rough bar advisory light, 62' above the water, on a skeleton tower near Chatham Light.... The light will be activated when the seas exceed 2' in height and are considered hazardous for small boats.

And yet more after that--Chatham Fish Pier--no fishing boats coming in that day, but still a great place to check out the working boats and the harbor seals. And take pictures.... my sweetie had her killer digital SLR out for this trip.

I also geeked out at this Coast Guard rescue boat--a newspaper article about these new boats circa 2008... they are made by SAFE Boats International--I think it is a "Full Cabin Archangel Class". Pretty neat technology... it has a flotation collar around the perimeter: "solid polyethylene (closed cell foam) collar encapsulated by a marinized polyurethane membrane with extreme rip-stop reinforcement."

The polyethylene foam for the SAFE Boats collar system was designed to insulate the Alaska oil-pipeline. It is inherently UV stable, impervious to petroleum products, harsh solvents and extreme weather conditions.

The Standard SAFE Boats collar system has been proven to stop small-arms fire from penetrating the hull. With the addition of ballistic material placed behind or actually laminated into the collar, it has been shown to withstand ammunition of up to 7.62 mm. A recent test was performed at a 3-meter stand off and with both hardball and JHP-rounds.

Day-umn. Yeah, they make military boats.

Wandering around Chatham, we ended up in a very touristy store: "Do not eat collectible rocks please. Adult supervision". Wow... Wonder how many times that has happened...

They also had a sign that you could buy, saying:

WHAT HAPPENS ON THE CAPE STAYS ON THE CAPE

Um... yeah. I've never really associated Cape Cod with debauched Vegas-style excess. I'm imagining the regrets of the day after a weekend bender of upscale shopping and antiquing... "Holy s*** man, I was passed out on the floor of my bed and breakfast... and when I came to, I looked around, and there was all this furniture with lace all around me. What the f' did I do last night?"

And we wrapped up with a fantastic dinner at The Impudent Oyster in Chatham--strong recommend. As the Yelp review says, "This spot stands out among tedious Cape Cod dining options"--yep, true enough! Seafood on the Cape... in the off season, with fewer tourists, and the nights chilling down... very nice.

Sunday we drove out to Provincetown, and did the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum--"the tallest all-granite structure in the United States."

A great view from the top--with the telescope (or the super zoom lens on the DSLR), we could make out the Boston skyline!

An amusing story about the tower--it was patterned after Torre del Mangia in Tuscany. When they first proposed the design, they mocked it because, well, Boston already has a copy of the Torre del Mangia! ("...they say they've already got one...") It's a former firehouse, which is now the Pine Street Inn--and we saw it from I-93 on the drive back!

We headed down into P-Town proper, wandered around, and had lunch at The Lobster Pot--excellent Portuguese Kale Soup... and check out the lobster-shaped "you're-table's-ready" buzzers!

A lovely town... very much what I expected, but I mean that in a good way. Some annoyingly touristy crowded parts (still, this late in the season), but I'm guessing that's expected.

Also, I had a giggle at The Prince Albert Guest House. Yes, it's true, it could be meant entirely innocently. On the other hand, maybe not. [Link Not Safe for Work!]

I had to explain to my sweetie what that meaning of a Prince Albert was. I have to ask my guy friends--it's probably a normal reaction to protectively grab your boys when reading that Wikipedia article, right?

Anyway, we wrapped up the evening and headed back up to Boston that night. A fun weekend--thanks so much to Sarah's folks for putting all of that together!

Welcome to Charming.... uh... Lowell?

2010-09-27T20:05:00.008-04:00

"Hey Sarah, we have a free weekend! What do you want to do?"

"Well, Saturday is Smithsonian Museum Day--free admission to museums around the country."

"Cool! What's around here in Massachusetts?"

[Option... option... option...]

"How about the American Textile History Museum in Lowell?"

"Sure! I've wanted to spend some time exploring Lowell for a while..."

[Questioning look]

"Whaat?"

So yes, that's how my sweetie and I spent a day in Lowell--one of the classic old mill towns on the Merrimack River. Yeah, I know, like I don't spend enough of my work life looking at old mill buildings.

We started out with lunch--based on a Yelp hit, we chose a Laotian restaurant. We had the Homemade sausages (sai oua mou)--yummy, followed by sweetened natural purple rice with creamy coconut sauce and egg custard for dessert. A tasty and neat dish.... purple rice... wacky...

Then on to the museum!

The first part of the museum seemed a bit slow, but there were some cool discoveries. For instance, I really had no idea what linen (and flax) were, as a textile. It turns out that the flax plant takes a ridiculous amount of preparation to turn it into spinnable fibers, which is why cotton took over the market in a huge way once mechanization was used to process fibers. Many things that you would expect in a textile museum... the history of Lowell (it was actually a planned community, based on its location at the confluence of two rivers), stories of the textile workers, and the way the industry went into decline in the 1920's, when the jobs started shifting to the South.

Another interesting bit of trivia--I've long known that purple was the royal color in ancient times, because it was so expensive to dye cloth that color. But I didn't know why: Tyrian purple required catching and killing thousands of murex snails to make one ounce of dye ("The dye substance consists of mucous secretion from the hypobranchial gland of one of several medium-sized predatory sea snails found in the eastern Mediterranean"). And it was valuable as a color until synthetic aniline dyes came along.

Some of the more interesting stuff--they have a large collection of operational machinery, and they sometimes operate them. They showed videos of the machines while working, with explanations.

Then they got into the high tech uses of fabric and textiles. Carbon fiber, protective suits for firefighters, body armor--stuff like that. Also--airbags!

As well as astronaut gloves. They had a pretty clever exhibit--they pulled a vacuum on the clear box (note the clear rod in the middle, which keeps it from collapsing). You can stick your hand into it, and note how difficult it is to move with an atmosphere of pressure across the fabric. There were two right-hand gloves in the exhibit.

"This glove is a bit smaller... it fits much better."

"Uh, like a glove, sweetie?"

Wow... apparently these astronaut gloves are well-articulated enough that you can flip someone off.

After the museum closed, we wandered around the canal walks around Lowell--a good portion of the town is a National Historic Park. All of the exhibits were closed by the time we were wandering, but it was a nice walk.... including the canals...

...and some pretty buildings. Man... Lowell had serious money back in the day.

A very nice time. During our walk, there was only a small percentage of obvious gentrifiers vs. locals of various sorts... not sure if this will change over time, but they are definitely pushing the high end condo market. Anyway, we definitely want to go back sometime to explore the park... however, it closes for the season in a few weeks (October 11th).

PSA: Nextbus

2010-09-02T21:04:00.008-04:00

That is, in fact, a public service announcement, not Prostate-Specific Antigen. Although I'm moving towards the age where I'll need to get that checked.

Anyway: this announcement is for the website NextBus--they have installed GPS units in buses, so that they can post predicted wait times for a bus on a given line (as per their "about" page):

NextBus uses satellite technology and advanced computer modeling to track vehicles on their routes. Each vehicle is fitted with a satellite tracking system.

Taking into account the actual position of the buses, their intended stops, and the typical traffic patterns, NextBus can estimate vehicle arrivals with a high degree of accuracy. This estimate is updated constantly.

I remember seeing this system out a few years ago on MUNI buses out in the Bay Area... wow, so not dumb! I was pretty psyched to find out that it had come to the MBTA.

So how does it work? Um... mostly well. I've been using it on the 77 bus, and the Silver Line at the airport, with my BlackBerry web browser. You can hit update, and it corrects timing. But there are occasional snags... times bouncing back and forth, or going from "3 minutes" to "5 minutes" to "arriving" (a bit like the xkcd strip, "the author of the Windows file copy dialog visits some friends").

But hey... definitely much better than just sitting around feeling frustrated. Also, useful for figuring out, "Do I have a stupid-long wait, that I can use to run into CVS and pick something up?" Although I've been biking to work a lot lately (given the great weather), I'm glad that this service will be around come winter, when I'll be bus-bound a lot more.

The Phantom Subdivision

2010-08-26T20:15:00.004-04:00

On the way to Tom and Julee's wedding this past weekend, I took the bus (a.k.a. Southwest Airlines)--because getting to Minneapolis for $10 ain't such a bad deal (frequent flyer miles). However, the routing to get there was BOS-STL-MSP (and MSP-MDW-BOS on the way home).

Anyway, on approach to land at STL, I saw a rather strange sight out my window. There were a set of streets, like a usual suburb, but no houses. Just grass and trees. And as you look closer, you can see grass growing in through the pavement cracks.

Whoah. Weird. I was wondering if this was a case of, "We're expanding the airport, so you people really don't want to live here now, right?" Or some eminent domain buyout.

First, I started exploring on Google Earth (once again, they can organize my world's information, baby). After some poking around, I found this subdivision on the west side of the airport.

And hey... check out a bit closer... there's actually one house left. Hey--it has a tennis court and a swimming pool, I think!

Hrm. A rather green and slimy swimming pool, though.

Anyway, it took a while to find out what the actual story is--it turns out that somebody else had the same question--with the following answers--it's the Carrollton subdivision in Bridgeton:

I'm a former resident, grew up there, lived there, and watched it get taken away. When i was a kid i remember the yellow ribbon campaign which had us to putting ribbons on our trees, doors, overhangs, etc to show our unity against what was called F4, the taking of Bridgeton for airport expansion. During the very late 90's and early 2000's the push came through and the airport finally bought the homes in the carollton subdivision. Very sad for all those who lived there, and even worse for those who DIDN'T get bought out, but were stuck in their unsellable homes.

Even more interesting... a former residence put up a blog documenting the demolition of the neighborhood:

This place was once a subdivision called Carrollton, located in Bridgeton, MO. It was one of the first planned communities in the U.S. that made sure to include green space, parks, schools, churches, and a community center in its development. Lambert International Airport made a proposal to the city of St. Louis to expand beyond its boundaries and build a new runway. This was pushed because, at the time, St. Louis was a hub for TWA. Despite the fledgling airline industry, the cause for eminent domain was issued in the direction of Bridgeton, including much of the city and all of the Carrollton subdivision. Although fought hard by community residents who formed a group called, “The Bridgeton Air Defense” and a number of legal battles that stretched decades, Lambert ultimately won and started taking homes as early as 1992. 2,000 structures, 2,000 parcels of land have become or will be soon property of Lambert International.

By the time I was old enough to realize that the concrete was creeping in to the edge of the subdivision where we lived… it was too late to care. Or, so I thought, until last year. Watching my own house go down, I realized that the remaining homes needed to be documented too. So, for the past year, I have been watching and photographing what little remains of the original 2,000. As of today, October 9th, 2007… only 56 houses are left.

Ah well. A sad story behind that one.

A Trip to Haverhill

2010-08-16T20:55:00.010-04:00

Last week, I spent a Friday morning up in Haverhill, MA for work--it is one of those old industrial/mill towns on the Merrimack River, right near the New Hampshire border. According to Wikipedia, "was known for a time as the "Queen Shoe City of the World." The city was also known for the manufacture of hats." In addition, BirdJen used to work there, and live nearby. It has some chunks of nice downtown (including industrial buildings that were going to be turned into lofts... before the real estate market imploded... oops), but it appears that a chunk of it suffered through urban renewal. I've heard the wag, "... Europe had World War II to destroy its cities so they could rebuild them... the United States used urban renewal to destroy its cities instead.":

Unfortunately, during the 1950s-1970s, city leaders enthusiastically embraced the misguided concept of Urban Renewal, an approach since discredited, and received considerable federal funds used to demolish much of the north side of Merrimack Street, most of the Federal homes along Water Street (dating from the city's first hundred years of development), and throughout downtown. Many of the city's iconic buildings were lost, including the Oddfellows Hall, the Old City Hall, the Second Meetinghouse, the Pentucket Club, and the Old Library, among others.

As I first walked towards the building, I was disturbed to find a great big pool of blood on the sidewalk. With a trail of blood drop spatters leading away from it. Um... yikes? Maybe rat.... dog... person? Not sure. Given how close the town is to Lawrence (one of the sketchier towns in MA)...

Anyway, on to the building. It was a circa 1900's warehouse or mill building, right next to the Amtrak/Commuter Rail tracks. An interesting construction method--it is an all-cast in place reinforced concrete building (more on this later).

A nice view up from the roof. I have to say, I get to go to some neat places in my job.

This was followed by a nice lunch at Krueger Flatbread--thanks for the recommendation, Jen!

But one thing that was more interesting was after I went back to the office to do some research. One of the first hits when I Googled the name of the building was a Google book from 1918 that did a case study on this building: CONCRETE ENGINEERS' HANDBOOK: DATA FOR THE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF PLAIN AND REINFORCED CONCRETE STRUCTURES (Hool, Johnson, & Hollister). Pretty neat stuff--it turns out that this building was innovative for its time, when they were figuring out how to build with cast-in-place steel reinforced concrete (something that is essentially a solved problem in construction nowadays).

But the book has a bunch of very classic black-and-white drawings of the building I was looking at:

You could look at the drawing... look at the building... yep, that's the one!

Cool. I've said this before, but Google Books friggin' rocks. You can organize my world's information any day, baby ;).

Birthday Bonus Round

2010-08-10T21:37:00.004-04:00

I know that I've covered my birthday to death already... but there were a few items that needed sharing.

First of all, Sarah's grandmother sent me a birthday card. Cool--thanks Gram!

Second, Sarah's parents sent me a birthday package. Among the contents: wine bottle stopper (cool!), a nice Hawaiian shirt (win!), and this adorable picture of my sweetie at age 9:

Besides, "Ohhhh, so cuute!", my reaction was, "Man... I'm lucky to find a gal of this caliber."

Sorry.

Anyway, the last item--a birthday card from Canada... from Dan & Daniel!

And the inside was a pop up card, "It's the Birthday Monster... Chomp Chomp Chomp!"

Heh... that made me smile in a big way. Thanks everyone!

Wedding Post Part II: The Wedding

2010-08-01T15:13:00.015-04:00

I kind of doubt that anyone is interested in a blog post about the wedding from... wow... a month and a half ago now. But my OCD compels me to write a Part II blog post to follow up on my post on the first half of that trip to the Bay Area. I'll try to keep it brief... but based on the photos I took, I probably won't.

Out-of-towners mostly started filtering in to the Bay Area on Thursday--U5, Rebecca, and Sarah were all on the same BOS-SFO flight, so I ran into JMD at the waiting area... it's funny being in another city, and running into your housemate at the airport without planning it.

Sarah and I headed up to SF, to pick up Bird and Jen, grab lunch, and hit the road. We had to stop, though, to look at the Golden Gateand be a little bit touristy... a beautiful day in the Bay Area...

... as well as a detour to Muir Woods (I'd never been there, so it was a must-stop).

The wedding was up in Healdsburg--wine and touristy country; a lovely area. We had a bit of slack time, so we made excellent use of it. Healdsburg is an absolutely charming place... lunch at Costeaux French Bakery; a walkable downtown. U5, Rebecca, Perlick, Sarah, and I went out kayaking... Sarah had wanted to take me out on the water for a while. A very nice, calm paddle... S. and I were in the two-seater, so we didn't do anything that challenging...

Given the tribe of folks up there, we rented houses (becoming known as 'Kid House,' 'Jess House,' etc.)... so communal meals (with Christy in charge) were a fun activity. The mix of friends included the Cornell crowd, who I've met during my many trips through Ithaca during grad school, and love dearly.

One of the food preparation highlights--Christy brought her stick blender for the carrot soup. This got our collective creativity moving... this is what you can do with stick blender + seedless watermelon. Awesome.

The morning before the wedding, Sarah, Caitlin and I managed to squeeze in a trip to a few wineries... it would be sad to go up to Wine Country, and not actually spend any time sampling. I enjoyed geeking out on the various technological pieces of winemaking--such as the gigantic fans used to keep frost from damaging the vines during cold snaps.

Oh yeah... the wedding itself! It was held at the Alexander Valley Community Hall, nestled between vineyards.

A lovely outdoor ceremony... both sets of parents were completely wonderful and gracious hosts. Some excellent toasts delivered Jofish's sister Sarah, Kip, all MC'd by the lovely and brilliant Miss Janet. Also, Indy followed the flower girls in the procession, as the Fairy Queen. Yay!

... and Jofish and Erin were utterly brilliant... but who would expect otherwise?

The Cornell crowd did an a capella rewrite of For the Longest Time, in regards to Jofish and Erin. Also, the tEps inflicted a crock song on the crowd... as well as the usual Hava Nagila (did anyone get a picture of that?).

Oh yeah--in case anyone wants some linky goodness--JMD's pics, Kip's pics, some great ones from somebody I don't know, but Google found them for me. If there are more links to add, let me know!

Oh yeah... the family photo, c/o ~~JMD~~BirdJen!:

Incidentally, this was the first time I had ever taken a date to a wedding--turns out that this was true for my sweetie as well. Cool.

Anyway, this is the newest photo that is proudly displayed among my collection of wedding group photos. Yay!

Happy Biiiiirthdaaaay Dear AmieandBats...

2010-07-28T22:22:00.009-04:00

Last weekend, Amie and Guy were kind enough to host a party celebrating the 40th birthdays of, well, A. and yours truly. Actually, my actual birthday isn't for a few days, but it was a good excuse to have a nice party

It was a neat mix of a party--in addition to the usual suspects, a few of my other friends made it--a coworker, a former coworker who I still keep in touch with (and their respective spouses), and Doug (a.k.a. Air Force Guy), his wife Stina, and their 2-year old, Brian. It was neat to let my worlds churn a little bit--some would call me Bats, others K.

Amie and Guy were fantastic hosts--Guy pulled out all the stops with food and drink, as he often does. They included breaking out the fryolator, and making wings, as well as killer fries. They were based on FoodLab's column on how to make McDonald's style fries--it involves an initial parboiling step:

So McDonald's does indeed use a double fry method, but it's far from the traditional one. Rather than a slow low temperature fry for the first round, the fries get dunked into very hot oil for only 50 seconds (the second fry is then carried out at the actual location). In addition to this, the potatoes get a pre-fry blanching step in hot water. What could the purpose of this be?

(Read the column, The Burger Lab: How to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries, to find out details).

Of course, this being a 40th, the gag gifts abounded. Including a card from my sweetie--Happy 100th Birthday!--yeah, thanks. As well as other winners, like a denture bath, large print crossword puzzles...

...and generic-brand hemorrhoid cream! Aw thanks... you shouldn't have!

And in case you were wondering, why yes, drinking was involved....

Single malts were the drink of choice that evening--one amusing idea came from a misheard name--Glenkinchie was misheard as "Glen Kimchee." Sounds like a concept for a whiskey-kimchee mixer. Ugh... that's up there with Sporkle Pork 'n' Apple Juice Drink.

What's funny is that the people looking the most zoned in that picture actually were not drinking. As for myself, I did not seriously tie one on... I just savored some single malts. Must be getting old or something...

BatBike Soul Transplant

2010-07-27T23:43:00.010-04:00

I've blogged several times about my faithful commuter bike, The Bicycle of Theseus:

It's an incredibly old beater: I've had it since about 1989--yeah, my undergrad days. Being an inveterate tinkerer, I have continuously replaced and upgraded parts since then. The original parts are: the frame, the front fork, the handlebar stem, front & rear deraileurs, and the left crank arm. It's faster to list what's original instead of what's been replaced.

...the title of this post is a reference to The Ship of Theseus--that Philosophy 101 paradox: if an entire ship is replaced, piece by piece, would it be, in the end, the same ship?

However, on these daily commutes, I've toyed with the idea of getting myself a new bike. I know, shocking, given my engineering cheapness gene, and my buy-less-stuff attitude. However, my folding bike (from 2008) was a noticeably nicer bike than my main one.

Then a few months ago, REI had a clearance sale... including a bunch of bicycles... I was sorely tempted by the Marin Bolinas Ridge Mountain Bike ('09 Closeout). After hemming and hawing, I ordered it and had it delivered for pickup. Man... I probably shouldn't agonize about amounts of money of that magnitude, but I do. More importantly, with my close-to-daily cycle commute, it would definitely get used well; I would be getting my money's worth, and it would be a long-term investment. After all--I've had my old bike since friggin' 1989... at this rate, I'll be buying another replacement bike when I'm age 60 or so.

Anyway, on to the new bike, as I got it from the store:

Time to tear it down, and customize it into the new BatBike...

There were a load of things to do:

Soul transplant: to maintain some continuity, I just swapped over the rear fender, handlebar ends, rear view mirror, and the pedals with toe clips. Yeah, I'm not hard-core enough for clipless pedals.
New bright lights, front and rear. Be visible, people!
Front fender: I was worried that with a front suspension, that a fender would be hard to come by. No such problem--SKS Shockblade was on the display rack at the bike store... simple and secure attachment.
Tires--had to transplant over the Schalbe Big Apple city slick tires, of course.
A new lock, to keep it all safe.
The handlebars were way too high in the original setup... I felt like I was leaning back and driving a crosstown bus. I had never played with a threadless headset, but changing the stem height wasn't that big of a deal.
I prefer "straight stick" handlebars, with bar ends--bought new handlebars and swapped them in. Plus I like to customize them by cutting them as narrow as practical... all the better to get between cars without worrying about thwacking a side mirror.

