1:21 PM
No, contrary to some rumors, I have not disappeared from the face of the earth - just been rather busy. And no, I do not intend this to foreshadow a decrease in blog rate. I will write again tonight (promise...)
Instead, I'll leave a treat - one of my favorite poems. Those who know me well will agree that I can really associate with this poem - it describes what I think about nature better than I could, certainly:
I love the accomplishments of trees,
How they try to restrain great storms
And pacify the very worms that eat them.
Even their deaths seem to be considered.
I fear for trees, loving them so much.
I am nervous about each scar on bark,
Each leaf that browns. I want to
Lie in their crotches and sigh,
Whisper of sun and rains to come.
Sometimes on summer evenings I step
Out of my house to look at trees
Propping darkness up to the silence.
When I die I want to slant up
Through those trunks so slowly
I will see each rib of bark, each whorl;
Up through the canopy, the subtle veins
And lobes touching me with final affection;
Then to hover above and look down
One last time on the rich upliftings,
The circle that loves the sun and moon,
To see at last what held the darkness up.
("A Final Affection" by Paul Zimmer in Crossing to Sunlight. University of
Georgia Press, 1996, p. 79)
Published: Monday, 3 May 2004
10:50 pm
It is snowing out - or is it hail? Kernels of white, well, chunks falling out of the sky. Certainly doesn't look like snow - more like white rock salt. Hmm. Perhaps embarassed snow (for falling in May), or perhaps scared snow (since it is bound to be unpopular coming at this late date). This is supposed to happen in April, not May. Gee, just 3 days ago we were walking around in shorts and t-shirts, as it was 25 C outside. Now it is +3 - go figure.
So where have I been? Well, let us count the days - really quickly now.... Last Thursday night I went to an orchestra concert (we orignially had a pair of tickets for this coming Saturday, but Gwendolyn will be at a weekend of "sewing camp", so I split it into two Thursday tickets for myself) - very good, well performed, and good music. I'll spare you the details.
Friday we went skating, and it went pretty well. Then we just chilled after the work week, and went to bed early. Saturday morning we got up early and went up to the lakeshore to go birding - Spring migration is just starting in earnest. I think we did just great - by noon we were up to 54 species, and that with very few warblers and ducks. And I do love warblers! Magical little colored birds, no more than 11 cm long, often with amazing songs. Pure magic. Just add water and bugs and you get instant wonderment.
On Saturday afternoon I travelled to pick my Mom up in Buffalo airport. She is returning from the Mayo clinic (they were looking after her knee), and is now going home. Boy, that poor woman. The good news is that she has several braces that stabilize her right knee so she can hobble along with a walker. But given her shoulders are also really bad with arthritis, even using the walker hurts with each step. Either way, she is happy to be back home. To make life easier, we attached a basket to the front of her walker - she puts things in there, goes where she wants to, then takes them out again. It was sort of funny - at one point she was sitting on the side of the bed picking up all her cloths with this long "pickker upper" gizmo and placing them in the basket. She then walked out to the kitchen and put everything in the wash. Another amusing moment (for me, not her) occured after we had eaten our Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner. I was in another room reading and heard a "splat" followed by a "darn!". I came to see what had happened, and it just looked like one of those pictures they given you in grade school and then tell you to write a story about it.... She had put the chicken box (with leftover food) in her basket, waked over to the trash can, picked it up, given it a toss and... missed. Splat. Damn. Anya liked it, though - we removed the chicken bones and she took care of the rest In fact, I sometimes wonder if the whole thing was intentional to feed the dog...
Published: Monday, 3 May 2004
11:14 pm
OK, I'm tired of reading the articles - let's design a voting machine tonight. I don't understand why it is so hard.
First a quick history review. Current voting machines seem to all have their problems. The ones we use in this part of NY state seem to work fine, but are old and not manufactured anymore. Some other ones involve people punching holes in cards - seem to be prone to failures, change of mind and "hanging chads". In Optical readers reading pencil and pen marks are also not very compatible with people, who can't read, follow instructions, or push hard enough when writing.