And the finished result:

So how do I like it, and how does it ride? I'm definitely happy. Nice light frame, ergonomics are now set up like I want them, and all new components means shifting and pedaling are smooth.

But all of you are definitely free to mock me, for totally modding up a mountain bike, primarily for city commuting use. Duh, I know, I know, I ought to be getting a skinny tire non-suspension city hybrid. Or a touring bike. But I think I need to maintain my identity as "fat dude riding on fat tires, pedaling until he gets there"... so I'll call that my excuse.

However, I now have a faithful old commuter bike left over. Does anyone know of a good home? Or should I keep it around as a "guest bike," like Jofish does?

Weekend HandyBat!

2010-07-27T21:54:00.016-04:00

Back in April, I spent a morning repeatedly clicking on the Mass Save® Great Appliance Exchange website, in order to reserve an Energy Star dishwasher rebate for his sweetie. I let folks know back then, on Facebook:

K. wants to inform all of his Massachusetts-local friends about the big Energy Star appliance rebates that are opening up tomorrow morning at 10 AM: $250 for a dishwasher, $200 for a fridge, $175 for a clothes washer. Your ARRA money at work! List of qualifying appliances on the website.

I only got a waitlist spot, but it turns out they were honoring them for the rebate! So we went out shopping for a replacement dishwasher in May, and it was delivered in June. So finally, in July... I had a weekend free to install the darn thing!

Man... during the installation, I came to realize that there was some beautiful German engineering going on... it's a Bosch. For instance, those "channels" at the bottom of the dishwasher are there on purpose--to route the electrical cable, and the water supply hose. Very elegant... I'm used to installs where you just have a jumble of wires and tubes, and you try to keep them unkinked as you slide the dishwasher into its opening.

Also, instead of having levelling feet on the front and rear... with the rear ones close-to-inaccessible, there's a clever screw-and-pivot system, that lets you adjust the rear height of the dishwasher from the front, with the dishwasher in place. Very nice.

Another thing that I discovered during the installation... the existing dishwasher was hooked up to the garbage disposal, under the sink:

There's a pipe stub at the side of the disposal, that the dishwasher drain connects to. That drain comes from the factory with a plastic plug in it, and you knock it out when you hook up a dishwasher, so that it can drain:

But check out how the disposal was connected:

Hrm.

Hey Sarah--when did you say the dishwasher last worked correctly?

Oh, about 2003.

So what did it do?

It wouldn't drain... it would chug away and overflow.

Ah. I don't suppose the garbage disposal got replaced around the time the dishwasher stopped working?

Um.... maybe?

Check out this picture...

Haha... that's funny. Also, do you know who installed the disposal?

Um... who?

My ex-boyfriend, D.

Heh... awesome! Fixing repairs that the ex screwed up. Hey... if I was told that I'm a lousy lay compared to the ex, I probably wouldn't be that crushed... hell, I pretty much expect that out of life. But not being able to fix something that the ex could? That would be a bit too much. So my manhood and ego are safe for now.

Also, I took care of some landscaping work that Sarah needed done--a wind-fallen branch that was too large for the bin. So fellas--if you want to impress the ladeez, you might want to whip out the 18 V cordless reciprocating saw with a tree pruning blade...

Yeah. Or something like that.

Anyway: the finished result for the dishwasher: ta-dah!

Yay! No dirty plates in the sink!

Bonus Post: Bus Seat Belts

2010-07-05T22:42:00.006-04:00

Sarah is staying in Maine, taking a week of vacation. However, I had to get my butt back to work, so I hopped a bus from Bangor back to Boston--Concord Coach Lines. A couple of nice surprises on the way.

First of all: free WiFi and 120 V electrical power throughout! Took care of some work email, and then some blogging (like the Block Island post).

But the other interesting thing: I don't think I've ever seen seatbelts on a motorcoach-type bus before in the United States.

Kinda cool. After I snapped in, I started poking around on the web--"How did the industry manage to get away with not putting seatbelts on motorcoaches? After all, as stable as they feel while riding, they are still metal boxes hurtling down the highway at 60-70+ mph Even if you don't notice it, physics is still happening, folks." Hey--it was either dorky web research, or watch Fame on the bus entertainment system.

First I found a blog site for the Peter Pan union local out of Western Massachusetts, with an article on the subject "The Case for Lap Seat Belts on Motorcoaches":

For decades, authoritative heads have said that safety belts on busses and motorcoaches are unnecessary due to factors such as "compartmentalization", "monocoque motorcoach construction", high-back seats, and lower G-forces during an average motorcoach collision compared with auto vs. auto.

In Feb. 1999, the United Motorcoach Association issued their "White Paper" report which defended the lack of seat belts on motorcoaches. Although the 3 page article summarizes some of the arguments, it is very thin on facts and details that are available from crash tests and actual crash histories. Taking a closer look at catastrophic motorcoach accidents of the last decades would have tipped the report in favor of seat belts. It is clear, due to the costs involved of retrofitting an estimated 30,000 motorcoaches throughout the USA, that the industry "voice" would lean in the direction of doing nothing.

The post also talks about what happens in bus crashes (and worst of all, rollovers): the great big windows often fail, and the roof can get sheared off, and then the passengers are ejected, often fatally.

I also found newspaper articles from November 2009, stating that NHTSA was planning on boosting motorcoach safety standards, including reinforced roofs, seatbelts, and sensors to determine if the driver has been running over driving time hour limits ("Obama administration proposes seatbelts, other safety measures for long distance buses").

But the most geeky and interesting stuff was a PDF of a presentation from NHTSA: "Seat Belt Testing for Motorcoach Safety". They did full-scale 30 mph frontal collision with a bus, with crash test dummies in a variety of configurations--unbelted, two-point belt, and three-point belt. This was followed up with sled testing. Surprise--seat belts reduce injuries in bus crashes.

Anyway, it seems like seatbelts on buses are a step in the right direction. Sign me up.

Maine Weekend: Up at the Lake!

2010-07-05T18:43:00.022-04:00

Sarah's extended family has their annual summer get-together around Fourth of July, up at "the camp"--a cottage up at a lake near Bangor (her extended family's ancestral home). She has been talking up this experience most of the time we've been dating--so this past weekend was going up for the festivities.

It's a fantastic place--a log cabin in a protected cove, looking right out on the lake. Here's the view from the screened-in porch...

...and much socializing goes on there (including relaxing on the porch swing):

We did loads of the classic camp activities: swimming off the dock, going out for a canoe ride, walking around the lake, making s'mores around the fire pit...

... my first solo attempt at kayaking...

... oh yeah, and making the food. I've demonstrated my passable kitchen chops enough times that the family decided that they "needed to initiate me" in the ways of a New England Clambake. Too cool... it involved a washtub basin sat on top of the fire pit, with clams, corn, potatoes, eggs, hot dogs, and lobster, all covered with a sailcloth to keep the steam in:

Seriously yummy stuff. Many lobsters were devoured, in a wonderful feast.

But you might wonder, "What the heck is up with those hot dogs?" They are red hot dogs, which are a Maine delicacy--and yet another thing that Sarah has been talking up all this time.

Yeah, more than a bit terrifying. First of all, they partially dyed the clam shells pinkish. Also, if you need to guide taxiing airplanes on the tarmac, you can wave a pair of these franks around.

After the big lobster fest, we picked the lobster for salads. Personal protective equipment was warranted.

One disturbing discovery made while swimming: I am buoyant only as long as I hold a breath in. I experimented by doing a face-up float, and my face stayed out of the water. When I exhaled (much like a whale exhaling through its blowhole), I sank right down. I have always thought of myself as a fat dude with loads of built-in buoyancy, bobbing away on the water... I'm wondering what's up with my current flotation levels.

Overall, it was a great weekend, although all too short--I am currently on the bus back to Boston on Monday afternoon. Unfortunately, this will be a hella busy week. But many thanks to all of Sarah's family, for their generosity and hospitality!

Block Island Weekend: Holy Cross-Linking!

2010-07-05T16:05:00.016-04:00

I am seriously behind on blog posts--so this is in regards to last weekend, on Block Island. Sarah is one of three godparents to the child of her dear friends M&E (down in Attleboro). Ugh... that's one convoluted sentence... let me know if I should diagram that out. So they had a godparents get-together weekend on Block Island, where E's family owns a cottage.

The reason why this post is link-a-riffic is because other folks have already blogged about it--both the parents, and one of the godparents. So it feels like my posting about it is mostly superfluous on the scale of things. But a few items I wanted to mention....

First, this was the first time I've ever been to Block Island--it's a touristy-resorty island off of RI... classic New England island, similar in character to places like Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Complete with simmering conflict between year round residents and vacation cottage owners. ;)

On the 1-hour ferry ride over, Sarah pointed out that the new iPhone OS links the GPS tags of photos with Google Maps. And apparently, she was getting 3G reception all the way over:

Pretty cool. We got in to Block Island around sunset on Friday--what a neat view.

But the weekend was not intended for just lounging about! The house was recently built, and being prepped for the first summer renters.

So all of us were put to work--puting up blinds, painting, and two engineers attempting to diagnose an icemarker. Fruitlessly, sadly.

(BTW--previous two photos c/o the other two blogs.]

But that's not to say it was all work! We also cooked together, a killer funny game of Uno, lounged about looking at the water...

...and got a tour of Block Island the next day (including two lighthouses):

The one here has a cool story--they moved the entire 1870s era birck structure 300 feet back from the edge of the cliff, which was eroding away.

Anyway, a wonderful weekend--many thanks to M&E for their hospitality!

Nano-Vacation: Chicago

2010-07-02T21:47:00.012-04:00

I have previously used the term "micro-vacation" to describe small trips that I take as "an event"--like up to Bird and Jen's in NH. I previously expounded on the topic here:

I realized that the way I schedule my vacations currently is pretty unconventional—I often take a few days here-and-there while on business travel, when work sends me to places that are either interesting or where friends live. For instance, I have made use of business trips to San Francisco, Cleveland, Denver, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Seattle, Waterloo, DC, and many other towns to see friends, which has been absolutely wonderful.

But the end of this week was more of a "nano-vacation": work sent me to Chicago, so instead of doing a fly-out-in-the-morning/fly-back-in-the-evening/have-a-15-hour-day plan, I spent the night in Chicago on my own dime after I wrapped up. Also, my sweetie was out of town this week, so there was no rush to get back.

This job was out in the western exurbs of Chicagoland... and amusingly, right near the development where my thesis field research site was located--I've been here 8+ times. It was odd to be back in that neck of the woods, where I whiled away many days down in a basement.

First lesson learned from this trip: when the job is to look at a basement that consistently floods, it might be flooding when you go there... so you might want to bring more than one pair of shoes (or galoshes).

Ugh. So yeah, after splashing around the basement for several hours, I ended up spending the rest of the trip in sodden boots.

After the job, I drove back to O'Hare, checked into my hotel, and dropped off the rental car. I thought, "Huh... Google Maps says I'm 1.5 miles from my hotel... maybe I'll walk it, instead of [Avis shuttle to ORD] -> [Hotel shuttle to hotel]."

Man... an airport is definitely a place inhospitable to pedestrians. I pretty much walked from the bottom of this map to the top:

Also, I realized that anyone walking in that environment is easily mistaken for someone who is homeless, mentally ill, or destitute... I was fully expecting to get stopped by the police during my walk.

Then holy cats... time to get my butt into the city. Hopped CTA in (I was staying at an airport hotel)... maybe it's just how I'm made up, but I get a bit of a thrill, coming in and seeing the skyline of a cool town. Blue Line in, Brown Line out...

... in order to get to Second City e.t.c., to see their new show, "The Absolute Best Friggin' Time of Your Life." Second City was one of those things that Sarah and I wanted to do when we were vacationing here last winter, but couldn't schedule in. I thought it would be neat to catch a show--to go to such a storied comedy club, as well as the possibility that I'm seeing the next generation's Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, John Belushi, etc. before he/she makes it big.

The show was great--lots of short sketches, plus songs... they did a great job keeping the material tight, and ending it before it went flat (i.e., the Saturday Night Live problem). Too many great moments to describe... but as a one liner... "Dinner at Olive Garden... ahhh... it's just like Italy... if Italy SUCKED." Also, I was amused that they use the same technique as crock writers--profanity in the right place often gets a good laugh when applied correctly. Check out the preview video if you have a moment. Some of it veered off into social commentary... which wasn't comedic, but it kept all of our attention really well. And some of it was fun mocking of Tea Party types.

The last set was an improv session... it's really impressive to watch good improv comedy folks work. There are definitely hits and misses, and moments when you can see things are sliding off the rails, nobody's coming up with anything, and you pray they cue the lights and end it soon. But when they knock one out of the park, it's really impressive to see humor that impressive arrive so spontaneously.

Sadly, I didn't schedule enough time for a dinner in the city, which would have made the evening... alas. Hopped CTA back... it's odd going late enough that you have an entire subway car to yourself.

My flight back the next morning was after 10 AM--very nice, as I noted on Facebook:

Kohta Ueno finds that taking a flight home *not* at the crack of dawn kinda rocks. No panicked wakeup, a leisurely breakfast, and a calm shuttle ride to the airport. And time for postcards.

Anyway, a fun trip. And off to Maine with Sarah for 4th of July weekend!

Wedding Post Part I: Not the Wedding

2010-06-22T21:00:00.014-04:00

I have loads of blogging catch-up to do--sorry about the hiatus (over two weeks!). But this past week was a spectacular trip to California, for Jofish and Erin's wedding and associated festivities. I was out in California Tuesday through Sunday--when booking a frequent flyer ticket on United, I was in blackout territory unless I went early... oh no, taking vacation days in the Bay Area... not that ;).

Anyway, I did so much on this trip that I decided to split the blog post into two parts: the solo portion, puttering around the Bay Area, and then the wedding itself--where I was joined by my sweetie! Bringing a date to a wedding... that's a new one for me (and for Sarah as well!)

The flight out was uneventful... I took my usual window seat. However, one interesting item--a group of white sticks pointing out of the ground, with a ring road leading to each one...

Oh yeah... wind turbines! Cool. I back-calculated our rough location, and I guessed that we might have been over western Nebraska.

I landed at SFO, and BART delivered me just in the nick of time to join a walking tour of the historic buildings of San Francisco's Financial District. The guide is a historian who is writing a book on the city, and shares his great stories. For instance, the city requires that developers include privately-owned public spaces (POPOs)--little parks that the public can access. One of them is on the roof of a bank building--they sold off the air rights (the right to build in the space above the building) to an adjacent building that wanted to go higher. The guide said, "I've met bankers who have been working here in the financial district for twenty years, and they've never wandered into this space"--the way to enter these spaces was worth the price of the tour alone.

There were also neat architectural oddities, such as the "narrow building" (130 Bush): 20 feet wide, 80 feet deep, 10 stories tall--originally built as a garment manufacturing building.

And this one: they were building a skyscraper, but the existing building owner steadfastly refused to sell. So they agreed to let the building stay in place--building the skyscraper over it. Also, the small-building owner has the air rights to all the apartments above him--so he gets rent from the square footage above his building!

Plenty of other historically interesting and beautifully detailed buildings. Unfortunately, some of the locations were security-conscious and don't allow photography. But that just means you'll need to go on the tour yourself sometime! A strong recommendation to all of my Bay Area (or visiting) friends--it's a great way to spend a few hours in SF.

Afterwards, I thought, "Huh... am I near the Instructables office?" As a matter of fact, I was just a few blocks away. I wandered in unannounced, and walked up the stairs... "BATS?!!!?!!!" "Hi there Christy!!"

My coincidental timing was excellent--it was U-Boat's birthday, and he was celebrating with ice cream cake! Yum, cake. Also, Quinzee was there semi-randomly as well... excellent on seeing more people.

And the placard on the Instructables bathroom made me laugh:

That evening, I headed down to South Bay, to join Jofish and his crew for a bachelor party... well, if you can call a "hang out at a bar with the groom, bride, both their parents, and a whole bunch of friends" a bachelor party. A nice time, but I was coming up on 24 hours awake, so I left the party early.

The next day, I headed up to East Bay. First on the list was to hit a restaurant recommended to me by Judy (my former landlady): Bakesale Betty, a sandwich and pastry place in North Oakland's Temescal District, run by an Australian transplant who cooked at Chez Panisse Cafe for 3 years. They do one sandwich exclusively: fried chicken and cole slaw... it's seriously tasty. But it was huge... and I was far too filled up to try their pastries, alas. My advice: split the sandwich with a friend, along with a bag of baby carrots, and then you'll have room for dessert. Patron seating is outside, at ironing boards and stools on the sidewalk... pretty fun.

Then I killed some time walking along University Avenue in Berkeley, to meet up with some architects that we have worked with out there. Got a little bit of work time in--it was also great to see them and catch up on their current projects.

The photo below was just a condo building along my walk (The New Californian)--I was trying to figure out if it was a renovated existing building, or a new building made to look old. I'm guessing the latter, but some of the molded masonry/terra cotta panels make me say, "What, people are still making decorative elements like that?" Aha... apparently the latter: The building was designed by Oakland architect Kirk Peterson, who favors historically influenced design and who has designed several other Berkeley buildings, including the Bachenheimer and Gaia projects, Southside Square, and 1717 Fourth Street.

I originally made plans to have dinner with the lovely and brilliant Dr. O (a.k.a. Paramecium Woman); however, she had to cancel out on me at the last moment (don't worry... not due to another bike crash). However, she let me know in the morning, so I started sending out text messages, to see if I could catch folks I would miss otherwise.

Result: a nice Indian dinner with Spackle over near the Rockridge BART station! Having friends with flexible plans just rocks. Man... Rockridge is a hip/gentrified neighborhood... I think that in the future, if I'm at a loss on where to have dinner, I'll just take the train out there and walk down the street, picking a restaurant at random (we had fun cocktails and pretty decent Indian at Khana Peena).

It was great to catch up with him... his sweetie M. is currently teaching up in Eugene, OR; Spackle is planning on making the move up there sooner or later, when he can find work. They are considering buying in Portland (110 miles/2 hours away), and Michael can shuttle back and forth given a more-flexible academic schedule, while Spackle will have an easier time finding work in town.

The next day was picking up my sweetie at the airport, and heading up to California wine country for the wedding... which will be continued in Part II...

Meet the Parents...

2010-06-06T00:02:00.016-04:00

Soooo... last weekend (Memorial Day) was when my sweetie, Sarah, got to meet my family (both parents, and my sister). It actually went incredibly well, and we all had a nice time.

We drove down on Friday night, and my dad spent Saturday morning with us, giving us the Long Island quick tour: malls, suburbs, and seashore. We stopped by Oyster Bay--very nice out that day:

Then a quick 24-hour jaunt into New York City... first a stop at the new roof lawn at Lincoln Center (as described in this New York Times article):

A new two-story structure, which will eventually house new facilities for the Film Society and a high-end restaurant, rises from ground level just to the west of the stair; its roof, covered by a vast, tilting lawn, overlooks the plaza. The project’s most dazzling space, the lawn warps up on two sides, so that climbing it can make you feel as if you were about to float off into the air on a carpet of green.

Pretty neat. But apparently, five days after they were there, they had to close the lawn, due to damage. Bummer.

Next up--dinner at Momofuku Noodle Bar... it turns out that I'd talked it up so much, that Sarah really wanted to go. No objections here! Just as a sign of how popular it is: we got there at 5:40 (it opens at 5:30 PM), and there was already a 20 minute wait. However, we happily passed the time with tasty soju (Korean rice vodka) slushies.

Dinner rocked... the signature pork buns, baby bok choi, chilled spicy noodles (Sichuan spiced sausage, spinach, cashews), and roasted foie gras (celery root & miso pureee, brown butter, pineapple).

Next up... jazz (Ahmad Jamal) at the Blue Note. A great set... piano, bass, drummer, and percussionist. The percussionist had a huge array of chimes, gongs, blocks, talking drums... he was almost like the sound effects guy on an old radio show.

And after that... I'd talked up Dessert Truck in the past:

On the night before Halloween 2007, like a figment of some calorie-deprived dieter’s fevered imagination, came DessertTruck, quite possibly the first haute confectionery on wheels. The vehicle, parked strategically outside an NYU dorm, dispenses the sort of lavish concoctions you’d have to go to cooking school to learn how to make—as did co-owner Jerome Chang, a French Culinary Institute graduate who left a cushy berth in Le Cirque’s pastry kitchen to sell $5 cups of crème brûlée out of a retrofitted postal truck.

It turns out that they no longer run the truck... but they have opened a storefront (Dessert Truck Works). on the lower East side/alphabet city area.

Warm molten chocolate cake (with olive oil ganache center + vanilla ice cream), and warm chocolate bread pudding (with bacon custard sauce). Serious nom. And providing an object lesson to me: bacon and chocolate does work. Hot damn.

Sunday was a morning at MoMA: for those of you who don't know, Sarah is an awesome avid photographer, so we headed to the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit. He did a huge range of subjects--from Ghandi's funeral, to portraiture, to the Great Leap Forward in Communist China, to trips to Mongolia and Indonesia. It seems like his photographs were a strong presence in Life Magazine through the 1950's and 1960's. My understanding, from the exhibit, is that he is one of the primary reasons why photography is now regarded as a serious art form.

Next was lunch with my sister and her boyfriend, and then a train home. Sarah and I had a wonderful geek-bonding moment: my dad was complaining trying to extract video from the the cable company-supplied DVR--he could record it onto the VCR, but not in HD. S. and I quickly fired up internet research... figuring out that the entertainment industry works really hard to keep you from extracting HDMI output into any useful form. We looked through a variety of options, and concluded that an external eSATA hard drive was probably the way to go... which I quickly ordered off of newegg.com.

But my dad commented, "I really think that you two were talking some alien language that has nothing to do with what the rest of us humans speak." Yessss.

Then... then... we have to delve into my sordid, nerdy past. Back in high school, I was the captain of our quiz show team, which was recorded on the local PBS station ("Brainstormers"). So my parents had carefully recorded all four episodes (we made it to finals--Long Island second place!), in their VHS glory, and have been plotting for the past 22 years to humiliate me by showing it to a visiting girlfriend. There I was, in my ultra-serious, question-answering, hornrim glasses, sweater-vest and bow tie glory. Oh cripes.

Okay, we all got a good laugh out of it. If I can get a screen capture next time I'm down there, I'll post it for sure.

Mom made a very tasty dinner--the whole family was there--followed by lunch the next day, out on the back porch:

Yep... think the family likes her all right. All good.

A blissfully traffic-free road trip back up to Boston on Monday... and then back to a four-day workweek.

PSA #2: Ten Year Old Bailey's

2010-06-05T23:43:00.006-04:00

Here's my second public service announcement: it involved an evening of trying to fix a drink for my girlfriend, and unfortunate discoveries at the back of my liquor cabinet...

Sarah was over on Friday night, and I suggested that I prepare some drinks. However, no limes in the fridge... so no margaritas, daquaris, or gin & tonics. No sour mix... no whiskey sours. No mint... so no mint juleps, or mojitos. Grr. We went online to go recipe hunting.

"How about Bailey's Irish Cream?"

"Sure... I should have a bottle in my cabinet somewhere..."

[online searching]

"Looks like an Irish Cream Special should work--milk, Bailey's, and ice" (why yes, when I speak, I do include hypertext links, actually).

"Sold!"

However, when I dug out the Bailey's, I realized... huh... 2000, eh?

Hrm... seemed like there was a bit of a plug in the neck of the bottle.

[shake shake shake]

Eeeewwwww.

The sad thing was that it still smelled yummy. But I wasn't planning on pouring... erm... smearing it over ice.

Yeah, it turns out that Bailey's isn't something that you want to cellar. Thought y'all ought to know that.

PSA #1: Low Mileage Discount for Car Insurance

2010-06-05T23:24:00.006-04:00

A couple of public service announcements this evening--one was that fact that I recently updated my car insurance to reflect my driving habits--as mentioned previously, typically under 5000 miles per year, compared to the US average of 12,000 miles/year. For a graphic representation see below: the brown is my old Boston-to-495 commute (bleah!), black/yellow were my shiftless years in grad school, and blue is my current commute (2010 is YTD):

Partially, I was prompted by Dave and Katie's blog post ("Thoughts (and data!) on car ownership costs")--for those of you who don't overlap, they are lovely friends of Jofish's, who are currently living in Portland, OR car free, biking everywhere--woot! And that's with a 6-month old kid. Rock on, guys, I salute you. Anyway, they did the math on car ownership... if you add up everything, that government rate for mileage reimbursement (50 cents/mile), really is not a huge bargain. Also, they pointed out one of the unfortunate effects of owning a car:

To me, this drove home the point that if you're going to own a car anyway and you carpool driving can be cheaper than an annual transit pass costing around $1000 per year per person. This is one of the financial traps of car ownership: the incremental cost of any extra usage is small enough that if you own a car it's hard to financially justify not using it. It's a pair of thrifty handcuffs, making the owners feel good about driving more. I consider this throwing good money after bad.

Alas (speaking as a car owner). Perhaps my costs are lower... I'm not sure if my car has depreciated quite to zero, but it's getting close. But the least I could do was contact my insurance company, to see what their low mileage discount was. They told me that there were two tiers: at 7500 miles/year, and 5000 miles/year. It turns out that they verify low mileage based on the reported miles at your annual state inspection--pretty smaht, eh? Anyway, given my history, I'm pretty comfortable that I can hit 5000 regularly.

I got a revised bill, dropping my rates from $664/year to $572/year. Not terrific, but hey, getting $92/year for something that I already do ain't a bad thing. And for reference, those numbers are for a 18 year old car, garaged in Arlington, MA; 39 year old driver.

im in ur NAS

2010-06-03T08:33:00.004-04:00

Sarah and I spent Memorial Day weekend in New York, both seeing New York City, as well as introducing her to my family. Yeah, ulp! It actually went very well--she liked them a lot, and I think my family liked her too!

But that's not what this post is about (I'll post on the weekend later).

I normally like to make sure that people have the photos I took of an event--so one of my to-do items was to upload the folder to S.'s NAS. However, she was out that evening, at camera club.

But wait... hrm... can I get wireless signal on her porch?

Apparently, yes! So she got an email message, with the attached image and caption:

im in ur NAS uploadin weekend pikchurs

I have to say one of the more amusing "im in ur base" riffs was this classical one.

Wiring, Wine, Salem, and Coincidences

2010-05-25T19:26:00.010-04:00

It was a busy but fun grab-bag of a weekend, primarily with my sweetie.

First, of course I have wandered down to Sarah's basement... and I quickly noticed that if was going to organize things onto shelves, I would need some more light. So I spent half a day turning this:

Into this:

It went from 1 light -> 3 lights, plus a wall switch instead of a pull chain, and a convenience outlet. Also, I installed a bike hook--and her bike is now tuned up, and has lights!

She rewarded my efforts with a burrito from Anna's Taqueria, and a great big smooch. Heck--check it out, I was even wearing my BCD safety glasses at the time!

That evening went a bit more highbrow--a wine tasting at a friend's house in Framingham--Reds: Argentinia vs. Chile. For some reason, that sounds like a soccer match (GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!). I have to say that eight glasses per person make the table really hard (and nerve-wracking) to navigate.

Sunday was a day trip up to Salem (with sides trips to Home Depot and REI)--meeting up with Sarah's friends Jen, Marcey, Eliza, and baby Asa--we had a fun wander around town:

Also: strange coincidence #1. That evening, I received this message on Facebook, from Amie's friend Alexa:

Did my family nearly run you down on the sidewalk at the Friendship in Salem this afternoon? If so, I apologize for not stopping and chatting. It was running into dinner time. It was also Peter's first time out on a bike of any sort in over 7 years, let alone with a 5 year old on a trailer attached.

If not, there is someone running around the North Shore looking very much like you.

Hah--cool! Yes, I definitely remember a family with two tag-a-longs attached to two bikes, that I waved past our group. Very funny.

While browsing around the various tourist-trap stores in Salem, I found a store that sold wine and mixers, including this one:

Um, bottled simple syrup? As in sugar, water, and heat? Wow... seriously lame. I am not sufficient hard-core as a bartender to keep a supply at hand, but I can easily pop some water + sugar into the microwave to a boil/dissolve, then chill it down. Check out the ingredient list:

Ingredients: Triple Filtered Water, Cane Sugar, Lactic Acid

Anyway, a very nice wander around Salem.

Had a lovely dinner at Green Land Cafe, a new and classy place in Salem, with great food. Although we did go lowbrow, and our dishes included fried oysters and pork cracklins'.

Over dinner, I found out about odd coincidence #2--it's complicated enough that I'm putting it in diagram form:

Sarah -> [is friends with] -> Jen -> [who is sorta-dating] -> Jeff -> [who went to Grove City College, and took classes from] -> Big Bird's Dad (a.k.a. "Helfy" among the students). I've met Bird's folks a bunch of times, so it was funny to get an outside perspective--he has a reputation as a really hard grader.

A full and busy weekend.... and this upcoming weekend (Memorial Day) is NYC with Sarah--and she gets to meet my family. Yikes!

Bike to Work Week!

2010-05-19T23:25:00.011-04:00

For those of you who don't know--it's Bike to Work Week this week!

The League of American Bicyclists is promoting Bike-to-Work Week 2010 from May 17-21 and Bike-to-Work Day on Friday, May 21.

Yes, this that means you haven't missed it--if it's a possibility, please bike to work this Friday! In the Boston area, the weather is supposed to be nice on that day (high of 70 F and clear). So far, I am batting 1.000 this week, including a grey, drizzly day (details below).

I had some bad information, and thought that it was bike to work day last week. On that day, I had to go to a client site in Concord, MA. Grr! Waitasec... got my coworker to put the testing equipment in her car. Then I did home -> Belmont Station via bike...

To Commuter Rail to Concord... (go Dahon folding bike!)

And then to the jobsite in Concord! And I caught a ride back to the office with my coworker; the folder fit in her back seat no problem.

Any post about bike commuting would be remiss if it didn't point people at MassBike--they are a great advocacy group, and I donate to them regularly. That link shows their advocacy history--they were pretty instrumental in getting the Minuteman Trail built.

Also, they have this great awareness campaign going on:

Same Roads, Same Rules is aimed at both bicyclists and motorists. It is about coexisting in a shared space, respecting each other as human beings, using common sense, and keeping yourself and others safe by following a common set of rules. As the number of cyclists has skyrocketed in recent years, the need for more information has become urgent, with many on the road, bicyclists and motorists alike, unsure how to safely interact with each other.

Everybody who drives a car should take a look at the motorist tips section; I was considering printing out those sections on index cards, and giving them to people who nearly squeeze me off the road, honk at me, or come close to dooring me (hey, check it out: $100 fine for hitting a cyclist with a car door--MGL chapter 90, section 14). Also, there are tips for cyclists as well--pedestrians go first, stop at red lights, dammit.

Oh yeah... in regards to that grey drizzly day... I took a photo when I got home, and my flash came on. It was useful to show just how much ScotchBrite I am wearing:

I recommend the ScotchBrite triangle--I saw somebody with one pinned on their backpack, and thought, "Wow... that's a great idea; 90% of my night biking is with this pack." Also, my tires apparently have that compound on the rim. Finally, my Novara Conversion Bike Jacket has reflective piping... good stuff. Of course, though, if you are riding at night, you still need lights, front and rear!

What's funny is that people sometimes have the reaction, "Wow... you're hard core at this stuff..." No, not really... my former coworker, who biked ~40 miles each way, every day, rain or shine--he was hard core. Me... I'm just a fat guy riding on fat tires (Schwalbe Big Apples, FTW!), who keeps on pedaling until he gets there. Sadly, my bike commute is probably the only significant exercise that I get. But hey... the fact that it makes it non-zero is a plus.

Buying vs. Renting

2010-05-11T21:52:00.007-04:00

This post on buying vs. renting a place to live was prompted by (a) a recent New York Times column ("In Sour Home Market, Buying Often Beats Renting"), as well as (b) a few of the folks on my friends list have either recently bought, or are looking (congrats Q!). In addition, (c) I was looking into this during the past few months, when I thought that my living situation would be changing (actually not the case, now).

First of all, as background, if any of you haven't seen it, I described what I would ideally be looking for, back in 2008 ("The Most Tenuous of House Plans"). But moving on, specifically, to the New York Times article:

In much of the country, for much of the last decade, renting a home has usually been a better financial move than buying one. It’s been true in Southern California, San Francisco, Phoenix, Las Vegas and large parts of Florida, the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast.

Now, however, the situation is getting more complicated because the housing bust has been playing out unevenly across the country.

...

In some once bubbly markets, prices have fallen so far that buying a home appears to be a bargain, based on a New York Times analysis of prices and rents in 54 metropolitan areas. In South Florida, Phoenix and Las Vegas, house prices — relative to rents — are as low as in places that never experienced a bubble, like Indianapolis and St. Louis.

But in a handful of other areas, including San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore., house prices remain significantly higher than they were before the bubble began. People who buy a home in these areas will face higher monthly costs than if they rented, even after taking tax deductions into account. As a result, buyers are effectively betting that prices will rise enough in future years to cover the difference.

They offer up a simple lookup, to first figure out if buying or renting makes more sense:

A simple way to do the comparison is to look at something called the rent ratio: the purchase price of a house divided by the annual cost of renting a similar one. The number 20 provides a useful rule of thumb. When you do the math, you discover that a ratio above 20 means you should at least consider renting, especially if you may move again in the next five years or so. When the ratio is well below 20, the case for buying becomes a lot stronger.

Interesting. They have a table of Rent Ratios; it shows that Boston fell from 21.8 to 17.6, between 2005 and 2009. Promising... but it doesn't cover an individual's specific case. However, they have an interactive calculator, which lets you enter current rent, home price, down payment, interest rate, etc.. A typical plot looks like this: the tan portion shows the point at which buying makes more sense than renting:

Interesting. However, I know that I have really cheap digs, splitting a two bedroom place near Arlington Center with JMD. Also, when I was looking around for places, it seemed like one bedroom condos started out in the $300,000 range in Somerville/Arlington-ish, and two-bedrooms started around $350,000. Let's see what that graph looks like with those numbers:

Hrm. Wow. Yes, yes, I know... half of an apartment is not the same "real estate value" as whatever I would be buying into. But frankly, what I am interested in is something that fulfills the role of, "Keeps me under a roof, okay place, in a good location," which my current spot does in spades. Living below my means?... why yes, I'm good with that, thanks.

There are plenty of handles and tweaks in the calculator that I'm not playing with here (property tax rates, rent increases, etc.)--I left those at default levels. But still... to me, the takeaway lesson is that financially, I should hang on to my current location as long as it makes sense.

Finally, to get a bit philosophical, I really don't have any intrinsic real estate lust or nesting instinct... as discussed in that previous blog post. I'm afraid that I fall squarely into the demographic of developmentally-challenged guys described in a 2006 New York Times article ("For Men, a Fear of Commitment"):

Still, there seems to be a consensus among brokers and buyers who have witnessed the trend that single men, even those whose college diplomas are yellowed with age, gravitate to a lifestyle not unlike that enjoyed by fraternity brothers: relatively free of commitments and rife with male companionship.

They consider buying a home detrimental to their independence, as it tethers them to one location, squelching any youthful fantasy of a nomadic existence. Indeed, for many single men without children, buying a home is a commitment akin to getting married — and they are content to put it off.

Single women on the other hand seem more interested in establishing a sense of security, or "nesting," as several brokers and buyers put it. They consider buying a home an act of independence. It is an asset, a symbol of their financial strength and proof that they need not wait for a man of means to provide them with the security they crave.

If somebody told me that at age 60 or 70, I would still be living in a rental, I don't recoil in horror or anything. Of course, I'd want to know, "Um, is it in decent neighborhood? Do I have money in the bank all right? Do I still get to go out and do fun and interesting things? And we're not talking about a 400 sf chunk of retirement home out on 495, where I'm strapped to a bed, right?" If all these answers were okay, hey, it doesn't bother me.

Catchup Post: 961 Miles

2010-05-09T19:26:00.014-04:00

I just had a lovely, quiet, catch-up-with-life weekend (mostly with my sweetie). However, that makes for lousy blog copy, frankly. But the reason why a quiet weekend was so welcome--the past two have been insanely busy and travel-filled: Washington DC (work plus seeing Beef & Laurel, then Squanto, Beth, and Fiona) one weekend, and Bangor ME + NYC the other weekend.

The reason for the trip to Maine, sadly, was to attend Sarah's grandfather's funeral service. It was a very sad reason to see all of her family, but I am glad that I made it up for all of the get-togethers, for whatever small support I could offer. And even at a time of such emotional distress, the family was incredibly gracious and full of hospitality.

On the way home, Sarah and I heard about the MWRA water emergency going on in the Greater Boston Area. Since we both live in affected zones, we decided to load up on drinking water while we were still in Maine:

But there was another event shoehorned into this weekend: Bird and I had bought tickets to see Peter Gabriel in concert in New York City on Monday--he only played three North American cities on this tour, so that was the closest. So we spent the night at Bird & Jen's, had a lovely dinner at Anneke Jans in Kittery.

On Monday, Bird and I road tripped down--a late lunch at Rein's New York Style Deli; in town by 5 PM. Then, over the course of the next ~16 hours, we packed it in:

Dinner at Momofuku Noodle Bar--many thanks to Perlick for turning me on to them. Steamed pork buns... oh so perfect and full of unctuous pork goodness... grilled ramps, and a great big bowl of kimchee stew. A fantastic dinner, in a casual, hip environment. Plus, we were seated right at the bar, so we could see the line cooks cranking away... "Hot, coming through!"
The Peter Gabriel Concert--a sold-out show at Radio City Music Hall (a gorgeous art deco masterpiece of a theater). Gabriel is looking older now (going bald, all white hair), but his voice is still kicking. The first half of his concert was going straight through his new album: Scratch My Back--covers of songs by a wide variety of folks--from Talking Heads to Regina Spektor to Lou Reed to Randy Newman to The Arcade Fire. Oh, and this is all done with an orchestral backing: no drums, no guitars. The second half was many of his older songs (albums from Security through Up), done with an orchestral backing. Oh yeah--Lou Reed doing a guest song after intermission! Peter Gabriel put on a tremendous show... if you're actually interested in detail, New York Times review here

(Note: photo not my own--it's from a Flickr page).
Two rounds of Guinesses at a New York City bar with Bird, to 1 AM
Breakfast at a quintessential Greek diner... a new breakfast combination for me--an egg and gyro sandwich
Road trip back up during the day on Tuesday, and getting dropped off at work to put in half of a useful day.

So all told: the long weekend's trip of Somerville -> Littleton Commuter Rail -> Bangor -> Dover NH -> New York City -> Somerville was 966 miles. All done in other people's cars, although I did take turns driving and/or buying gas. A pretty exhausting weekend.

..And Top with QuickCrete Frosting...

2010-04-21T20:18:00.008-04:00

Sometimes, I'm pretty amused at the odd directions my work takes me. Specifically--one of the follow up studies for my job in Vermont was to perform material property testing on some building material samples that I collected. One step was to dry the samples down to 0% moisture content, as per ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) Standard C67: Standard Test Methods for Sampling and Testing Brick and Structural Clay Tile. So what does that mean?

Yep, I got to bake bricks! Okay, structural clay tile, actually. Strangely, the standard does not call for inserting a toothpick into the sample to find out if it is done.

Another test was to perform a 5-hour boiling absorption test. So JMD came home to this on the stove:

"Uh, Bats, why are you boiling bricks?"

"Making stock. You have to boil the heck out of them to get the flavor out."

I somehow managed to resist tasting the brick stock to see how it was coming along. However--no matter how long I boiled it, fall-off-the-bone my butt... it didn't soften up.

Anyway--ta dah! Ready to be plated.

Order up!

Adventures in Car Audio

2010-04-20T18:53:00.005-04:00

Back over Christmas, I was at a loss for a good, personalized present for my sweetie. Fortunately, I came up with something--given my tinkering skills, I figured I should offer them up: so I gave her this gift certificate:

This gift certificate entitles the recipient to one (1) day of House Project / Construction / Furniture building / miscellaneous services. Services shall be rendered upon tender of certificate.

She had a great idea on what to collect with--her driver's side car speaker has been intermittent (and then dead) for close to a year now. Sure I'll do that--come on over!

Yeah, I know, too cute. My Subaru is the one that is older (1992!!), smaller, less sporty, and more weathered. Like me!

Anyway, I was hoping that speaker replacement would be a matter of simply pulling off a speaker cover or something. Nuh-huh. Turns out that you have to remove the entire door panel to replace a speaker. Grr. Fortunately, Sarah owns the Haynes manual for her car, and we followed the instructions to disassemble the door panel--mostly successful; not too many disasters:

I also told her to pose with the removed car door panel:

and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!

Anyway... diagnosis time. Hrm... no obvious problems with a visual inspection. Wiggle all the connections, and look for corrosion on the terminals? Nope. Continuity from the wire terminals to the speaker lugs? Checks out. Wait... I have a set of half-broken old speakers in my junk pile... temporarily connected it... yep, the original speaker is shot. Argh.

I suggested that we head to the ~~Buy More~~ Best Buy and pick up car speakers, to avoid reassembling and re-disassembling the car door.