Enter electronic voting machines. The main concern here is one of fraud. There seem to be several problems, at least with the one machine made by Diebold. It is an all electronic machine that records the votes, and then at the end dials a central center and downloads the results. Yep, sure enough they are tried this out in several places and found several problems - duh - it seems any peer review could have anticipated them. Let's name a few - several machines crashed and it was unclear if they forgot all of their votes or not. They all dialed the same place at the same time to download votes, and guess what - the phone was busy. Gee, like no one thought of that... And then there is the theoretical (at least) possibility of "hacking" such machines to bias the results. Gee, that seems like a reasonable concern. Indeed, one university class in computer security decided (as an exercise) to try to take a similar machine and write some hard to find code that biased the voting if a certain sequence of keys were entered. Well, they at least sort of succeeded.
In summary, although the hacking fear is probably overblown, the lack of printed, hardcopy records is proving to be a significant shortcoming if the darn things crash, or there is a power failure, or....
OK, let's start our 10 minute design. Well, first, we will need a hardcopy record. The voter needs to be able to verify their vote (preferably off the hard copy), but is not allowed to get a receipt themselves (otherwise they could be bribed to vote a certain way and the briber could ask to see the receipt for payment - with no receipt there can be no verification, so bribery or other pursuasion does not pay). And we need this thing to be pretty hack resistant.
I would separate the overallall function into two collaborating machines, made by two, independant manufacturers. The first machine translates a vote entry into a marking on a record. This marking should be robust, so let's say we use a combination system - a punch in the paper, as well as an ink mark in the punched area (i.e. a black dot with the center punched out). To make things really sure I would also encode "no vote made" as a punch/mark by itself - so every row lets say has 1 of N marked. This is all the first machine has to do.
The resultant paper vote is then rolled into a adjacent machine. The purpose of this machine is to read the vote (use optical means to see the ink and either optical or mechanical means to read the hole). If they don't agree, an error is flagged, and a human somhow resolves it (such as by loading more ink into the first machine). If they agree, the results are displayed on a screen and the voter hits a "confirm" button, which punches a (redundant) "confirm" marking. This machine also tallys the votes (advances machanical counters as well as electronic ones). If the voter made a mistake, they could void the vote, and try again.
In this way at the end of the day you have records of the votes (like in the current system), failsafe mechanical counters (these don't clear in a crash or power failure), and still an electronic record to downloading to the election site - or the numbers could be called in as per current technology. Statistical cross checks of paper records vs recorded votes (done by yet a third manufacturer) could be performed. It is rather hard to hack this system because most attacks would require both machines to have to same bad code - if one was compromised, the displayed results (from the paper tape) would not match the entered vote, and a human (the voter) would be likely to see this. And if the final tally / reporting software was compromised, you still have the correct record (made by a different manufacturer) to perform the statistical audit against.
There - design done. Why is is so hard??? Am I missing something?
Nite nite.
Published: Monday, 3 May 2004
10:31pm
Saw the fox kit again (this is our fourth sighting). (S)he always seems to be by the road, but of course statisticly that is a useless observation, since we see him at night when driving - where else could we see him? But then again, by political standards we could proclaim - "clearly this fox lives in the road's shoulder, since 4 out of 4 times it was seen there". Sort of like
We went to ballet again tonight - or rather the other people in the class were doing ballet, and I was randomly moving body joints with my head rotated 90 degrees so I could see what the instructor was doing, somehow translated the her movements (she was facing me from the side), get left and right figured out, and then try to do the same with the correct body part. Needless to say, this was not a real-time exercise - my phase lag was approaching 360 degrees.
Afterwards one of the students (Nadia, and yes, surprise, from Russia) had brought her 5 (?) year old daughter. She had been coloring during class. I went through her coloring book (which was teaching spelling), and named off about 2/3s of the various things in the book (bird, river, man, woman, etc). Luckily I didn't have to spell them, although that is certainly one thing that is much easier in Russian than in English. Afterwards we introduced Natasha (the girl's name) to Anya - she liked it.
Apparently my Mom and her occasionally visiting home helper cleaned out drawers today. Gee, this hasn't been done for decades. She claimed to find calanders from 1973 and other assorted things that haven't been used in decades. We have (is anyone surprised) very messy drawerswith random contents, and none (other than the silverware drawer) have "themes". Maybe some day they can throw out the florescent light tubes that have probably been in the closet since I was in 6th grade... (Hi Mom...)