Man... it's been a while since I had such an object lesson on how incompetent their staff is. We already figured out that it was a 6-1/2" speaker with... say... a ruler. We flagged down a salesbot, and he tried to convince us that it was a 5-1/4" speaker. After more fruitless conversation, we wandered off into the aisles. Fortunately, Sarah could get signal on her iPhone--Crutchfield to the rescue! She could get the list of compatible speakers by car model year, and then cross-reference the speakers on the shelves with how they were rated by users.

And people wonder why I think brick-and-mortar stores have a limited use. One set of Sony Xplods later, we were heading out the door.

Installation went smoothly, although I had to resort to a headlamp and flashlights when finishing off the passenger side installation.

As a final note... as we were wrapping up and putting things away, Sarah picked up the old speaker that I had sitting on top of the washing machine.

"Ugh... this speaker is sticky... I think it got stuck to your washing machine or something..."

"Um. Magnet?"

"Oh."

We both had a good laugh over that one.

A Weekend in Maine

2010-04-12T20:36:00.007-04:00

I had a weekend up in Maine with Sarah; sadly, the reason for this trip was that her grandfather is not well at all, and much of the family is travelling up to see him. Travel and visiting was most of Saturday and Sunday, through the early afternoon. But the drive back had a few things worth sharing.

We stopped in Portland on the way back (including Cape Elizabeth). We got to briefly check out the sights--from Crescent Beach...

...to Portland Head Light (obligatory postcard shot!)...

...to the local wastewater treatment facility! (okay, so we just drove by it on the bridge. But I found it interesting enough to find the web page about its construction).

Dinner was in Portland, at Street & Company--a great little seafood place, in a cobblestone alley off of the main drag. The Yelp reviews were really good... with many recommending the lobster fra diavlo. Yep... that's what we ordered (seafood with a spicy tomato sauce and pasta... including a whole split lobster):

We also had some "taste" side dishes to start--tomato and parmesan clafoutis (somewhat like a tiny quiche), and a small red pepper stuffed with crab mean. Both great... but man, the fra diavlo was amazing. Sarah taught me a thing or two about extracting the last bits of meat out of lobster (e.g., the fins on the tail actually have a nice morsel, if you crack them open).

But I have to say that the aftermath from our feast made me want to describe our dinner as, "spicy red sauce seafood massacre":

Like I said, yum. Strong recommend.

Finally, I had to drag Sarah over to the docks, to see if a certain boat that I know is still there:

Yep, the Bay View Lady is still in the water and in business, Amie. That fact makes me smile for some reason.

The Brown Mountain State

2010-04-12T20:22:00.001-04:00

Last Monday was a work trip up to Vermont (West Rutland, to be exact)--about three hours from Boston. A nice drive both ways--although I have to say that this time of year, Vermont is more of a Brown Mountain State than anything else.

After completing my work in the early afternoon, I decided to have a nice slow meander back home--I wasn't going to be very productive, so I thought I'd let myself stop at those spots where I wanted to linger and check things out on the way up. For instance, passing by this piece of machinery in a scrapyard--"WTF is that?!"

Can't say I really figured it out. Apparently, the Traylor company made mills for the mining industry. It looks like the round indentation is a some kind of a ginormous bearing, with babbit surfaces.

I made stops on the way for maple syrup, lunch in Rutland (The Sandwich Shoppe--a thoroughly tasty and unhealthy chili wrap), and a coffee/snack break. Oh yeah, and postcards, of course. A lovely serendipitous find--allechante in Woodstock, VT.

It felt like the area I was driving through was kinda the ski resort/upscale/tourist/yuppie axis of Vermont--looking at the cars going by seemed at times like: "Subaru.. Volvo.. other... Subaru.. other.. Jeep... Volvo... other... Subaru..." There are actually three Subarus in the photo below, but I didn't frame it quite right:

A quick stop at the LL Bean outlet store on the way back, and dropping off maple syrup for my sweetie. A good day.

Bounce Trip: IAD

2010-03-26T21:56:00.009-04:00

This week included a "bounce" trip to DC, in order to give a presentation at a conference. The conference center (more about that later) has a shuttle straight to and from IAD, so I flew BOS-IAD (and actually got bumped to First Class... whoah).

Arriving at the terminal building, I had to look up at the soaring ceiling, and say, "Yep, very nice, Mr. Saarinen."

If you didn't see it previously, I geeked out about Eero Saarinen, the architect, on a previous trip to DC. There was an exhibit at the National Building Museum; one of my reactions was:

As much as I harsh on modernism, Saarinen aesthetics were pretty spectacular--they really create this 1960's-Jetsons-here's-our-cool-future aesthetic that gives me nostalgia for an era before my time.

If you care for more photos of the terminal, there are a bunch of them at Great Buildings Online. The night photos are quite striking.

The other fun thing about Dulles is that it has these ridiculous-looking "mobile lounges," to take passengers to and from the concourse buildings. They link up to the main building, and look for all the world like goofy 1970's science fiction prop vehicles, with big balloon tires, and a cab that rises up and down:

I have always chortled at the name, "mobile lounge." Oh yeah, set us up with a disco ball, some beanbag chairs, and a thumpin' bass sound system, and I think we're all set. Although that red carpet really has to go...

I have long wondered, "Did they not realize that, just maybe, a tunnel connecting these buildings might not be a bad idea? Like every other airport that I've been in?! Well... as usual, Wikipedia to the rescue:

Dulles is one of the few remaining airports to use the "mobile lounges" and "plane mates" for boarding and disembarkation from aircraft, to transfer passengers between the midfield concourses and to and from the main terminal building. ... The MWAA plans to retire the mobile lounge system for inter-terminal passenger movements in favor of the underground people mover and pedestrian walkway system (now in service to concourse B). However, some plane mates will remain in use to disembark international passengers and carry them to the International Arrivals Building, as well as to convey passengers to and from aircraft on hard stand (i.e., those parked remotely on the apron without access to jet bridges).

Aha... the original plan was to use these mobile lounges to link up directly with aircraft! Fair enough--check out the Plane Mate manufacturer's page... lower down on the page they show that linkup... pretty neat.

Anyway, it sounds like the "mobile lounges" are being replaced by an automated tramway system. Unbelievably, I had time at Dulles, but failed to earmark time to check out their geeky exhibit on the tramway. Dammit!

I actually walked by the tramway without noticing--I was taking a shot of the neat structural elements here... those closed in glass areas are the tramways. My flight was out of one of the D gates, which is not connected by the tramway system.

I hopped the shuttle to my conference--it was being held at the National Conference Center (NCC)--it is absolutely gigantic, out in (formerly) middle-of-nowhere Virgina... but now being surrounded by brand-new exurban townhouses. But check it out--they have postcards of this place... wow... that rivals airport postcards in ridiculousness!

The interior is filled with windowless conference rooms, and you can get completely turned around very easily (okay, where is N4-226?). Check out the aerial view... it seems like some type of insane ancient fortification or step-pyramid ruin in its architectural style.

It made me want to riff into...

[PBS Announcer Voice:] The ancient Ziggurats of N'CC, located on the banks of the Potomac River, were only recently re-discovered by explorers this past decade. Its structures enclose 265,000 square feet (24,600 m2), and contain 250 conference rooms, an athletic facility, and 917 guest rooms. The best reconstruction of the historical record show that it was hewn from the raw forests of Virginia circa 1970. Its maze-like passages were known to have trapped countless conference attendees, who were forced to subsist on cookies and coffee from the break stations until they could find their way out again. Archaeologists are still working to decipher the color coding of their mysterious "living-learning modules." It still stands today as a testament to the technical prowess and fortitude of the Beltwei peoples.

Overall, though: traveling ~8 hours round trip to give a 1-1/2 hour presentation... man, that's pretty rough on the system. Ugh. Hey, it's Friday now.

Healthcare Costs and Life Expectancy

2010-03-22T21:10:00.003-04:00

I am embarrassed to admit that I have not been following the health care story nearly as closely as I should be (yes, I do know the headlines, and have read a bunch of articles). I found a Frontline documentary from 2008 very informative (Sick Around the World):

In Sick Around the World, FRONTLINE teams up with veteran Washington Post foreign correspondent T.R. Reid to find out how five other capitalist democracies -- the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland -- deliver health care, and what the United States might learn from their successes and their failures.

I was surprised to find out that Switzerland was actually a country that had only implemented public health care within recent memory (1994), and it came from a private system similar to the US. Just something that gave some hope, during the debate.

I also recommend this Atlantic article ("How American Health Care Killed My Father"):

After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem.

One thing that I have heard over and over again in the debate is that the United States has the highest per capita health care costs, but with completely mediocre results, by any metric. I did some web-sleuthing to see if I could find a plot or something along those lines. Google to the rescue--a Columbia prof plotted per capita healthcare expenditures against life expectancy (his full blog post here).

Wow. I say again, wow. The US is even more of an outlier than it was in the religiosity-vs.-income post from a few years ago. It's impressive just to look at these first-world countries that have no problem maintaining good lifespans while spending roughly half of the US amount; the professor's blog post has a less streamlined scatter plot, but with even more countries on it.

Overall, I am glad that this country is starting to move towards the rest of the world in terms of having a more-rational health care system (at least I hope so). But I am afraid that I am not very hopeful on the plan's ability to bring costs down... which, if you look at the graph, seems to be the fundamental problem.

Anyway, as a last note--the Atlantic had a post (Understanding How Health Care Reform Will Affect You):

Last night the House of Representatives passed the Senate health care bill, and the Democrats' year of living flirtatiously with failure ended with what I would call the greatest progressive achievement of the last two generations. We -- that is you, me, and everyone we know -- have spent months wrangling over the implications of health care on the deficit and the cost curve and the tenor of DC politics. But now that the bill has become a law, the most useful approach to health care is to servicey rather than debatey: so what does it mean for you, anyway?

It included a useful link to a Washington Post interactive tool "...that asks users to enter their source of health care (employer, Medicare, etc), household members, marital status and income, which it uses to calculate how the new health care law will affect you." I tried it out: it claims that there will be no change in my insurance coverage, and I will not pay additional taxes. Fair enough... let's keep an eye on all of this.

DIY Biohazard Remediation

2010-03-21T21:50:00.007-04:00

S. is going away for two weeks for a business trip to Europe, so while I was at her place this weekend, I took it upon myself to clear out the perishable items that wouldn't last the trip. It started out innocuously enough... here's a slightly soft red pepper that I can cook tomorrow... a bag of Brussels sprouts, and some grapes. A plastic bag with... uh... three-week old restaurant leftovers. Fair enough; she's been slammed for the past few weeks.

Then I started digging through the deeper parts of the shelves. And checking the dates on the package. For example... Egg Beaters from August 2009? Uhhh.. whuuuuh....

Wow... I didn't realize that you could make-your-own Craisins. But with a bag of cranberries, undisturbed refrigerator storage, and enough patience... voila!

And on this shelf... yogurt from January 2009? Aieee!

But the winner was when I picked up a half-carton of eggs.... and they felt... well, way too light. I took out an egg, and it felt hollow. Nope... no holes in the eggshell. Don't tell me that these eggs actually evaporated away through their shells?!? Let's check the date... May 2009?!?! Oh no, sweetie.... [facepalm]

I had to admit that I was incredibly curious, so I had to (cautiously) crack one open. It appears that the white had completely evaporated, and that the yolk (which contains fat) was frozen.

Anyway, I made dinner tonight using those "fridge saves" (red pepper and Brussels sprouts). But as for the rest... well, let's just say that the garbage disposal and my compost bin ate well this weekend.

For the record, I am officially putting A. and JMD on notice--you are no longer in the running for worst fridge management results among my circle of friends.

Oh, and in case any of you were wondering--S. and I had a huge laugh over all of this. I was hesitant to blog this, but she said that I definitely should... I hope that you might share this laugh with us.

Cutting the Cable...

2010-03-21T21:11:00.011-04:00

Recently, JMD and I were discussing our cable bill: it is ~$120/month for internet & cable TV (basic package; no premium channels). Yuck. I had previously assumed that JMD wanted cable TV (since she signed us up for it), but she actually remarked that she didn't want it anymore--especially because they were about to jack rates an additional $10/month. So the cable box got disconnected, and [gulp] all of it was returned to the company. I believe that our rates are going to go down by ~$40/month (internet only).

Those of you who know me probably are aware of this, but my television watching is pretty minimal. Maybe 75% PBS, 20% Discovery Channel, with a smattering of other things (the odd hockey game, TLC, History Channel). Also, DVDs, NetFlix/Amazon on demand, iTunes movies, or downloaded video files (via my hacked together media station). So I didn't think of it as that much of a loss.

My plan was to grab an antenna, in order to tune in boring, old, over-the-airwaves digital TV. However, I thought, "Huh... I could just plug the cable into the back of the TV and see if it picks up anything..." Well...

Schweet! With a built-in digital tuner, it picked up the unscrambled on-air channels from the cable no problem--including all the on-air HD channels. No idea if this is going away in a month or not--but it seems like it might be more of a pain than it is worth for the cable company to shut off over-the-air channels on their existing infrastructure. And if they do... well, oh noes, back to the plan of installing an antenna.

But I quickly realized: all that I really had lost (in my TV selection) was Discovery Channel. So wait...we were paying an extra $40 a month just for Discovery Channel? As well as whatever JMD was watching (TNT? the Law and Order channel?) Not to mention the privilege of not getting HDTV?! (the cable company was going to charge extra for an HDTV cable box). Dammit! That would have been a nice dinner every month for how many years now?!?

The New York Times actually had an article talking about the phenomenon of "cable cutters"--Changing Channels, From Cable to the Web:

...people who do watch television — sometimes plenty of it — but don’t own a cable box.

Those who belong to this crowd are only too happy to remind you that they can watch most of what you watch, but don’t pay $60 a month or more for the privilege. They will explain gleefully how they (legally, for the most part) circumvent the cable companies. And they are becoming more voluble, as cable bills rise and technology improves.

...

It’s impossible to quantify how many people have ditched their cable service, and the cable providers are eager to paint them as a minority fringe. But with devices like Xbox and Apple TV and software like Boxee making it easy to stream Internet content to a television, mention the phenomenon in just about any gathering, and someone is likely to pipe up about his or her way of watching cable free. And, yes, by and large they do enjoy making other people jealous.

However, it is only seen as a fringe element... although given how various internet appliances are making entertainment convergence that much easier for the masses, this might not be a fringe trend forever:

Cable executives say they are not worried. Setting up a cable-free life is still too daunting for most people, since most of the work-arounds involve a lot more than just grabbing the remote (assuming you can find it under the sofa cushions).

“We don’t consider it a threat to our business,” said Maureen Huff, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable. “Being able to watch TV on the Internet is not new.”

Without question, the cost of watching television is going up: The average household cable bill in the United States hit $64 a month in 2009, up from $47.50 in 2004, according to Leichtman Research Group, which specializes in media research.

Even so, most cord cutters are “really just a bizarre breed of people, usually in New York or San Francisco, who don’t watch a lot of television in the first place,” said Bruce Leichtman, the president of the New Hampshire-based group.

I am betting that my audience here probably overrepresents folks who don't bother with cable TV. Anyway, while we're on the topic of television, I had to mention this Atlantic Monthly article ("The Future is Cheese"). It had a choice quote from the creator of the TV show Heroes, which made me laugh out loud:

Speaking at a screenwriter expo in Los Angeles, Tim Kring struggled to defend his sci-fi-tinged show, which has endured two seasons of faltering ratings. Heroes is presented in a serialized format, meaning that stories “arc” over the course of an entire season rather than conclude at the end of each episode, as in a sitcom, or a police procedural such as CSI or Law & Order. The serialized format is “a very flawed way of telling stories on network television right now,” a blogger quoted Kring as saying, “because of the advent of the DVR and online streaming. The engine that drove [serialized TV] was, you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on-air.”

Then, in a fit of pique for which he is still apologizing, he said: “So on-air is [relegated] to the saps and the dipshits who can’t figure out how to watch it in a superior way.”

Saps and dipshits indeed. Yeah, I feel a bit of pity for folks who don't realize that there are options. Okay, not that much.

We Ate There... So You Don't Have To....

2010-03-21T10:35:00.012-04:00

A few weeks ago, JMD, S. and I were on our way back from visiting Bird & Jen (Jen's welcome-home-coffee-hour), around dinnertime. As we were kicking around dinner ideas, one option was: ".... hey, what about that Tiki restaurant that you see from I-95?" Huh, sure... we were game. S. figured out the name and location on her iPhone; the place is Bali Hai, in Lynnfield. She even started reading us Yelp review--they were filled with snarky and amusing asides, and gave us a decent idea of what to expect:

The place is very retro, very dated, and the entryway has a smell of stale smoke. But it doesn't matter. The service was excellent. The decor is very classic, kitschy Polynesian. The food is ample and delicious. ....

If you can appreciate kitsch and like cheap food and drinks, and can designate a driver, this place is for you.

....

Like I said, I've never been to Bali Hai before. And upon entering, I also stumbled into some place I've never been before. The 1970s. In this case, though, that's not a bad thing. It makes for a good atmosphere. Polynesian Kitsch is what I'm gonna call it.

The food was alright. Nothing worth going here for alone. But it was cheap. There was a whole page of sub $5 menu items. But what's even cheaper than the food is the booze, and boy do they try to get you tanked! The drinks are just as fruity as any other chinese restaurants, with at least double the alcohol.

Okay: retro faux Polynesian and cheap drinks. Sure--worth a shot! Well, we got there, and my first reaction was, "Wow... it is a time warp!" A degree of sad rough-around-the-edgeness decay, with Powerball and Keno as the dominant notes of decor. Another thing in the lobby--a cigarette vending machine?!? Wow... I haven't seen one of them in ages.

So what do they have for cheap and potent retro-Polynesian drinks? Check out this Ty-D-Bol-esque combination. Cool. And wow... what a menu too!

Anyway, on to the food. Here's what $20 of appetizers ("Happy Talk Platter: Spare ribs, crab Rangoon, shrimp puffs, chicken wings") looked like.

Yeah, pretty terrifying. We barely put a dent into it, between the three of us. We also ordered another dish that involved chicken, Virginia ham (no lie!), and a fryolator. We had the exchange with our waitress: "It take long time." "Uh, really?" "20 minute." "No problem."

It ended up being hard nuggets of chicken wrapped around ham, fried into submission--kinda a chicken cordon jerky. Overall, I would describe the food as terrifyingly whitebread Chinese/Polynesian/kinda-Asian.

So overall, maybe with the right crowd--who would enjoy the hipster irony--this place would be entertaining. But our experience was mostly depressing (as well as heartburn-inducing). But like I wrote--we ate there... so you don't have to.

Back in the Saddle...

2010-03-19T20:27:00.005-04:00

For those of you not on the East Coast, we have had a wonderful spate of great weather recently--sunny, and highs up in the 60s. Also, I have been gradually recovering from my flu/pneumonia mess. As a result: this Thursday was the first time I biked to work since--[embarrassing!]--February 5th!

It was nice to do that again--waiting for the bus can get really old. Plus the nice feeling of having a bit of a workout before and after work, and enjoying the sunshine.

Incidentally, I got to try out my new prescription sports sunglasses on this ride--they work pretty darn well. Some people might criticize flexible spending accounts (FSAs) as "helping the rich," but hey, I'm pretty happy to buy them with pre-tax dollars.

They are photosensitive, not straight-up sunglasses--so they are still useful after dark. They are Liberty Sport F8 Slams--strong recommend--wrap-around frame, and comes complete with an integrated brain strap. The frames are close-fitting enough that they touch my face--takes a little getting used to, but they are okay after that.

However, I have to admit that when the tinting turns "off," they do look pretty dorktastic (yeah, almost birth control device dorktastic). As evidenced by the photo above. Heck, S. even got in on the action too in this glamor shot (wearing Jean's new crocheted creation)!

Yeah, I think she needs to be flying an open-cockpit biplane with this outfit on.

The Drugs are Working!!

2010-02-28T18:48:00.005-05:00

I've spent the tail end of this week out sick, but I went in on Thursday for a second doctor's appointment. They did another set of tests, including a chest x-ray... conclusion: pneumonia. Which explains why I have been wrecked and feverish for about 2 weeks.

They put me on a five-day course of azithromycin. I'd been writing down my temperature for a few days, so I thought I'd plot it out. Hey... looks like those antibiotics actually work, eh?

Yeah, can't really argue with that. Also, I am no longer waking up covered in a thin layer of sweat, spending the day shivering or roasting, or achey all over.

However, I am still coughing hard enough that I occasionally puke, and when I speak I sound like I have been gargling drain cleaner. But hey, it's a step up, at least.

I'm planning on heading to the office tomorrow. Hope everyone else had a good weekend!

Current Status: Still Friggin' Wrecked

2010-02-24T12:40:00.004-05:00

I am still stuck at home with the flu. This friggin' sucks. Today makes 11 days of illness. Grr.

And it's not like I'm having a good time taking sick days off. I get to watch a few movies--including Empire Strikes Back with the commentary track, Moon, Watchmen, and catch up on some TV shows--finished watching PBS's Ascent of Money online, as well as a few episodes of NOVA (including one on experiments in reviving the 1918 Pandemic strain).

Also made some progress on my taxes.

But the only thing keeping me vertical is constant doses of Advil and cough syrup.

Also, nothing says, "I'm sick" like waking up covered in that whole-body film of sweat while coughing and shivering.

The other day, I woke up with a headache so crushing/implod-ey that my first reaction, while staring at the ceiling, was to say out loud:

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

February 22nd, 2010

Okay, language centers check out; I'm not having a stroke

However, no sign of secondary infection so far (which is the classic reason why flu extends out over time--when you start seeing interesting-colored phlegm, that indicates a secondary/opportunistic baceterial infection).

The Big Energy Picture

2010-02-19T13:25:00.020-05:00

I'm currently stuck at home with the flu--I'm feeling moderately wrecked (as opposed to completely wrecked, earlier this week), with a temperature of ~100 F. When I saw the doctor yesterday, he said, "If you still have a fever, you should be at home, instead of infecting your coworkers. I can write you a note." More importantly, there was an office potluck today--the last thing I ought to be doing is food prep for my coworkers--so I begged off.

So a reasonable way to spend a sick day would be curled up on the couch with a cup of tea, and catching up on Survivor or How It's Made episodes. Yeah, but you guys know me better. One thing that has been on my to-do list for a while: a colleague of mine (Martin Holladay) writes a column for the Green Building Advisor website called "Musings of an Energy Nerd"--it's really good, giving layperson explanations, but I also learn stuff when I read his columns. A recent one was titled Houses versus Cars:

He points out that you might want to figure out how much total energy you are using on transportation, vs., say, this home energy thing--and see which one matters more in your personal case. Some of his key conclusions were:
Transportation energy use is significant. The average American family uses more energy to operate their cars than their home.
Many of us are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a new water heater, in hopes of saving only 10% on our water heating bill. But we could save twice as much energy by simply choosing a car that gets only 1 mpg better mileage than the average car.
Anyone who succeeds in living without a car should be honored. Good work, bicycle commuters! Keep pedaling.

So I wanted to do this exercise myself, working out my energy consumption figures for 2009. Yeah, there's a reason I'm still single... oh wait, I'm not... crap, I need to get a new joke. Anyway, I keep extensive and dorky records, so I had a shot at putting together some reasonable numbers. Also, I know my driving patterns are far off from the averages, so I wanted to see how they all pencil in.

So here's the graph, showing Btus (units of energy) per quarter of 2009:

And here's how I came up with those numbers.

Gas and Electricity
I keep pretty close tabs on my gas bills and electricity bills--after all, this is part of what I do for a living. I converted all of this energy to "source" energy--in short, for each unit of energy at the electrical plug in your house, you need ~3x that much energy (coal, nuclear, gas) at the power plant to generate it. It's mostly the inefficiencies in generating electricity, as opposed to transmission line losses. Just think about it--those great big cooling towers that are dumping waste heat into the sky at power plants? Yeah, that's where most of that missing 2/3 is going.

You can see the obvious patterns--gas use (i.e., heating) is high in Q1 and Q4 (winters); electricity stays close to constant. Also, I compared how JMD and I are relative to the US average: we were at 80 million source Btus for 2009; the US average is 187 million (per household). Woot! That's about 40% of the US average. Go small apartments!

Automobile
I'm really happy about the fact that I have set up my life so I don't have to drive that much. 2008 was 4,786 miles; 2009 was a new record: 3,398 miles! For reference, a typical annual number is 12,000 miles per vehicle in the U.S.

So assuming 27 mpg (roughly my car's average mileage), and Martin's Btu/gallon numbers, my car use is a significantly smaller amount of energy than my home energy use. Cool.

Bus
Of course, although I seldom drive to work, I mix it up between biking and taking the bus. I started digging for numbers on passenger-mile fuel efficiencies of mass transit; one of the better ones I found was Is green U.S. mass transit a big myth?. It's written from the viewpoint of somebody who likes (and rides) mass transit, but is disappointed with where the numbers actually pencil in. For instance, you can see that is only marginally better than a car with a single driver, and worse than a car with a 1.57 passenger loading:

Note that his calculations assume a 9 passenger loading for a bus--although this is lower than what I typically see, remember that there is a serious observer effect going on:

A full bus or trainload of people is more efficient than private cars, sometimes quite a bit more so. But transit systems never consist of nothing but full vehicles. They run most of their day with light loads. The above calculations came from figures citing the average city bus holding 9 passengers, and the average train (light or heavy) holds 22. If that seems low, remember that every packed train at rush hour tends to mean a near empty train returning down the track. Remember, by definition most passenger experiences are on the fuller vehicles, which is why you probably think the average loads are higher than they are.

And San Jose Light Rail? Worse than a solo car? WTF? Is it constantly operating at a passenger loading of 1.1 or something? ("Okay, Bob's on the light rail again! Our numbers are up!")

However, take a look at the overall number--it is the barely-visible purple bars on the graph. This was based on my ballpark estimate of mileage--taking my T pass expenses from 2009, dividing by number of bus rides, and assuming 3 miles per ride (to and from work), that came out to ~300 miles per year. That's an order of magnitude lower than my driving (~3400 miles)--so the numbers make sense to me.

Airplane
Aha... yeah, this one is the real kicker. I have e-receipts for all of my flights, and it is easy enough to calculate mileages. Holy cats... in 2009, I flew a nominal 54,228 miles--that's 2.2x the circumference of the earth. No wonder I felt beat to hell this past year--Q3 and Q4 were particularly bad. Assuming 60 passenger miles per gallon of jet fuel and 130,000 Btu per gallon, those are the numbers that come out. I figured that this would be the case--my airline travel totally dominates over everything else I'm doing.

What's Missing
I fully acknowledge that this is not meant to be a complete picture of my energy use--it's missing some significant factors. For instance, I don't account for bicycle commuting energy use. There's been a large amount written there on fuel->food->bike->go, but I didn't want to bother to get into it. Also, I have to say that at least those calories are being burned off for a useful purpose, as opposed to waste heat in a gym.

I did not include the random other incidental transportation items--NYC to BOS bus, Amtrak, or subway rides.

Also, I have not talked about the energy costs associated with food production, which are huge. I don't know where those numbers stand on a per capita basis compared to mine, and I also don't have information on whether I would probably be + or - the average. My guess is that not eating much beef (maybe a few times a month?) is probably helpful, but I probably can't claim any great shakes (vegetarianism, no dairy, etc.).

Finally, I have not accounted for any of the embodied energy of The Crap That I Buy (i.e., see the Story of Stuff post). Not sure how much that accounts for, and I certainly didn't want to slog through doing the calculations.

Alternate Graph
Looking at this graph, there are a few things that would be fair to modify. First of all, JMD and I split the apartment, so in fairness, if I'm talking about my energy use, the gas & electricity numbers should be cut in half.

Also, the huge energy pit was air travel--but almost all (85%) of it was due to work. For argument's sake, only the trips I took for my own purposes (Alaska and Chicago) are plotted here.

Arguably, that means I should be able to chop my car number down as well--most of my car trips nowadays are, "Okay, we're going to the site in Fall River, or Chelsea today; guess I'm not biking/busing to work today." However, I left them as-is.

Other Cool Stuff
Finally, speaking of the Big Energy Picture, there's a graph that the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration puts out every year--it's part of the 2008 Annual Energy Review. It shows the energy flows for the country, from all sources to all consumptions, divided up by type. I think it's a rather nice presentation of a large amount of data that would be really hard to compare as just columns of numbers.

You probably want to click on it to check it out in detail.

Surprises for the Stupid Holiday

2010-02-17T22:45:00.004-05:00

Just a quick update on last weekend--a bit of an event; it's the first time I've spent the stupid holiday (a.k.a. Valentine's Day) in a non-single state.

So wow... it involved buying chocolate and roses for my sweetie! Yikes!

It worked out all right... I didn't feel like I was completely a victim of the romance-industrial complex. For instance, S.'s card for me had absolutely no pink on it! Woot! Thumbs up.

Also, bought flowers from JMD--seemed like the right thing to do:

Anyway, the evening wrapped up with dinner at Prose, which I have described before. Some highlights included Roast prime rib of beef with thyme-garlic marrow and house-made spicy kim chi, a cheese platter (including raw milk cow and goat cheeses, and a super-stinky blue), and Red Velvet cake with vanilla bean-cream cheese frosting. I know I've said that Prose has a reputation of sometimes being hit and miss--but this was definitely a very enjoyable dinner.

Overall, a nice weekend with my sweetie. Hey--it works for me.

Anyway, as a further random update, it seems like I've caught a nasty cough/cold/flu or something--achey and tired since Saturday, fever over 101 F at times, and just feeling generally wrecked. Took Monday as a sick day. Last night, I ended up passing out with the lights on and my glasses on, after uncontrollably shivering myself asleep. Yeah, heading to the doctor tomorrow, but fully expecting a reply of, "Yep, it's the flu... get some rest and plenty of fluids."

Random Photo Grab Bag

2010-02-07T23:45:00.011-05:00

Yet another post on some recent random photos that are entertaining enough to share. Most of them silly self-portraits.

Walking from the bus to work, it seemed like Christo has struck the random side streets of Cambridge.

Okay, yeah, maybe it's just the Cambridge DPW. But it could be installation art!

For coffee hour, Sarah brought some Minneola oranges--they seem to typically have a growth at the stem end... but the size of it varies...

Hey, it's a Dunkin' Orange! Awesome!

A few weekends ago, Sarah and I visited her friends down in Attleboro, M. & E. They also have three charming kitties there (Oliver, Gracie, and Luna)--I had to check if one liked perching on my shoulder.

This photo prompted E. to email Sarah: "Don't look now, but Luna's got her claws into your boyfriend!" Heh.

Over Christmas, I got a package from BirdJen--woot, prezzies! I couldn't wait to try it on... JMD and Sarah were in the room, and had to grab a photo:

On my trip to California for Robbie Burns 2010 (which I completely failed to blog this year... apologies), I had to shoehorn in a visit down in the crawlspace of the jobsite before going out to a fancy dinner with Judy and John (at eVe in Berkeley--strong recommend; very nice place). I took a pair of self portaits before and after changing--I was told that I needed to make it into an animated GIF. Thus the following:

Finally, back during the New Year visit to Maine, with Sarah's family, Sarah's mom took a few candid shots of us together. This one caught me mid-laugh... er, mid-grimace?

Yeah, afraid the caption might need to be, "Eeeewww.... girls are iiiccckkyyy!"

Heh.

Alumni-riffic Week

2010-02-07T23:15:00.006-05:00

Wow... a busy social week and weekend... First of all, on Thursday, I received email to our group mailing list from Tappan (I saw him on my Chicago trip):

Subject: Super short notice

I'm randomly in Bahston until 8pm today. Anyone free to hang out?

Turns out the plan was meet up with some folks at Redbones for dinner. Woot! Was great to see him, and very nice to meet his girlfriend, Becca.

Then on Saturday, Perlick showed up in town--he's visiting Boston and New York, for a variety of reasons, including "I need a damn vacation," "It's time to experience a New England Winter again to appreciate being in the Bay Area," and "There's a cool talk in New York City that I want to see." Oh yeah, and tEp initiation. Woot! Peldges: initialized! Good to see a few drooling alums there.

We had a low key catch-up evening back in Arlington, including Bombay Sapphire G&Ts, using Q Tonic:

Q Tonic is dedicated to making the world’s best tonic water - a clean, crisp, completely ungeneric beverage that enhances the finest spirits or stands proudly on its own. We’ve used the best ingredients we could find. We went to the slopes of the Peruvian Andes for hand-picked quinine and to the Mexican countryside for organic agave, a sweetener better than honey with a gently rounded sweetness. We meticulously refined our recipe with both food scientists and mixologists. Then we worked with one of New York City’s best design shops to develop a bottle as beautiful as the liquid it holds. We think we’ve come up with a superior tonic water.

Well, it was definitely a winner for most pretentious packaging and description. I thought it was good, but not incredible--especially at $1.80 per G&T for the tonic--yes, the baby panda tears that they must use to make it the most utterly perfect tonic water are tasty, but color me unconvinced overall.

On Sunday, I threw a coffee hour to celebrate Perlick being in town--special guest appearances by Linder (+Aaron), Becca, and Morton & Sarah (+ Brynn).

After a bagel-based feast, we took a walk around town, ending up at the very Norman Rockwellesque skating pond here near Arlington Center:

Okay, I guess ice kiting wasn't that common in the Rockwell era.

And Teps on ice! Soon to be playing Radio City Music Hall:

The late evening wrapped up with a Superbowl Party--Sarah brought snacks, and I had fixin's to make pizza and salad. I have to say that it was pretty entertaining to hang out with two avid fans who really enjoy the game (Perlick and Morton), and who can analyze (and unpack) the arcana of the game so thoroughly for the rest of us. Although some of their discussions was as incomprehensible to me as listening to the cricket scores on the BBC ("... leg before wicket..."). But even as a non-football fan, the game was pretty darn exciting.

Anyway, power dinner at Mary's tomorrow! Woot! But--erk--I need a weekend to catch up!

Out and About

2010-01-30T13:15:00.004-05:00

On business trips, I have often complained that all I see of the towns I travel to are (a) the airport, (b) the jobsite, and (c) the hotel. On this recent trip, we stayed at the hotel that is attached to the airport… because the job was located there. Wow… so in this case, I would see... um... the airport!

The Hotel

As one consolation, we were set up at a quite luxurious hotel… much nicer than the Red Roof Inns, Holiday Inn Express, and (ooh, fancy) Hampton Inns that I am accustomed to. Honestly, I really don’t need much… a flat place to lie down, power plugs, a bathroom, and a WiFi connection.

Speaking of which—I suffered from the perennial complaint—normal hotels have free WiFi, but the high-end ones charge for it. This was discussed in a Washington Post article (“WiFi Should Be a Right, Not a Luxury”):

This is clearly not a cost issue when economy hotels like Holiday Inn and Days Inn have no problem offering free wireless access from the middle of nowhere in the South. (Not to mention Krystal.) This is an issue of greed or tech ignorance on the part of luxury hotels and consumers and business travelers need to start showing some outrage.

On the greed point, Paul Carr—whose parents are hoteliers and lives in hotels now—says the sky-high prices are largely the result of hotels losing fees from business travelers making phone calls, now that we all have mobile phones. The only way to make up the cost was to start charging for Internet access. I wouldn’t have a huge problem with that if the access was good. But I get angry when you charge me $20 a day for a connection that barely works when I can get a better connection at a coffee shop next door for free.

Usually, I try to get by with using my BlackBerry as a tethered modem—as I do when I am sitting around an airport for multiple hours:

But overall, I don’t blame fancy hotels for gouging people on expense accounts… but in general, I vote with my feet/dollars whenever I can, and stay at my favorite downscale places. (I assume everyone has heard that classic one liner: La Quinta—that’s Spanish for “near the Denny’s.” Heh.)

The aesthetics of the place were definitely fancy—a huge soaring indoor atrium, with a reflecting pool, subdued lighting, glass-walled elevators, 30-foot tall bamboo, and a classy restaurant.

But after breakfast there--$15 for a bowl of oatmeal and coffee? Oy. Free cheese-and-egg puck plus biscuit-and-gravy at the Holiday Inn Express, here I come.

One “I’m-not-in-a-normal-hotel” moment when I opened the shower curtain and saw:

The wall placard had the perversely convoluted logic of feeling ecologically virtuous by using, say, a normal amount of shower water, instead of double:

Refresh yourself / restore our world

One of your Heavenly® Shower heads has been turned off in an effort to minimize water usage and protect one of our most precious natural resources.

To experience the most out of your Heavenly Shower, you can turn the second shower head on by pushing the small button behind the lower head.

Yeah, that’s pretty analogous to: "All right!! A D-minus, and not an F! Good job guys, good job--great hustle!"

The Rest of the Trip

As for the rest of the trip—I was worried that I would end up spending the entire 2.5-day trip without stepping foot outside of the airport. However, fortunately, we made it out for one work dinner at a Mongolian barbecue place.

The trip out was on a DC-9… what, they haven’t retired these things by now? Sat near the back of the plane, right near the fuselage-mounted engine. Wonderful. Go noise-cancelling headphones!

Also, I decided to go all carry-on for this trip—a huge stretch for me…. going 48+ hours without a Leatherman tool on my hip makes me nervous. I take for granted the ability to say, “Man… that window air conditioner unit in my hotel room is really noisy. [Unscrew] [Bend] [Shim] [Rescrew] Ah… better.”

Not having tools almost bit me in the butt, because I was prepared for two days of meetings… but found out late on Day 1 that I would be crawling around the guts of a building. Fortunately, I had packed a pair of jeans, and still had my flashlight on me.

Sadly, I realize now that I missed a nice bit of creative monkeywrenching without my tools—I could have unscrewed that second shower head, sealed the aerator with a piece of Styrofoam cup, and put it back in place.

I'm A Dinosaur!

2010-01-16T12:25:00.008-05:00

Thanks--I think--to Rawhide for pointing this one out

Apparently, I'm not just a dinosaur (i.e., not the King Crimson song), but I am a 2.5-foot-tall, Hasbro animatronic triceratops ("Playskool Kota My Triceratops Dinosaur").

Wuhh. And [shudder]. I have to admit that having a commercial jingle about oneself is rather disturbing:

Actually, the most disturbing thing was the commercial for it... the thing also chews food and belches. Hey... waitasec... I can do that too!

I consider this yet another reason that I really not too interested in having kids--"The media mass mind is telling me that I need to buy my kid an animatronic what?"

Also, in case it's not obvious, please don't buy this for me as a gag gift or anything. First of all, it's $300. Also, I'm probably too big to ride on it... and that would pretty much ruin the fun for me... [sniff]

Anyway, while we're on the topic--there's a animated bear with (almost) my name. Oh, and lastly, BirdJen pointed this one out years ago... apparently, I have the same name of a well-loved soccer player. Oy.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-03T17:52:00.009-05:00

Hope that everyone had a wonderful and festive New Year! Just a quick update of how my celebrations went. For the beginning of the week, I was back at the office trying to catch up before the post-holiday deluge begins. But on Wednesday evening, I hopped a Concord Coach up to Bangor, Maine, to celebrate with Sarah's family. Her parents are from upstate New York, but she has roots (grandparents, uncle/aunt) in Maine.

The ride wasn't bad--first of all, they had WiFi on the bus with a moderately fast connection--and I could actually connect to it, unlike BoltBus. It was an express bus from South Station to Bangor (one stop, in Portland, ME)--about 4-5 hours on a bus, but not too bad. Traffic was annoying getting out of town, but it quickly cleared up.

My netbook battery held its own quite well, maybe getting to ~60% charge.

Had a fun day touring around Bangor, thanks to Sarah's parents. The city is filled with many wonderful old buildings, including this Ralph Adams Cram church (All Souls Congregational Church; Sarah's family are long time parishoners):

The river that passes right through the middle of town freezes over, with a neat pattern of buckled ice at the edges. Also, the tide swelled the rivers up to impressive levels (~2' below the bridges) the next day.

At a Chinese buffet dinner with the extended family, I was vastly amused by the soft serve ice cream machine--it has a selectable multi-flavor syrup co-extrusion machine, which flavors the vanilla ice cream!

I believe options included butter pecan, strawberry, blueberry, and bubble gum flavors. Food technology can be scary sometimes. Also, there was, um, strawberry residue at the bottom of my bowl, under the butter pecan... cross contamination issues.

Then that evening, we did the city's First Night celebration--Downtown Bangor's Downtown Countdown. It was fun--caught a bluegrass band, and then a fusion jazz band, playing in the most incongruous setting I could think of--the City Hall Council Chambers: a space that was fluorescent lit, with low-pile carpet, and the council benches behind them.

I had a mental image of, "Meanwhile, at the downtown jazz club...," with the city council members crowded around a table in a darkened club, trying to have a meeting over the din.

Bangor's New Year's event is wonderfully unpretentious and downscale--they have a beach ball with Christmas lights taped to it...

And come midnight, they throw it off the roof of the building:

Happy New Year! [bounce]

Anyway, we drove back on Friday (New Year's Day), after a wonderful lunch with S.'s family--our original plan was Saturday, but there was a winter storm watch for the weekend, so we decided to get out of there early. A very nice trip, and many thanks to the extended family for their hospitality!

Another Map Dorkery (and Religiosity) Post

2009-12-29T23:13:00.011-05:00

The other day, I randomly heard about the US ranking of the "least and most religious states." I was curious, and looked it up; there was a Pew study along these lines released last week. No big surprises there: classic Southern Bible Belt states were the most religious (Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee), and New England making up most of the least-religious. Interestingly, though, Alaska is #2 of the least religious. Colorado is in the top 10 least--interesting, in that I always thought that it was one of those "split" states. I did a bit more web searching, and found that Gallup did a similar poll early this year, except presented in map form:

It's a bit more useful to look at it this way. Us heathen Northeasterners stand out, as does the Pacific Northwest. Utah, of course, is "Most Religious"--makes sense, given the Mormons. California is a notch away from the least religious category--perhaps the immigrant population, but more importantly (I think) is the fact that inland/rural California is a completely different political animal from coastal California. For instance, check out the red/blue mix from the 2008 election, by county.