I'll end with a true non-sequatur - whoever invented angel food cake should be knighted or something... Yumm.
Published: Tuesday, 4 May 2004
10:55 pm
One more thing - I can't believe I did this. My group at work (most of them considerably younger than I am, I may say, and one just finished a marathon this last weekend) pressured me into "running" (for me more like "run / walking") in a local 5.6 km "corporate challange" race. I can't tell if the main point of persuasion was ET and AM's smiling faces or the BBQ promised afterwards. May 27th. Goal - don't injure. And guys - I'll thank you now, but later I am not so sure...
Now on to oboe.
Published: Tuesday, 4 May 2004
11:33 pm
Tonight was a slow, mellow night. I took Anya for an hour walk, followed it with the now traditional "twist kiddie cone", then came home. I was bummed that West Wing, the only (and I mean only) television show I watch was preempted for some sort of special related to the ending of "Friends", which I have never watched. So instead I started making a Word table (with sound clips) to help me learn the songs of the 36 warbler songs. Learning the first hundred bird songs is not actually that hard, but some warblers can be tough to impossible. So in this particular case, just listening to the CDs does not cut it - we need written analysis and cross comparisons if I am going to have a chance.
BTW, if anyone out there is interested in learning bird songs, I highly recommend the Peterson Field Guides Birding By Ear (Eastern / Central), followed by the same series More Birding by Ear. Peterson publishes other bird CDs with different titles, and you want the ones I mentioned. The first guide is very good - people at all oriented to this sort of thing should have no problem learning at least 60 species, and as many as 100. The second picks up from there and adds another 100 species. But before learning bird song it of course is best to just look at some, and right now (May in general) is THE time to do this. But you have to be willing to get up in the morning. If anyone wants, BTW, just express interest and we can make it happen, or I can tell you what you need to know. Even have loaner binocs. Sorry, dear Russians, getting together with you is harder and more involved...
Published: Thursday, 6 May 2004
11:39 pm
This afternoon the weather was absolutely beautiful - about 23C outdoors, sunny, light wind. It was not helping my concentration at work (I have been doing system design and investigation, and now it is time to "dump my brain" onto paper, and I was having "start the term paper" procrastination problems), so I hatched a plan. Since I knew it would be raining in the evening, I traded an hour in the afternoon for an hour in the evening, and went for a walk in the woods during the afternoon. I then worked for an extra hour something (until 7) while it rained. It was a good deal.
Dinner was gourmet pizza (yumm...) then I went to an orchestra concert. The first couple of pieces were quite nice, but the final piece, Sibellius Symphony #2 was just wonderful. I know, this is an acqured taste, but I seem to have acquired it. The second movement is just haunting in a way, and the development and climax of the final movement (especially as they performed it last night) was a wonder to behold! Glorious glorious!
Driving up our hill at night in the rain was another "dodge the frogs" experience - no snakes this time, and no fox, however.
Published: Thursday, 6 May 2004
12:14 pm
This seems to be the day of strange things happening - here's what's going on:
When I walked into work this morning there was a Rochester Water Department truck parked along one of the major roads. About 10 meters from the truck I saw a yellow box with an antenna sitting in the grass - I stopped and looked at it - yup, interesting, no markings. Wonder what that's for. Hmmm... Further down the road there was a Water department worker pointing at the ground with an elaborate piece of equipment looking something like a weed whacker. I took an educated guess and asked him "do I assume that this is some sort of a metal detector used to look for pipes?" He indicated it was. I then asked about the other box - he said it was a receiver of some sort - it was placed over a place where they KNEW there was a water main, and then the thing he was holding transmitted a signal into the pipes - the yellow box received the signal and then used the antenna to transmit its findings to what it heard. "Great," I said "does it work well?". He indicated that it did not work very well at all, and that in the end he ended up using a set of divining rods to actually find the pipes, and just used the gadget to determine if they were the right pipes. With this said, he then went back into the truck and got his divining rods - think of two pieces of coat hanger about 50 cm long, each bent at right angles to form a 15 cm "handle". He held these two, one in each hand, with the "pointers" initially pointing straight forward. He then walked from the curb towards the sidewalk, and sure 'nuff, at one point the wands spread out. He then repeated this (his thumbs were up and hence unable to manipulate the rods) and repeated the result. He then took his spray paint, painted a line on the sidewalk, walked down the road several meters and repeated the find / paint.