The map is from the guy who does awesome cartograms, which demonstrate that even though "red America" is spatially large, the populations are roughly balanced. To wit, the same map above, turned into a cartogram:

But overall, yeah, I'm afraid that religiosity maps inversely to how much I would want to live in a state, as a rough trend.

This reminded me, though, of one of my posts from 2008, on religiosity vs. per capita income, and the way that the United States was a completely outlier from the general world trend (higher income / lower religiosity). I though it would be cool if somebody did this same type of study by state. Well, it turns out, some professors at Columbia have done exactly that! Schweet. 2007 data, but I'm guessing the trends have not changed that much.

States that voted for Bush in 2004 are in red and the Kerry-supporting states are blue. You can see that people in richer states tend to be less religious, although the relation is far from a straight line. There is also some regional variation (more religious attendance in the south, less in the northeast and west).

Pretty much the trend that we were all expecting. Okay, one more geeky map that I found, and then off to bed for me. I don't know how familiar most people are with the term "tax burden"--it is an indication (again, by state) of how much money is paid in Federal taxes, vs. received/disbursed. the Tax Foundation did a study back in 2006; the map is pretty self-explanatory. In case you can't read the key, the dark blue states are the ones who are receiving more tax money than they pay in, and the light blue ones are the ones who are receiving less Federal money.

Interesting that some of the reddest states are the ones who are taking in the most Federal money. Reminds me of the wag I have heard some say about Alaska's attitude towards the Feds: "You can't tell us what to do! Now give us our money!" Yeah.

Xmas Post V through XXII: Chicago Vacation!

2009-12-29T00:22:00.004-05:00

Okay... I don't know if anyone particularly cares about this saga-length, photo-filled blog post, but the event-packed four-day vacation in Chicago with Sarah was just fantastic. ~~I'll try to limit myself to one photo per cool event... but I'll probably slip up in the process.~~ Sorry, I quickly gave up on this idea while writing…. lots o’ photos incorporated into this post. And many of them courtesy of Sarah, her kick-ass digital SLR, and her mad skillz—thanks, sweetie!

Saturday

Hotel

For two days, we were at a hotel that I booked via a points/rewards program—some consolation for the amount of time I spend on the road.

The hotel was pretty slick—right downtown, at the three-way junction of the rivers in Chicago. Also, it overlooked Merchandise Mart--a huge building built in 1930 to try to integrate wholesalers, retailers, warehouses, etc. It was the largest square footage building until the Pentagon was built; it was bought up by Joseph Kennedy (Sr.) during the Great Depression, and the Kennedy family held onto it for several generations. It is now the home of many upscale shops, among other purposes.

Incidentally, a 7-day CTA pass cost $23 per person, which worked out exceptionally well for our tourism; it covered both train and bus fares—strong recommend.

Art Institute

I know, I know—only a day at the Art Institute? Yeah, it felt like we were barely scratching the surface—only a quick drive-by of George Seurat’s Sunday. I think there will be many trips there in my lifetime. The Great Stairwell had an exhibit of various architectural elements salvaged from historic buildings that were being torn down—cast iron, terra cotta, Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass.

After a few art-filled detours, we ended up in the Modern Wing, a recent addition designed by Renzo Piano. New York Times review of the wing here. I have to say… wow, a really great space. Also parts of the design seem similar to the California Academy of Arts and Sciences—blogged about that visit previously.

We also looked at the architecture and design wing—I have to say that it fits so many stereotypes that there is a framed Frank Gehry in that gallery that is not much more than a scribble (“Um, we’re building what here, boss?”).

Afterwards, we wandered around Millennium Park, and did “the Bean” (i.e., Cloud Gate). Obligatory Chicago skyline reflected vanity shot!

Buddy Guy's Blues Legends

And shifting gears, we then grabbed dinner, and caught a few blues acts at Buddy Guys’ club—c’mon, we’re in Chicago, we gotta do the blues! Both of us have been to Kingston Mines in the past, so this was “the other club.” A kickin’ (although loud and tiring) evening—Guy King and his group, followed by Carl Weathersby.

Sunday

New Hotel/Old Town

We changed hotels, finding out the hard way that the CTA Purple Line doesn’t run on weekends. Oops! Our new hotel was up in the Gold Coast area, a relatively short ride from downtown, but a slightly more sedate neighborhood. As for lunch: deep-dish pizza in Chicago (Edwardo’s): check!

We had an afternoon wander around the local neighborhood, which is known as Old Town. We found an exceptionally ornate automotive garage (no doubt a building of greater grandeur back in the day), with a huge terra cotta façade on the front.

But if you look closer, I have to say that these look like zombie squirrels:

Braaiiiinnnnnzzzz…

uh… wait…

Aaaaccoorrrrnnnnzzzzz

Alinea

This was the serious food pilgrimage of the trip—Grant Achatz’s molecular gastronomy showcase. It was as incredible, beautiful, and delicious as I had hoped for; it probably warrants its own post, but this will have to by my summary for now. We had the 12-course tasting menu, with a bottle of wine (not the wine pairings).

This was the shot they took before we dug into the “deconstructed pork buns”—incredible slow cooked pork with magically modified lettuce (frozen? dehydrated?)

They do such a wonderful job of building up anticipation, and the presentation of the courses—artfully choreography of presenting the dishes and whisking them away. The silverware gets set down on these specific pillows before each course.

One favorite was “hot potato/cold potato”—a cold cream-based potato soup (truffle flavored too?), with several pieces of hot potato suspended by a pin, stuck through the side of the paraffin bowl. You then pull then pin (“grenade!”), dropping the hot into the cold, and throw it back like a shot, getting both hot and cold sensations. Sarah and I geeked out with our waiter, asking why they ended up choosing paraffin as a material (easier for them to make in-house, I believe… perhaps also the self-sealing and hydrophobic properties of paraffin reduce any leakage around the pin).

Desserts were fantastic as well—including various bits of maltodextrin magic (sweet hot peanut butter crunchy wackiness).

I had to take a photo of the gleaming kitchen behind the glass doors, where an army of cooks was toiling away. Wow. I think I’m going to buy the Alinea cookbook, not necessarily to make anything, but more to find out “How the heck did they do that?!?”

Monday

Architecture Tour

Sarah suggested and set up a tour given by the Chicago Architectural Foundation—we did “Historic Downtown: Rise of the Skyscraper”—basically from the invention of the steel-frame skyscraper through the 1930s. A cold, blustery day for walking around and looking at buildings, but we had respites to look at interior details as well.

We checked out the Monadnock Building, which I geeked about on a previous trip. A beautiful Art Deco skyscraper (135 South LaSalle) was on the tour—completed just as the great depression hit, so it ended up being the last skyscraper built in Chicago until the 1950’s. Having grown up in New York, I think I have a soft spot for Art Deco…. it’s just how old skyscrapers are supposed to look!

Chicago is also the home of architectural terra cotta (basically fired clay, like flower pots, made into decorative architectural elements—covered in exhaustive detail on the National Park Service website). For instance, check out the decoration on the entryway of the Fisher Building.

Scale Model

Afterwards, we explored the scale model of the city that the Chicago Architectural Foundation has in their museum. They built it with CAD files and 3-D rapid prototyping technology. Interesting, because Sarah used to work for Z Corp, one of the companies that makes 3D printers--so she could tell me all about the methods, detail resolution size, etc.

But I really want to come back sometime, along with a 12" tall wind-up Godzilla doll, and unleash it on the city while taking video. Raar!

But check out their model of Millennium Park… including the bean, complete with mirror finish! Too funny.

The evening wrapped up with a visit to the Contemporary Photography Museum, coffee at Intelligentsia (thanks for the tip, Jess!), and dinner at Salpicon (modern Mexican, with an amazing wine list).

Tuesday

Lunch with Tappan

Tappan lives here in town, and he has long recommended a place near him, Kuma's Corner--we tried to make it there last time I was in town, but failed.

It’s a joint with kick-ass burgers and a heavy metal theme (with matching blasting music). The burgers have names like the Black Sabbath, the Metallica, the Judas Priest, or the Slayer ("Burger, Chili, Cherry Peppers, Andouille, Onions, Jack Cheese, and Anger").

Tappan is doing pretty well, telling triathlon stories—it was great catching up with him!

Surgery Museum

Sarah has a great guidebook that includes all sorts of offbeat museums—and our hotel was pretty close to the International Museum of Surgical Science. A geeky museum with creepy old medical devices? Sign us up!

It's located in a gorgeous old mansion on Lake Shore Drive; walking there on a snowy blustery day was unpleasant, but we made it all right.

It had surgical implements both old (iron lungs, medieval-looking body braces)…

…and new (rib spreaders, replacement heart valves, and spine immobilization implants that look for all the world like high-tech climbing equipment in stylish-colored-anodized metal).

They had an exhibit on the development of x-rays for medical purposes (this is an x-ray tube stand, circa 1897-1905).

One laugh-out-loud moment was an excerpt from a 1910 Company Catalogue, of "Two Ways of Locating a Bullet"

Old Way: Patient: Doctor, I have been shot, can you find the bullet? Doctor: Let me see. I guess it might be here, but I will have to probe for it. [patient has a slight grimace on his face]

Present Times: Patient: Doctor, I have been shot, can you find the bullet? Doctor: Oh yes! I can see it. I can take it out without trouble. [patient looks reassured, with a smile on his face]

Wow... patients were so polite back in 1910! I'm just envisioning the modern-day version:

Patient: Mothaf***er shot me! He f***'in busted a cap in my ass! I'm gonna get that mothaf***er!! Doctor: Calm down, calm down! Where are you shot? Patient: Man, you got tha f***in x-ray machine, you tell me!

Evening of Theater

Since Chicago is known as a theater town, we decided we had to go see something. The Steppenwolf Theater was showing David Mamet’s American Buffalo; however, Sarah and I had seen Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow at the New Repertory Theater recently. We considered comedy at Second City, but they were sold out. However, the LookingGlass Theater Company was showing Icarus, a modern retelling of the Icarus/Daedalus Greek myth with a six-person cast, and some incredible athleticism and aerial/rope work. The author’s focus—coming from the point of view of a father of a 3-year old—was the devastating loss of a child dying. I thought it was exceptionally well put together, and a fine evening to wrap up our trip.

Also, the theater space was part of Chicago Avenue Pumping Station near Water Tower Place—i.e., this beautiful old stone building...

... with... holy cow, a pumping station inside! I actually did a double take when I opened the door and saw that this was inside. Water works at Water Tower Place… who’d a thunk it?

Conclusions and Recommendations

Wow, you read down this far? I think I owe you a beer.

Overall, vacationing with Sarah was great--we have pretty similar travel styles, likes and dislikes, and active time/slack time needs. No problem with spending the better part of the day walking our way around the city. Both of us have a good comfort level with mass transit (both el/subway and buses), figuring out our routing as we go via iPhone and BlackBerry. Sharing meals—both highbrow and lowbrow—was great. I think we might just be doing this type of thing again!

Xmas Post IV: New York Sojourn 2

2009-12-29T00:22:00.001-05:00

After Christmas with the family, I headed back into the city again for another 30-hours-on-the-ground NYC trip. Saturday afternoon was the only window that Probe could schedule in to meet up, so we got together for drinks and snacks at a wine bar on the Upper West Side (Barcibo Enoteca)—a great little spot.

Probe is doing well; we caught up, geeked out about both of our jobs, and had some tasty Italian Reds. However, he, Becca, and Sophia were flying out on Sunday (ugh… with all of the associated security unpleasantness).

The next day, I had a general plan of a few items to check off my New York List. I wanted to go check out the American Radiator Building, which is a 1924 skyscraper, with a great black and gold finish (black brick exterior, plus gold leaf details): Black brick on the frontage of the building (symbolizing coal) was selected to give an idea of solidity and to give the building a solid mass. Other parts of the facade were covered in gold bricks (symbolizing fire), and the entry was decorated with marble and black mirrors. It is located on Bryant Park, near the New York Public Library. Also, it is the subject of a Georgia O’Keefe painting from her time in New York, before she left for the Southwest.

On the walk over, I came across this car, just sitting parked on the street. Caption contest, anyone?

NO RADIO
“Hey, you’re the one who wanted the convertible!”

Full-on wreck, both airbags blown, with the entire roof removed by the jaws of life. But more interestingly, the sticker on the driver’s side reads:

WARNING: THIS VEHICLE IS IN THE CUSTODY OF THE NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT. “ANYONE” TAMPERING WITH OR “REMOVING PARTS” FROM THIS VEHICLE WILL BE SUBJECT TO ARREST AND POSSIBLE IMPRISONMENT

First of all—ew, emphasis quotes. Ugh. Second, under “Reason for Custody,” the checkbox read “Evidence.” Um… is it really a good idea to leave evidence just sitting around out on the street? Isn’t there something like that whole “chain of custody” thing going on?

The next stop was lunch in Chinatown. One of the Christmas presents that was actually a huge win was from mom—the Momofuku cookbook (Perlick brought me to Momofuku Noodle Bar back in 2006). Chef David Chang mentioned a dish from Great New York Noodletown as an inspiration, or even a direct steal, for one of his dishes. So I had to give it a shot. Pretty yummy—ginger and scallion lo mein noodles, and pork/wonton soup. And only $10!

Next, I hopped the train out to Long Island City in Queens, to check out PS1: it’s MoMA’s Contemporary Art collection, kinda an overflow space. A bunch of interesting exhibits; however, because the museum does not actually “own the rights” to the works on display, they forbid photography. Ah well. At least I got a good shot of the exterior—it’s a repurposed old brick school building, with a courtyard lined with what appear to be concrete blast walls.

Although they refinished the gallery spaces, the hallways are still close to their original condition, with many layers of ugly institutional pea-green paint. Hey—at least they didn’t keep the old water fountains that are 2 feet off the ground, for little kiddies!

One work, however, was incredibly striking; it is labeled James Turrell: Meeting (1986) and is behind a door that is locked until 1 hour before sunset. You walk through the door, and you are in a square room with a huge skylight overhead. Oh wait… that’s not a skylight… that’s, um, the sky! (but with the ceiling cut at a knife edge, giving the illusion that there must be a drywall corner to a vertical shaft). You can hear the nearby trains and trucks, and watch birds fly by overhead… quite neat.

A large wing was dedicated to video art… at first diverting, but it was quickly a rather grating and annoying art form. I gave a cursory glance and fled.

While there was still daylight, I made it out to Gantry State Park—they are circa 1920 gantry cranes on the Queens waterfront, that were used to transfer cargo from railcars to barges. They are no longer used, but the gantries were kept as the main decorative element of a waterfront park.

The views out onto the water are just fantastic—I was lucky enough to stay around to catch a sunset over Manhattan. This area must be packed when the weather is nicer—there were maybe half a dozen other people out there with me.

I had one more nice dinner before heading out of town—a French bistro in Long Island City, called Tournesol. I’ve historically associated the Long Island City area with warehouses and power plants; perhaps the place where Russian mobsters take stolen cars to strip them behind rollup doors. However, apparently, it’s pretty gentrified now—the restaurant was a delightful little spot; their bouillabaisse was fantastic… like somebody took the essence of the sea (fish, mussels, shrimp) and made it into a hearty stew.

Then hopped the 7 Train back into Manhattan, and caught a late (8:30 PM-12:15 AM) bus back to Boston—killing time on the road writing blog posts! For reference, BoltBus has power outlets, but I cannot connect to their WiFi network. Grr.

Xmas Post III: Hardware Dorkery (NetBook)

2009-12-25T21:38:00.008-05:00

Yeah, I know--"What about Chicago with Sarah! What about Alinea? What about the food porn!?" Yes, yes, yes... getting to that in a bit. But first, a bit of hardware dorkery... I got a new NetBook. Kawaii computer desu, ne? I thought I'd share some of the experiences of using it, too.

Technical details: ASUS Eee PC 1005 HA; Atom N270 processor; technical details here.

Reason why I got it: it's not just a toy! My main computer (BatBook III, above) has been showing serious problems--to get it to start up, you have to unplug the power adapter, torque the case slightly, and ~50% of the time it boots up (otherwise, it just stays black screen). I needed to get it fixed--fortunately, it is under 3 year warranty, so Fujitsu gets to buy me a third replacement mainboard (no lie--color me unimpressed with Fujitsu reliability).

I had a non-work-critical window over the holidays to take my old machine in for service, but going for two weeks on the road without a computer sounded really frustrating. So browsing around Newegg, I found this machine--open box sale, $250. Woot!

One first important step: upgrading from 1 GB to 2 GB RAM; go Crucial, yeah! (fast, reliable).

However, my machine did not recognize the upgrade at first. Thankfully, the intarweb is a wonderful thing--for instance, the research on this page--to get it to "see" 2 GB, you just need to boot into BIOS on startup (F2), save changes, and continue with startup.

So how does it perform? Well, it's shockingly like a real computer. I have loaded up all of my usual applications on it; it's a bit like working on a slightly slower/older machine. Also, it slogs noticeably when many windows are open. But overall, if you're not throwing too many challenges at it, the performance is just fine.

But where it shines: it's fantastic for traveling; very light and tiny. I could get used to having a carry on bag this big under the seat in front of me (i.e., an oversized butt pack). The small screen has no problem being open in the most painful of economy-class seat pitches.

Also, having an actual (if underpowered) computer is pretty nice on the road, even with great devices like iPhones and BlackBerries. A real keyboard, and a real monitor make life a lot easier--e.g., buying theater tickets online from a hotel room.

A little bit of extra awesomeness--the touchpad does the whole iPhone style pinch/stretch with two fingers for zoom in/zoome out. A bit klunky at times, but works.

The native LCD is 1024x600, which is okay at times, but otherwise frustratingly small (scrolling around web pages; etc.); it appears that you can get NetBooks with larger displays. However, one nice thing--if you plug it into an external monitor, it is smart enough to immediately drive that monitor at a decent resolution (i.e., full size screen), instead of the dumb, "Hey, we'll blow up your small display onto a big screen, a la Duplo Blocks!."

I have not done any tests of battery life yet--I'm going to try out watching a movie (stored on hard drive) on a bus ride from New York to Boston on Sunday. They claim 8.5 hours... but I'm wondering how little the machine is running in those tests.

Also, the lack of an optical drive was occasionally annoying--I needed to install some software directly from CD, and could not do so. So I'm buying a USB-to-IDE DVD drive enclosure, to use an unused internal and make it an external unit.

Overall, I'm very happy--strong recommend. I wish this could be my replacement on-the-road computer, but I'm guessing that I'll need to do enough work on the road that I'll need more processing power. Ack.

Xmas Post II: A Sojurn in New York

2009-12-25T19:04:00.010-05:00

I had 28 hours on the ground in New York City before heading out to Long Island, but I managed to pack in a variety of activities that took advantage of being in such an amazing place.

First, the approach into LGA was from the south, so we got some great views--like flying right near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (between Staten Island and Brooklyn; it was the largest suspension bridge in the world from 1964 to 1981).

Also, we passed over the Unisphere and the New York State Pavilion--I waxed blogfully about these modern-day urban ruins during a 2008 visit.

Took the M60 bus from LGA to Manhattan (Bats to New York: a local bus from the airport into the city? WTF? That's even lamer than Boston's bus-rapid-transit Silver Line!). However, note that the mass transit from JFK is a bit more reasonable (MTA AirTrain).

I stopped for a felafel sandwich at my favorite Israeli-Yemeni restaurant on the Upper West Side ("Alibaba, a eight-seat glatt kosher restaurant and takeout shop specializing in Yemenite-Israeli cuisine—with a macrobiotic twist."), and dropped off my things at my sister's apartment.

The next stop was a trip downtown: one of my high school friends helped found a New-York based urban design, planning and architecture firm, and one of their recent project was a public art space called LentSpace. It is described as a...temporary project — made possible by the use of a Trinity Real Estate development site to LMCC — [which] creates an “in the meantime” activity for a vacant site awaiting future development. LentSpace is a free outdoor cultural space open to the public from 7am to dusk, made possible by LMCC. A pretty neat space, although I could only observe it from outside the chain link fence--it is closed over the winter.

While I was down in that area, I grabbed a latte at Gimme! Coffee's SoHo branch--shout out to my favorite Ithacans!

After this was dinner with my sister and her boyfriend (yep, they're still a couple all right). Conversations with my sister are actually more pleasant when there is a person with a slightly more normal frame of reference around... it convinces me that I'm not the crazy one when conversations take odd turns.

On the walk back from dinner, I thought, "Hey, I'm right in the neighborhood of Jazz at Lincoln Center... I wonder who's playing?" Punched it up on my BlackBerry... holy cats, Marcus Roberts?!?!? (gospel-influence blind pianist who toured with Wynton Marsalis' band for six years; I have several of his albums). And I can still catch the 9:30 set?!?! I stood in the standby line in eager anticipation...

Yesss!!! They put on a great show--standards, and a few Christmas songs, artfully redone. I realized that this was a perfect wrapup to the evening: sipping a Manhattan, listening to a jazz artist that I like a lot, with a view out onto Central Park and a glowing line of skyscrapers in the background. Day-umn. Okay, Jazz at Lincoln Center is now on my list--if you come to New York City, a strong recommendation to check it out.

The next day, I was having a slow groggy morning.... when I realized, "Hey, Anna is in New York now. I wonder if she's gone back home for the holidays?" It turns out that she was around... I just had to get across town, and she managed to schedule in lunch with me. She's doing a postdoc at Cornell Medical Center; she has safely moved to NYC and settled in quite well. I caught her before she headed out to Long Island to celebrate Christmas with friends--she's dashing off to Penn Station in a taxi here.

(Either that, or I take pictures of random blonde women getting into taxis. Um).

Anyway, back to Long Island later that day to celebrate Christmas. Whew!

Xmas Post I: Chicago to New York Travels

2009-12-25T17:47:00.005-05:00

First off--Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to everyone! Hope that you are all having a festive, joyous, and safe holiday. I've barely had any down time since last Friday--a vacation trip to Chicago with Sarah, with a flight straight to New York after that for the holidays. I am currently out on Long Island with the family, with a net connection... thus I'm spending an evening catching up on blogging. There will probably be a whack of posts; this is just a writeup of the travel back from Chicago (MDW) to New York (LGA).

First of all, I think that I pretty much lucked out on travels this holiday season--my sympathies for those of you who have gotten stranded or delayed here and there. There were all of these air travel clusterbumps on the East Coast and in the Midwest... and by sheer luck, my itinerary avoided all of them. For instance, the huge snowstorm that hit the East Coast last weekend? Yep, flew out on the Friday before it hit.

The MDW-LGA trip was on the 23rd, so I was expecting at least somewhat bad holiday traffic. Yeah. This is what check-in looked like:

Yikes. There was a line wrapping around the winding cordoned area. We arrived at the terminal over an hour early... and I was already getting worried. The line was progressing pretty slowly... as we moved forward, I found out why:

Yeah, five or six dead check in terminals, out of that bank of 12. Thanks guys. But even scarier--check out what OS they are running underneath that:

Admittedly, though, I still run a Windows 2000 machine. Also, I think I'd be even more worried if it were a Windows 7 startup screen ;).

Managed to get to the gate just as my boarding group was called... smooched Sarah, and got on the plane. Made it! Whew.

A Week of Travel

2009-12-12T10:53:00.006-05:00

I just got back from the better part of a week of ass-kicker travel: BOS-DFW-CRP-DFW-BOS; Monday through Thursday. It included two consecutive days of ~4 AM wakeups… I found them highly objectionable.

The trip was a day of meetings, followed by a day of crawling all over a building. I am pretty dynamic when I do this stuff—weighted down with tools all over my belt, eager to crawl into dark confined spaces, hopping up on tables to look into suspended ceilings…. I overheard one of my colleagues whisper something like… “… he’s kinda like Jackie Chan, huh?” Heh.

But hey—at least I didn’t have to slog through the snowstorm in Boston this week. Sorry Sarah!

One interesting thing I tried out for the first time was automated check in (at an Embassy Suites). I was quite impressed: I bypassed a bunch of technophobes standing in line for the front desk.

It is yet another interaction where I am fine with eliminating the human touch: “Look—simple transaction: here is my information, here is my credit card, you give me a room key. Done.” Heck—you can even print out your boarding pass at this machine… pretty slick.

One consolation for this painful travel schedule was a not-too-bad sunrise, en route CRP-DFW.

During my long (3 hour… ugh) layover at DFW (thanks American!), I ended up wandering into the “Samsung mob!le travel lounge”… it was a nice, quiet lounge with a calming décor and power plugs.

I could plug in, put my noise-cancelling head phones on, and get some work done (after finishing a coffee and a scone).

Samsung seems to be all over branding at DFW (“Samsung mobile charging station…”), but I don’t understand how this makes much business sense. It’s a pretty fair chunk of an airport to rent out that does not generate any direct revenue. It's as nice as any StarAlliance or other lounge, but without somebody keeping out the riffraff (like me!). There was no “host” (read: salesman) coming to pester me… they just showed off their products in the cases between seats. Weird. Perhaps this is the advertising equivalent to peacock's feathers--"We are successful and well-fed enough that we can grow these ridiculous feathers... that's why you should reproduce with us!"

But hey, I found it nice enough that they get blog-kudos (and thus exposure to my tech-geek crowd of friends) out of it. Although I must mock them for having a BSOD on their highly prominent display out front:

Anyway, home for now… but off to Lincoln, Nebraska next Monday. Yep, the home of CliffsNotes and neo-Nazi hate literature. Awesome.

Meet the Unicorn

2009-12-01T21:22:00.001-05:00

This past weekend, I threw a coffee hour because, well, dammit, it’s been a while since I did it, and I like having a bunch of friends over. So the invitation went out:

I'm having a coffee hour over at my and Jean's place this Sunday, starting at 11:22ish!

Food contributions (juice, fruit, snacks) would be appreciated--we will supply coffee, bagels, cream cheese, lox, capers, & slivered red onions (read: the classic Real Damn Bagel preparation).

And oh yeah--you'll get to meet this woman that I'm dating: her name is Sarah; for those who don't know, we met via Raj and Bindu. Yeah, I know, "Suuurre... and we'll also get to meet a unicorn, and a leprechaun with a pot of gold, too, right?" Fair enough. Find out if I'm delusional or not on Sunday…

I got some amusing replies… for instance B. (Raj’s wife), who was Sarah and my avenue of introduction, pointed out: “We'll show up for a little while (at least until Vivek starts destroying your place). It would be a bit hard for me to deny Sarah's existence.”

As for coffee hour: there was a wonderful turnout—thank you for coming, everyone! Also, in classic Tep coffee hour fashion, people were filtering in and out throughout the day, from 11:22ish to 2 PM or so. Special appearances by baby Aaron (Linder’s son), and Morton and Sarah brought Miss Brynn.

Sarah had a great time meeting everyone—when I asked her later, “Any big surprises on the folks you met?,” she replied, “Nah, about the same crowd of geeks that I was expecting.” Fits in well with the tribe: check.

Also, in re the unicorn comment—mad props to JMD… she stopped by a store that had Beanie Babies, and immediately grabbed this one for the party. Sarah managed to get her hands on a ceramic leprechaun as well… too awesome.

Festivities stretched our throughout the day… in fact, a few folks ended up hanging out through dinner… we went out for Argentinian. A lovely way to wrap up a weekend.

Another Car Rant: Rear Visibility

2009-11-28T10:38:00.009-05:00

I don't know if my audience is tired of my various car rants, but this New York Times review of the new Cadillac station wagon made me go, "Ugh... car designers are still that stupid, eh?"

Incidentally, for previous rant examples, see this, this, or this.

First, the article goes into the logic of station wagons--I know that they are a fine idea as a practical cargo-carrying passenger vehicle, after almost 15 years of driving a 1992 Subaru Legacy wagon.

For most of us, the classic American station wagon — with its acres of fake woodgrain siding, sticky vinyl bench seats and lazy-revving V-8 engine — is a fixture of our collective automotive consciousness. It is also extinct. The gas crises of the ’70s hobbled it, the minivans of the ’80s dealt a knockout blow and the S.U.V.’s that followed stomped on its grave.

...

On the Continent [Europe], station wagons never were the wallowing land arks we knew, so today’s European car buyers aren’t scarred by that memory. And with Europe’s sky-high gas prices and narrow streets, S.U.V.’s make even less sense there than they do here, so Europeans who are engaged in all those much-talked-about “active lifestyle” pursuits — or who just need to carry a lot of stuff — often drive station wagons.

But the portion that actually set me off was this triumph of style and design over usefulness and safety:

“There’s a stigma of what a wagon is and I think what we were trying to do is something that was not a traditionally defined wagon,” said Clay Dean, Cadillac’s chief designer, who is also executive director for G.M. global advanced design. “The D-pillar is thicker than you would normally do; normally you’d thin that thing up as much as you can for visibility, but it was a conscious choice — we were trying to convey a sense of dynamics and sportiness and masculinity.”

From the driver’s seat, the low priority given to visibility is painfully evident, as the chunky pillars have a tendency to make cars in the adjacent lane disappear. Before changing lanes, precise adjustments of the side mirrors are advised, along with over-the-shoulder glances.

Terminology: D-pillar = pillar between rear window and rearmost side window. Pillars are lettered from front to rear: A-pillar is the one between your front windscreen and driver/passenger window.

F'ing morons. This is analogous to an interesting point brought up in Malcolm Gladwell's 2004 New Yorker article on how SUVs became what they are. He interviews G. Clotaire Rapaille, a French-born cultural anthropologist whose speciality is getting beyond the rational—what he calls "cortex"—impressions of consumers and tapping into their deeper, "reptilian" responses. He notes:

During the design of Chrysler's PT Cruiser, one of the things Rapaille learned was that car buyers felt unsafe when they thought that an outsider could easily see inside their vehicles. So Chrysler made the back window of the PT Cruiser smaller. Of course, making windows smaller—and thereby reducing visibility—-makes driving more dangerous, not less so. But that's the puzzle of what has happened to the automobile world: feeling safe has become more important than actually being safe.

Grr. Once again, f'ing morons. I am extremely happy with the "glass house" effect I have with my Subaru wagon--loads of visibility in all directions. I suppose I care about people looking into my car, say, when I need to sleep in it overnight. But that has happened all of one time.

As a final note, another entertaining auto-industry related snippet, from AP newswires, about the 2011 Buick Regal, which will be built in an Oshawa, Ontario plant:

The Regal, based on the Opel Insignia, is a key product for the brand, which has an average buyer age of 70 and is trying to attract buyers in their 40s and 50s.

Oh god... average age of 70? That's absolutely terrifying... and a clear sign that your brand is about to die out. What--free box of Depends(tm) with your Buick purchase?

Getting My Weld On

2009-11-23T22:29:00.014-05:00

I spent this past weekend taking a welding and metal cutting course at Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, Vermont. It seems a bit like a school run by unrepentant back-to-the-land hippies--hey, that's not a knock, it was a pretty cool and fun experience. It's a bit of a haul (3-1/2 hours out of Boston), but the campus is lovely.

The course itself was well taught--two instructors, six students, and loads of hands on experience. This was the first time I have ever welded--I consider it embarrassing that at my age, I have not developed that skill set (a similar rationale to taking that wilderness first aid course). Also, there are plenty of projects I have done where just a quick amount of welding would have been really useful.

We did oxygas cutting--heat up the metal with an oxyacetylene torch, and then dump boatloads of pure oxygen on the cut, and the steel burns off (like fuel--highly exothermic), blasting out the molten metal. It's pretty wild... I've suffered through cutting 1/4" plate with all sorts of tools before (bandsaw, horizontal bandsaw, abrasive cutoff saw, angle grinder)--but cutting through that material with oxygas like it's barely there is a really odd (and wonderful) sensation.

We also did some metal bending--classic heat it and beat it stuff.

The main portion of the course was stick (SMAW) welding--it's electric arc welding with a flux-coated consumable electrode. For instance, when you see ironworkers welding steel, it's stick welding. It's pretty much classic welding--if you can do this right, you can pick up MIG (metal inert gas) no problem. It's a bit difficult to figure out at first, but by the end, I thought I was laying down a passable weld bead.

TIG (tungsten intert gas) welding was positively magical: an airbrush-shaped gun which, with a blinding light and a quiet hissing noise, melts away a 4 mm diameter puddle of steel. All that with a welder that plugs into a 110 V wall outlet!

One part of welding is that you need to wear those big masks--unfortunately, when you're working in a crowded shop, you end up getting "flashed" once in a while--somebody else is welding, and you get a blast of electric arc seared into your retina. My eyes were feeling a little bit achey after the weekend, but they're fine now.

The instructors were a pretty neat bunch. One swaggered in with his union ironworker Local 7 sweatshirt, looking a bit like Jesse James (from Monster Garage), complete with wallet chain, who spends nine months out of the year erecting wind turbine towers in Alaska. Who later revealed that he's a former architect who gave up on the profession because he was friggin' tired of drawing bathroom details. The other was a sculptor who needed to pay the bills, so he does architectural-detail-level welding for a shop in Vermont, with most of their installations in the Boston area. They were really great guys and excellent instructors.

Not a bad weekend cost-wise either: $415 for tuition ($300), plus lodging for two nights in their dormitory and their home-cooked local meals. And the communal meals were neat--lunch outside, and folks from various walks of life.

Yeah, I know you next question--"So what kind of a welder are you gonna buy now, Bats?" Well, I think I'll hold off for a while--honestly, I have plenty of hobbies involving expensive equipment that I have no time for already. But would like to find some arrangement to use a welder once in a while. And heck, if I find one for cheap on CraigsList, I might pick it up. But all of these newly found skills make me want to come up with some project to use them.

But overall, this experience at Yestermorrow was very positive--perhaps I'll take another short course in milling lumber ("from stump to sticker"), concrete countertops, or shop machine maintenance.

However, that course took all of the weekend, from driving up on Friday night to driving back on Sunday night. So I really need a break from my weekend... but let's hear it for a three-day week for Thanksgiving!

Travel Coinciences: Schtick!

2009-11-12T19:36:00.002-05:00

Today's work travels were a miserable and highly objectionable 5:20 AM BOS-CVG flight, which necessitated a 3:30 AM wakeup. Why did I think that was a good idea?

However, while I was waiting for the rental car shuttle with my colleague, I heard somebody next to me say, "K.???". I looked up.

"Derek?!?!?"

No way! Gave him a great big hug. Schtick just happened to be traveling through Cincinnati at the same moment, dressed in classic business casual blue blazer/tan slacks, on his way to a meeting.

[Note: photo of him from Facebook; I did not have the presence of mind to snap a shot, but he looks about like this nowadays.]

He was on a final day or two of travel for a long trip, bouncing all over the place. He even passed through Boston during part of that (and stopped by the haus, I think).

Anyway... a pretty cool coincidence... although a clear sign that I am traveling for business far too much.

Condoms and Climate Change

2009-11-08T12:16:00.002-05:00

A recent snippet from a home energy efficiency periodical that I read:

A recent study conducted by the London School of Economics for the organization Optimum Population Trust concludes that expanding access to family planning is five times more cost-effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions than low-carbon technology. Based on recent estimates that the world population in 2050 would be half a billion smaller than projected if all women who want contraception now had access to it, the researchers calculated that CO2 emissions could be reduced by 34 gigatons.

Putting the cost of providing the contraception at a total of $220 billion, that amounts to $7 per ton of CO2 averted. Among more conventional technologies, per-ton costs were found to be $24 for wind power, $51 for solar, $57–$83 for coal plants with carbon capture and storage, and $92 and $131 for plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles, respectively. The full study is available online: “Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost: Reducing Future Carbon Emissions by Investing in Family Planning”.

Heh. Pretty cool.

Although I wonder about the phrase, "study conducted by the London School of Economics"--is this an actual endorsement, or did OPT just pay a grad student at LSE to crunch the numbers for them?

Incidentally, that image above is a Hand silkscreened giant condom pillow with giant fabric condom. Something I found while doing random image searches; thought it was amusing enough to share.

Bay Area Trip: Burning it at Both Ends

2009-11-06T23:41:00.013-05:00

I managed to continue my pattern of being out to the Bay Area every even-numbered month of 2009, for that continuing house project in Oakland. It’s a nice feeling that we’re getting this project pretty close to buttoned up and ready to go.

Incidentally, this trip was a week ago--I've been slamming on a week-long trip to Vancouver, and haven't had time to post since then.

Infrastructure Disasters and Dorkery

First, I managed to time my visit right during the period when the Bay Bridge was dead closed for several days, due to a cracked eyebar—thus tying up Bay Area traffic into knots. Happily, I just stayed in East Bay for my weekday work. Perlick pointed me at this fantastic web page, which has loads of pictures and engineering explanations on the failure and the repair.

In retrospect, it is impressive to me that they managed to cook up this kludge (that what us engineers call an inelegant solution cooked up to solve a problem quickly) in short order, but it was a little underdesigned. It might have been a better idea to also try to replace the broken Eyebar soon after the band-aid was installed (it's been almost two months, but I guess they didn't want to close the bridge again to install a new Eyebar).

Kludge... excellent.

I was shocked by the picture of the cracked eyebar. I was expecting, “Oh, it’s some hairline thing they found with magnaflux, or some special detection technique.” Nope… it’s this huge, visible, ugly, rusty crack... holy crap. Nobody happened to notice that before?

Work

Anyway, as usual, I was working everywhere in the house, from up on the roof…

…to down in the crawl space…

…doing everything from airflow measurements to equipment efficiency to checking photovoltaic output to installing a condensate drain to building my own Ethernet cables (data acquisition system network connection).

Some serious frustrations at work… for one, I FedEx’d my big case of tools to my client’s office, which arrived the day before I did. Unfortunately, nobody was in their office to take delivery. So the case went into FedEx limbo, despite multiple phone calls and offers to pick it up at their warehouse. And thus, I had to spend a day and a half trying to do my job with a Leatherman and my teeth (FYI, your teeth are a passable, albeit unpleasant, way to strip 24 gauge telco/network wire).

On Friday around lunchtime, my tools showed up. Man… this totally made me think of Jess’s turn of phrase describing her previous job--Waiting for FedEx:

Let’s go.

We can’t.

Why not?

We’re waiting for FedEx.

Ah.

Friday

I managed to wrap up at a reasonable time on Friday, and have a lovely dinner with Bradley, Janie, Sabrina, and young Mr. Griffin. Also, a special guest appearance by Jill—yes, she lives in the Boston area, but she was out visiting randomly.

Griffin showed incredible competence at being extremely photogenic and cute for the camera.

Incidentally, email showed up at 11 AM on Friday morning from Quincy:

I am turning 36 on Friday. Do come celebrate with me. Pumpkin-carving and going 'AW' at kids' costumes starts at 6:22pm. There will be food. Bring something to share, or drink my booze. I'll have some beer and mixers too. Wear your costume. Even I am wearing a costume this year. Really! Merry Samhain!

Aw dude… Quincy, next time you’re throwing a party, give us more than 7 hours notice! That would have been an awesome way to wrap up the week, if I hadn’t already made plans.

Saturday

After crashing chez Bug’s in Alameda, and having a filling brunch at Jim’s Coffee Shop, I actually went back to the jobsite, for a half day of wrapup. It was nice to have the flexibility, though, to go back and finish things off. However, this was followed by annoying logistics:

Drop off 118 lbs of gear at FedEx
Drive down East Bay, then across San Mateo Bridge
Drop rental car off at SFO
BART from SFO to Millbrae
CalTrain to Jen & Schmooz’s, to catch the tail end of Halloween

Unfortunately, this only got me down there by around 7 PM, so I missed most of Halloween with the kids. However, I did get to check out Schmooz’s most excellent mad scientist setup, for distributing candy! A Jacob’s ladder buzzing away, a Jello-O brain bubbling away inside a vat of green liquid, a variety of fake dead animals in jars, and wafts of dry ice smoke rolling down the whole thing. Awesome.

And did you know that quinine makes tonic water fluoresce? A neat touch. I knew it was a good sign that a few of the small kids were too scared to come up to get candy.

Sunday

Sunday morning, I managed to shoehorn in lunch with Jofish and Perlick at Palo Alto's California Avenue Farmer’s Market. A huge variety of choices… mmm… crepe-licious.

Then back onto Caltrain, to BART, to the jobsite. Wait, what? Back to the jobsite? Well, it turns out that we were missing a line of code in our data acquisition system program, and changing the program made the system actually write the data to the file correctly. Argh…. thus a quick trip out to Fruitvale. By random coincidence, while walking from BART, a Prius pulled up and folks waved—turned out it was Bradley and Janie, heading over to the Dia De Los Muertos festival at Fruitvale.

This was followed by dinner in Berkeley at LaLime’s, with John and Judy, who were in the Bay Area in their bicoastal relationship. Neat to catch them while I was in town.

Monday

I had the oh-so-lovely experience of taking BART around 5:30 AM to catch my flight to Vancouver—my next work destination. Hey, at least it wasn’t crowded, and I got some nice view of sunrise over SFO.

On my flight out of SFO, we flew over some fantastic views of the city, East Bay, Marin County, and the eerily empty Bay Bridge. Man… all these trips out to the Bay Area, and I’d never gotten that view. Neat!

Anyway, this trip was completely exhausting and jam-packed, running all over East and South Bay. Apologies for those that I didn’t get to see on this trip, and here’s hoping I have an excuse to make it out there in December, just to make it every even-numbered month of 2009!