I have seen this before, tried it myself, etc - it obviously (to me) is a con, but it is interesting on how straight-faced and earnest the workers I have seen employ it pull it off!
<Wrote this text at 9:30 am> I then got into work and tried to log on. Last night they changed our account structure and as a result much of my PC does not work - or rather all my personal settings are lost and I cannot get to some key network drives I need. So I dialed the help desk, and am listening to "on hold" music as I write this - so far we are 15 minutes and counting. I expect they are having a really special morning bonding with their customers.
<Back to 12 pm> Well, as it turns out they eventually got back to me in several hours, by which time I had asked around and fixed the problem by myself. But as it happens, something else had happened which was really funny.
Like good engineers, we like to play tricks on each other. And heaven help you if you go on vacation - if you are the "right" person, you never know what you will return to. Well, here's what they did to poor RF, who went away for a week:
The materials were easy - 1033 balloons, 4 pounds(!) of glitter, and lots of labor.
The method was easy - pour some glitter into a balloon, inflate (use a compressed air hose)
The logistics were less easy - where to store 1033 balloons - it takes quite a few weeknights to inflate all of them?
The answer for storage was to bag them in large trash bags - store some in the cubicle itself, and others in just about any closet they could find. Last night they emptied all of the bags into the poor guys cubicle - they had to extend it towards the ceiling with plastic wrap to hold them all.
This morning said victim walked in and explored what used to be his cube. He eventually popped a balloon - no one could have predicted what would happen.... The first balloon popped, sending glitter flying in every direction. Well, the glitter has sharp edges, and popped some of the adjacent balloons. A chain reaction ensued, throwing glitter in every direction (it is currently "all over" the entire lower level of out building, since it sticks to shoes and clothing, etc). Within several seconds hundreds of balloons had popped. There were several other chain reactions as the remainder were popped.
There is (at least as this is written) a web site about this now - a must see, especially the first page (the second page takes a long time to load). It is at: http://home.rochester.rr.com/akotlarz/bobcube.html - but be prepared to laugh!
Published: Friday, 7 May 2004
10:53 PM
After work took Anya for a walk, ate dinner, then went skating (G is away for the weekend on a "quilting retreat" - we call it "sewing camp"). On the way back saw the fox kit (probably up to 5 kg by now) on OUR PROPERTY! The other four times we saw it it was about 1 mile away. Anya saw it too and got very excited - we had to have a little talk about fox kits, and that she is not to try to find it (luckily she is pretty good about staying in the yard).
It was wonderful today also (about 16C), but tonight it is expected to get down to about 1, with frost warnings for "inland areas and higher elevations" - sounds like us!
Published: Friday, 7 May 2004
11:04 pm
Gee, I can see a trend showing here - on weekends I actually have LESS time to write, not more. And I thought this weekend would have a luxury of time - yeh, right!
<Speaking of yeh, right - in how many languages do you have two positives make a negative...>
On Friday night I took Anya for a very muddy (but wonderful) walk, and then practices ice skating. Things went pretty well - making progress.
Saturday was a sort of busy day in a social sense. It started quietly with my weekend trolly trail bird walk. I wasn't expecting much because it was quite windy (the birds don't bother to come out, and even if they did I wouldn't be able to sense their movement, since the eye latches on to movement, and if all the leaves are moving you find nothing), but I did come up with about 35 species. Then in the early afternoon one of my Russian friends (going to school here) came over with her dad, who is visiting for her graduation. Now normally visiting Russians who only speak Russian (given I don't speak Russian) come over and we smile at eachother a lot. Not this time! He had questions - lots of questions. So with his daughter serving as interpreter, we talked and toured the house for over an hour. Questions about how it is heated, what happends when the electricity goes off, why aren't our houses made of cement blocks given that is cheaper (which it isn't here), why is our house sooo darn, well, BIG for the two of us? All great questions. It will be fun to let G loose at him for dinner some time - they'll have a blast together once they can actually TALK the same language.
Then I went to another friends Bday party, which was good, although I got pretty "socialed out". That evening I was not good for much, but I did take a brief visit to the gym and give my leg muscles fair warning that in a couple of weeks they would need to carry me (hopefully running much of the time) for 5+ km. So I ran .25 mi, walked 1/16, ran 1/4, walked 1/16. etc until I had run 1 1/4 miles. And stretched a lot. Hopefully in the next week I can be up to run/walk 2.5 miles, then I'll start working on the continuous run stuff.
ON Sunday morning I originally planned to go birding early, but woke up to rain and went back to sleep. Around 9 am I work up, got dressed (a useful feature if you're going to go out) and drove to the lakeshore (Ontario) for birding, since the rain had stopped. I birded for about 2 hours, by which time I had found about 46 species of birds. Later during the day, G was returning from quilting camp, and stopped at Montezuma. I was cleaning house, so we both put on our headsets (she on cell phone), and we talked continuously while she birded. Pretty amusing, and if we combined our two lists, we get to about 70 species, which is really cool. Her best bird was a Snowy Egret. Mine was a American Redstart.
We then went skating. For most of the session it was uneventful. During the final "stroking" class, G fell while skating backwards and sprained her hand (the one that had surgery a month ago). It hurt a lot and she was really pissed that she decided she didn't need to wear her wrist guard given her wrist was finally feeling better. She is going to be OK, but it was a bad way to end the night.
Later on, I find out that my Mom is not necessarily doing well. I will have to learn the details tomorrow, but I might get an express trip to visit her. I feel so sorry for what she is going through - her life is quite hard right now. But on the other hand I wish this would resolve itself one way or the other, and I fear we are getting the other.
Thanks N and T for your Russia planning help- the enthusiam you show for our visit warms our hearts - we wish we could spend months there visiting. We will start working out the details. G is talking about possibly extending our trip by a week because there is soooo much to do and visit, but we will see. Either way, we are looking forward to a really awesome trip and can't wait to see you guys!
Nite nite!
Published: Sunday, 9 May 2004
12:48 PM
OK, actually talked to my Mom, and she is quite chipper. Alert level down to Yellow. Anyone that could be as emphatic as she was couldn't possibly be that sick: "No, I don't need you to come here right now, I am FINE. Worry about something else!"
During lunch I went for a walk down East Av - it is warm (about 26), partly sunny, and just a WONDERFUL day out there. The trees are in that state where most leaves are out in varying stages, but with the light yellow green of spring. Other trees are flowering in whites, pinks and yellows. There are flower buds on the sidewalks. Birds are singing and setting up their households. The lilacs are out in shades of white to red to lavender to violet. The air smells like flowers, like spring, like life. A beautiful time of year! Life is good.
Published: Monday, 10 May 2004
11:07 PM
Tonight instead of my normal walk (which is about 3.5 km), I did a combination of walk / run. Anya was a bit confused as to why I sometimes seemed to be chasing her - she didn't think it was supposed to work like that. I would catch up to her and tell her "go on" and she would shoot ahead again, sort of looking back at me as though to say "what is this - boot camp?" I walked for a while then did a 2 min run / 2 min walk/2R/2W/2R/5+W/4R/2W/4W/4W/2R - since the running was done at what I presume is a bit slower than an 8 minute mile, I ran for a total of about 1.8 - 2 miles.
I still enjoy (and expect I will always enjoy) walking to running - no doubt about THAT. When I run everthing goes by far too fast. There were several trail landmarks that I always look forward to that I didn't even see when running. So this is not really the start of a new thing - more a means to avoid my killing myself when I try to do 6 km of it.
G's wrist is feeling normal again. Expermented with softening some HDPE (if you don't know you don't care) to see if a "wrist brace lite" could be fashioned - moderate success. Polypropolyne (sp?) is the desired material, but is a semicrystalline plastic and... well, never mind...
Published: Monday, 10 May 2004
8:31 pm
Tuesday was uneventful - we played hooky from ballet (hard to get psyched when its wonderful and light outside, and you have spent all day inside. So we pulled weeds in the front yard then went for a short walk. After all walks of course is the obligatory ice cream cone - kiddie cones, of course because we are on a diet :-)
Today was another wonderful day - around 27 degrees, so a bit hot. AFter work we went to Highland park for a picnic dinner before the Lilac festival starts. And OH is it beautiful! If in the area it is highly recommended!