Map (and Energy) Dorkery!

2009-10-27T21:28:00.006-04:00

I am on plenty of energy efficiency mailing lists, and one of them recently pointed to the 2009 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard, put out by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE), the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), and other groups:

In 2009, energy efficiency has risen to a new level of recognition in the U.S. We present here a comprehensive state energy efficiency scorecard to document best practices and recognize leadership among the states. The Scorecard examines six energy efficiency policy areas: (1) utility-sector and public benefits programs and policies; (2) transportation policies; (3) building energy codes; (4) combined heat and power; (5) state government initiatives; and (6) appliance efficiency standards. States can earn up to 50 points in these categories.

The “top ten” states in this year’s Scorecard are: California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, New York, Vermont, Washington, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Maine.

Note that the categories above are weighted by potential impact on overall energy savings. They map out their results in a color-coded map; note that actual ranking is not nearly as important as distribution in bins (i.e., #4 vs. #5, compared with top group vs. second-to-top group).

I just found it amusing that this metric maps pretty darn well to, "states where I would not mind living" (although not necessarily one-to-one). And is anyone surprised that Cheney is from Wyoming? But it also shows that some of the states that are doing the worst are the classic poverty-ridden ones (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virgina).

Similarly, there is a ranking of per-capita energy consumption by state, from the Energy Information Administration's Annual Energy Review 2007 (Figure 1.6 State-Level Energy Consumption and Consumption per Person, 2005).

Again, this maps similar to where I would want to live. Though I do wonder... are some of the high and low users due to industrial energy consumption, rather than personal energy consumption? I.e., the oil is refined and produced in Texas, but consumed in all states.

But before any of us feel too smug about living in low-per-capita energy use states, I would point out that there are also statistics for world consumption patterns, by country. Most New England states are in the 250 million Btu per capita range. Much of Europe is in the 100-180 million Btu range/capita (145 million average); Asia's average is 43 (although that's a huge range--Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are all in the 200 range); Africa's average is 16. And China is at 56; India is at 16. Insert typical commentary on "What will happen when a 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.1 billion Indians try to raise their standard of living to first world levels."

iPod Hardware Dorkery!

2009-10-06T23:22:00.001-04:00

During one of my recent interminable plane trips, my old and trusty iPod started to give up the ghost--it's a bad sign when the machine becomes unresponsive, you hear grinding sounds from the hard drive, and the whole thing starts to get hot in your hand. Sadness.

As background, I have had this iPod since before grad school--it's a Second Generation unit--released 2002, FireWire, 10 GB, no docking station, monochrome screen, old school, yo. I believe that Leper once pointed out, "Man... I think that Dennis Hopper had a newer iPod on his Harley in Easy Rider..."

However, I have a Fred-Fenning-emulating compulsion to keep old machines operating.... I decided, "Heck, I'll try fixing it." Fortunately, there are excellent geek suppliers out there. I decided to double my storage capacity (woo [sarcasm]) with a 20 GB hard drive from ifixit.com. And while I had the case open, I decided to install a replacement battery from MilliAmp LTD--an upgrade from ~1200 mAh to 2200 mAh. Mad props to both of those companies--for having the parts available, at a reasonable price, as well as incredibly fast shipping. MilliAmp also takes back your old battery for environmentally proper disposal--points for that as well. They also know their audience:

If you have a 1st or 2nd Generation iPod, you’ve understood the iPod mystique way before anyone else. But why get rid of your older model just because it has a few years on it? All you need is one of our two high-capacity 1st or 2nd Generation iPod battery replacement kits and you will be back on your way to longer playtimes than you ever had, even when your device was brand new!

So... I got all the pieces lined up, including an installation tool for cracking open the case:

Getting the case open is definitely the most difficult part--I'd say the tool makes it doable, as opposed to--say--easy:

And then doing a guts replacement!

A few tense moments of powering it up, reformatting the drive from iTunes, plugging in, plugging out... but eventually:

It works! Rock on.

Okay, now I have a mental image of an iPod commercial silhouetting my short stocky frame, doing my dorky oh-god-he-looks-like-an-animatronic-Santa-Claus dance.

So I know, you're going to ask--does it make any sense to spend $86.90 and burn an evening hacking hardware, when I could have bought a brand-new-with-warranty 16 GB iPod Nano for $179.00--with all those newfangled features like, say, a color screen? True enough. But I have a perverse joy in keeping a trusty old machine functioning, instead of consigning it the landfill. A bit of the whole buy less stuff ethos, too. Finally, I know that I complain I have more money than free time right now, but if it ever reaches the point when I couldn't justify doing this... man... a piece of me will have died.

First Pie!

2009-10-05T20:36:00.003-04:00

Just thought I'd commemorate the first apple pie of the season! I always think of it as my official recognition of it being fall.

First of all, I realized that my pie-making setup is made up of a few gifts. The "apple lathe" is a Back To Basics Apple and Potato Peeler--a gift from AJFBS. And the pie plate is a gorgeous thrown clay pie pan, from BirdJen.

The crust recipe is straight from Cook's Bible (i.e., Chris Kimball/America's Test Kitchen), and the filling is mom's recipe (with a few tweaks). I only grabbed Macintosh apples this time for filling--I should have had a mix of a few others, a bit more tart, and a bit more bite. I have used Northern Spy in the past--and I agree with the common wisdom that they are pretty darn good for pies.

Anyway... nom nom nom. Need to make more soon...

Previous Denver Trip

2009-10-01T23:42:00.007-04:00

And sadly, I did not get to schedule time to see my favorite Denverites (Dr. Tectonic, or Julee). Alas.

It is worth mentioning, though, that I did get to see Beemer two weeks ago... when I was in Denver... on a completely different work trip. Some highlights included:

A day off wandering around Boulder--included a meander around the Pearl Street pedestrian mall, lunch, and postcards.

I even found a postcard that shows NCAR (The National Center for Atmospheric Research)--that's where Beemer works! See?

Got to hang out with Beemer and Greg--Jerry is away in Japan now, on an exchange term. Saturday was a hike out in Boulder Canyon with Beemer and his mom--who was a curator (?) at the Colorado School of Mines (?)... so she could identify everything out there on the trail. Pretty awesome.

Saw the movie "9"--a lovely little film, which puts together a wonderfully evocative world and atmosphere. However [spoiler!], we found that the ending was a little disappointing--not bad, just not a payoff in line with the rest of the movie. But if you are curious the award-winning 10-minute short film that got this movie rolling is on YouTube.

Anyway, thanks for the hospitality, Beemer! Was great seeing you!

Denver Travel Adventures

2009-10-01T22:49:00.005-04:00

Just got back from a bounce trip to Denver for work--flew out on Sunday night, and flew back on Wednesday. The trip went well, but I'm still residually tired. And sadly, I did not get to schedule time to see my favorite Denverites (Dr. Tectonic, or Julee). Alas.

My Sunday flight out was a connection flight, BOS-ORD-DEN, meeting my coworker in Chicago. However, seriously sucky weather on the way in to ORD--we got pushed out of the pattern, had to loop up almost to Milwaukee, and have another run at it. Serious turbulence on the way in--the last plane ride where I was that close to hurling was probably in the back of a P-3 Orion.

Of course, this go-around was a delay... I was trying to figure out all the ramifications of missing my connection... cancel the hotel room tonight, get a hotel near ORD (or crash with Tappan?), rebooking for tomorrow morning, figure out a way to get out to the jobsite... all unpleasant. As soon as we touched down, I started texting my coworker, to find out the situation. He wrote back:

No worries on missing your flight. Plane to Denver is the one that you are currently on. You don't even need to deplane.

Awesome. Although it was still an unpleasant travel day--getting to the hotel at 2:30 AM (4:30 AM EDT). Ugh.

The work itself was two days of setting up an insulation reference sample at a manufacturer's testing lab. Not really worth going into much detail about it. Suffice it to say, though, it was a few days of getting my hands dirty and building stuff, which is always good. Work actually wrapped up on time.

Also, the test lab is on the edge of town--you can see the foothills right out of the front window. Nice.

I also took my small bit of amusement at the coffee carafe labels at the Hampton Inn:

Yep... the decaf was labelled "UNLEADED." Heh.

Travel out was... actually eventful, this time. My coworker was doing more work in Denver, so he dropped me off at a skyRide shuttle bus stop. As we were approaching DIA, I was looking out the window, when somebody pointed out, "Hey, there's smoke coming out of the floor!" Yikes! We pulled over at the side of the road, and opened up the hatches to ventilate out. Swell. At least the bus did not actively catch fire while we were on it.

Fortunately, a few cabs pulled up to bring us the last mile or so to the airport... made it to the gate with a few minutes to spare.

The next bit of travel is going to be at the end of October... I feel like I could use a breather from this for a while.

Weren't You Just There Last Month, Bats?

2009-09-16T22:48:00.019-04:00

Considering that I was last in New York City a month ago, I guess it's odd that I took a weekend trip. But hey, it was a fun, jam-packed weekend... resulting in a long, photo-filled post here.

Friday

First of all, it was pretty damn satisfying to bail out of work early on Friday, hop the Acela down to New York Penn Station, drop off my bags at my sister's place, and make it to the Blue Note in time to catch the 10:30 set (Dave Holland Quartet).

Oh yeah. They offered up a California-made Belgian-style ale, called Brother Thelonious Belgian Style Abbey Ale, complete with an image of Mr. Monk himself on the bottle. I had to try one... which meant finishing a 750 mL ale by myself on an empty stomach. Hey... it was a long week... I managed to stumble my way home all right.

Saturday

Saturday was the planned get-together with A & Guy--we decided we wanted to catch the James Ensor exhibit at MoMA before it closed. Ensor is an odd duck--Belgian, late 1800s/early 1900s, rather surreal and avant-garde. Honestly, I knew him mostly from the They Might Be Giants song:

Meet James Ensor
Belgium's famous painter
Dig him up and shake his hand
Appreciate the man

Before there were junk stores
Before there was junk
He lived with his mother and the torments of Christ
The world was transformed
A crowd gathered round
Pressed against his window so they could be the first

To meet James Ensor
Belgium's famous painter
Raise a glass and sit and stare
Understand the man

For reference, the New York Times review of the show is here: "From Ensor’s Curiosity Shop, Nightmares of Gruesome Beauty"

Ensor is difficult to pin down--style wise, you don't really say, "Oh yeah, that's an Ensor"--his works were everything from realist to neo-Impressionist to finely detailed line drawings to works, if unlabelled, could easily pass for mid-20th century. I guess stylistically, there are common threads running through his work: creepy, skulls, masks, death, bodily functions (urination, vomiting, defecation). Incidentally, the junk store line above is relevant--he lived above a junk store, and various ephemera made its way into his art, such as the masks and other background clutter.

Skeletons Trying to Warm Themselves 1889

One of my reactions was, "He created all these works, and they hadn't gotten around to inventing LSD yet? Wow..."

We spent a few more hours at MoMA; I caught the Ron Arad exhibit (Israeli industrial designer-artist-architect)--he does stuff like abstract sculpture in modern industrial materials like aramid fiber-Nomex composite. Also, there was one work that caught my eye, concentrating on the suburban sprawl at the Tijuana-San Diego border:

...Cruz envisions a new urban landscape, calling for a densely arranged network of retrofitted homes. In this installation... a series of Latin American immigrants to the United States describe how they imagine the network of suburban San Diego homes transforming over time. The animated rendering on the right depicts the "McMansion" evolving as the characters tell their stories.

Heh. Immigrants turning San Diego into Tijuana. I'm not sure if I'm more delighted by the horror this inflicts on suburbians, the effective higher density use of these buildings, or sentencing these houses to such an ignominious fate. Hey Omri, you checking this out?

And dinner at Katz's Deli (i.e., from When Harry Met Sally) followed, along with an evening's wander around SoHo. Even managed to shoehorn in a late showing of In the Loop (satire about the rush to go to war, between the UK and the US).

Sunday

And Sunday morning, more museum geekery. I had been meaning to catch an exhibit ever since I read about it--“Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City”. Researchers took historic maps, soil borings, written records, archeological information, and put together many maps of what Manhattan was like before European settlers found it in the 1600s:

Really fascinating, such as checking out how thoroughly humans have reshaped the landmass of Manhattan and New York City. They had contour and geospatial maps, of everything from estimated incidence of forest fires, beaver populations, geology, etc. For instance, I did not realize that there is a seam of non-homogeneous bedrock that underlies both Roosevelt Island and the Lower East Side.

There was also a photography exhibit--Dutch Seen: New York Rediscovered. One interesting artist does portrait photography in the style of seventeenth century Dutch painters, but with a twist.

Hey... wait a second... that's a plastic grocery bag! Heh.

I then caught the Fung Wah back up to Boston... man, it's really hard to beat that $15 fare.

(Hell Gate bridge, from I-278)

I'd never taken it before, so I thought I ought to try it out, just for the experience. No complaints about the ride, but there's a certain luxury on Amtrak, on being able to spread out, plug in your laptop, and get some work (or reading, or whatever) done. Plus the train has a much smoother ride, and avoids traffic. But it's sometimes hard to justify a close-to-order of magnitude difference in price ($15 vs. $109).

Bumper Stickers (Seen in Passing)

2009-09-13T23:06:00.003-04:00

While driving to work, I saw a car ahead of me, and recognized from a distance that the back of the car was covered with those hateful red “MARRIAGE = [MAN] + [WOMAN]” bumper stickers. Three of them… ugh. But as I got closer, I saw an Obama sticker. Um, whaa? Pulled up a bit closer, and saw:

Hellsyeah. Awesome.

Incidentally, given how Cambridge/Somerville is such a small place, if anybody knows this person, please buy him/her a beer on me.

I’d put those stickers on myself, except that I place a priority of being to road trip around the country without getting shot.

Actually, an awesome hack would be to buy a whole bunch of “MARRIAGE = [MAN] + [MAN]” stickers, and cover up existing “MARRIAGE = [MAN] + [WOMAN]” bumper stickers… and see how long it would take for the car owners to notice.

Hi, I’m Bats… Remember Me?

2009-09-13T22:56:00.007-04:00

Holy cats… I realize that I have not done a blog post in over a month… yep, last thing was my trip to New York. I just got behind, and despaired on catching up. I’ll try to keep my writeup of this past month brief—but it’s sure been busy… here’s what I’ve been up to:

My company’s big seminar series (“Summer Camp”)—three days of building geekery and eating and drinking more than prudent:

Another work trip to the Bay Area. Highlight was a potluck over at U-Boat and Christy’s where I got to meet both of the new Teplings—Bradley and Janie’s Mr. Griffin, and U-Boat and Christy’s Miss Corvidae!

Caption: “…and I managed to catch one this big!

Vacation! A week of camping and hiking in Alaska with Ouija, Drea, and one of their friends. Saw glaciers, puffins, breaching orcas, salmon swimming upstream, a bore tide in Turnagain Arm, a moose (!!), and immense amounts of incredibly beautiful scenery.

Oh… and it seems like the state pastime in Alaska is shooting at road signs. Dudes… could you just go find a junkyard or something? Please?

And I just thought this photo was fun.

Finally… Big Bird’s birthday was just last week… Jen is living in Texas nowadays, so I thought I needed to help organize a shindig to celebrate! An evening over at Judy’s, with gin and tonics, and pie! As well as bourbon from Nantucket… we just had to buy it for the novelty value (“There once was some hooch from Nantucket/T’was aged in an old oaken bucket”)—it was actually quite drinkable. Not bad for Yankee bourbon.

I wrote this on train to New York City for the weekend, meeting up with Amie and Guy to see the James Ensor exhibit at MoMA! (Belgian avant garde painter; also the subject of a They Mights Be Giants song) Which is why I actually had some time to blog. And then on a plane on Monday to Denver for work; yep, I’m planning on stopping in on Beemer over the weekend.

New York: Guggenheim, Village Vanguard, Power Plants

2009-08-08T15:15:00.006-04:00

On my recent New York trip, as usual, I spent a day in New York City, shoehorned full of various activities. As usual, I walked away feeling like each day I spend here results in two more days’ of activities I want to add to my list.

First, I headed to the Guggenheim, to catch the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit before it closed. I have to admit that it is quite embarrassing, as a native New Yorker (and museum nerd), that I’ve never actually gone to the Guggenheim. The exhibit was in roughly chronological order, going up the spiral of the museum—a really nice organization method.

Yes, I guess this shot is probably overdone, but it’s iconic, eh?

I got the audio tour, which provided a wonderful wealth of information. But it was somewhat interesting looking at his work, as a building technology nerd. For instance, “…but they don’t talk about how they had to completely rebuild the structure of Fallingwater’s cantilever with retrofitted post-tensioned concrete, just to keep it from falling down,” or “Oh yeah, the Usonian houses… I saw that article on having to entirely rebuild the structure, because the beams were built out of multiple 2x4s instead of a 2x10, like it ought to be,” or “Marin County Civic Center—yes, it’s a gorgeous space, inside and out… and the detail of those repeating motifs throughout the building are great. And I have an awesome picture of the leaking skylight there.”

Incidentally, Wright appeared to be a pretty unpleasant human being to deal with—common personality traits that come with genius probably. This is based on the Ken Burns/American Experience documentary—a huge amount of fascinating information, if anyone is interested.

Anyway, in the gift shop—check it out, a Lego Guggenheim! It turns out that there is a whole Lego architectural series. Funny.

Headed back to my sister’s place, got changed, and headed down to Greenwich Village. Had dinner at a local spot I found just randomly walking around (Chow Bar)—Asian fusion-ish; great calamari salad and tuna tartare. One amusing dish that I got as a side—their “crispy spinach”: take spinach, deep fry, and salt. Yep, they made spinach into potato chips. Wow. You actually can make spinach unhealthy. I only had a few bites before I gave up.

A very nice little wander around the Village to kill time before the evening’s entertainment. A brief moment of, “man, sometimes, it’s good to be alive”—check out that view of the sunset.

Then an evening of jazz at the Village Vanguard—as I wrote in the past:

I don't know how many of you are jazz aficionados, but the Village Vanguard is a famous Greenwich Village jazz club that has been around since the 1930's. The greats have all played the Vanguard, and a multitude have recorded live albums there: [Insert name of jazz giant] Live at the Village Vanguard (including my personal favorite, Bill Evans' Sunday at the Village Vanguard). As a younger jazz musician puts it: "I call it the Carnegie Hall of jazz because most jazz clubs just don't have the sound that that place has. . . . It's the place where Moses and Mohammed and Jesus walked!"

The group I saw was Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson, and Paul Motian (piano, bass, and drums)—Motian has a history that goes back to the 1950s, playing with some of the jazz greats (including Bill Evans). It was an absolutely superb evening.

I was only in the city for the morning, the next day. I thought I would try to find the Jamaican food truck on the upper East Side mentioned in a New York Times article (“Sweet Heat: For Jamaicans, It’s About Jerk”). Unfortunately, I could not find it—I’m guessing they are a weekday outfit, and take the weekends off or something. Guess that will have to be another trip.

However, I did get to wander about the East Side, looking up and down the river at the bridges and Roosevelt Island across the way.

Of course, infrastructure geekery ends up finding me—there’s another gorgeous old turn of the century power plant on the river there (74th Street)—there’s a similar one on the West Side—see that previous post. Incidentally, Daniel—you wrote I've always loved the look of that power station. When we were briefly on the FDR Drive, I thought we went past it (half torn down), but that must've been some other ornate squarish building on the East side.--is this the one you’re thinking of?

Anyway, as usual, this prompted me to go do web searching on the history of this thing. It was actually unproductive at first (I was doing “74th Street powerhouse –mesothelioma,” because most of the links were class-action lawsuits). But then… paydirt, at Google Books: The New York Electrical Handbook, by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (“Being A Guide for Visitors from Abroad Attending the International Electrical Congress, St. Louis, Mo. September 1904”), with a chapter all about the power plant, in obsessive and excruciating detail (starting at page 243—“74th Street Power Station, Manhattan Division”). Man… for all of the debates on the intellectual property ramifications of Google’s book scanning project, it’s discoveries like this that makes me feel that on the scale of humanity, it is a fine, fine thing they are doing.

The amount of coal required for the operation of the power station during the winter months is about 700 tons per day. This coal is brought to the power station dock in barges, from which the coal is unloaded by means of a ton-and-a-half clam-shell bucket operated by a hoisting engine. This bucket is elevated about fifty feet to the top of the coal tower, where the coal is discharged into crushers, which break it to a size suitable for use in the automatic stokers. The coal then drops into weighing hoppers, where it is weighed before going to the boilers.

I also found that Con Ed has a PowerPoint presentation showing all their power plants in the New York City area that supply steam. It’s actually a pretty clever use—this is leftover steam heat, from the power plants—normally, this energy is wasted. Instead, they pipe it under the streets to heat buildings.

BTW—in case it is not obvious—all of these power plants are located at the perimeter of Manhattan because they use river water as their cooling medium.

Yep, another fine visit.