Later tonight after it cools off I will try to get psyched to go running - if not I'll walk. But watching West Wing is the top priority for tonight.
Published: Wednesday, 12 May 2004
11:36 pm
Nope, this "from nothing to 3.5 miles in 3 weeks" running thing is not going to be easy. Realism has set in, goals realigned. Prior to starting this I told myself that this was not about the physical, it was just a matter of willpower. Well, tonight I ran one mile, walked a .1 mile, ran 1 mile, walked 1 mile, and boy was that second mile hard. No, not quite that - I wasn't that much more tired after the second mile (my time was a bit faster and my heartbeat a bit higher), but rather the legs start to give out. Even if "significantly motivated" (insert whatever thought your imagination desired here), my legs in their current condition couldn't do it. "Need more fuel, Captain!". Well, tomorrow's a day off, maybe Friday I'll try 2 miles non-stop. And then again, maybe not.
Walking is more enjoyable. I think I will go to bed.
On a totally different obsession, anyone who wants to read about detecting migrating birds using the NEXRAD network is directed to the tutorial at http://virtual.clemson.edu/groups/birdrad/index.htm. Heck, it is a good tutorial about NEXRAD displays, even if you could care less about birds. In fact you can use them to find tornado components. Nexrad itself can be found at: http://www.wunderground.com/, which is also a pretty good weather site for the US.
Published: Thursday, 13 May 2004
12:23 AM
TGIF day (or rather "yesterday" was, given when I am typing this). A productive week, I guess, if not a bit amorphous. Tonight I have been a lazy person - I skated, but didn't run, and didn't practice oboe. In fact, I really don't even know what I have been doing for the last hour and a half since I got home from skating. Hmm, guess I'll go to bed.
Yesterday K came over - K and I had dinner together with G (Thai - yummm), then hung out, walked, talked about this and that. Life is interesting, but I won't get into that. We did talk about the upcoming sailing season - the tentative plan is to sail FD together, of course, doing morning club racing and at least several of the regattas (Cannonball and Cazenovia, plus with luck one other). In adddition, we will try to get Laser racing working, which will help us develop our individual skills, especially tactical. The details are still TBD. Probably next weekend will be the first weekend we camp at the club, and perhaps set up the boat. It is almost time to start the summer routine, which seems like it is coming too soon, but I am looking forward to it. The first FD racing will probably be Memorial day.
Time flies. Too fast for comfort. About one tenth this speed would feel about right.
Published: Saturday, 15 May 2004
11:12 PM
A couple of cool or amusing things happened today.
First to be mentioned was that we attended Julia K's graduation from Brockport college today, with a BS in Mathematics. Congratulations, Julia! After three years and a scare that you may not be able to finish your degree you have it now!
This evening, after 2 days off (it was supposed to be one, but it didn't work out that way) I went running again. My goal was to run 2 miles continuously regardless of pace, and I achieved that. In fact, although the conditions were unrealistically perfect (indoor track), I exceeded my goal by quite a bit. After running the first 2 miles I felt I could go on more, so I walked 1/8 th mile laps, took my pulse (150 - OK), then started running again. It soon became clear that I could complete the last 1 1/4 miles without stopping, so that is what I did. Total distance: 3.5 miles, total running 3.375 miles, Total time: 31 minutes, 46 seconds. I am very pleased, even if I never meet or exceed this. Of course outdoors in the real world I certainly will not match it, but I have revised my goals for the actual event: Basic Goal: Finish in 45 minutes or less, Desired Goal: Finish without walking, or with a time less than 40 minutes. Really cool, but unlikely goal: finish in 34 minutes.
Next phase expected: disillusionment, although it would be great to skip that step. We will also try to skip the injury phase.
Afterwards I went to Wegmans. I terrorized the deli counter person when I asked her to slice "4 tenths of a pound of meat". She asked what "4 tenths" was - was it less than a half pound? Yes, alas I have seen this before. It is particularly amusing since the scale she weighs things on is calibrated in .01 lb increments. Indeed, she must know from memorization or something at a third is .33 and a half is .5. Well, I told her to add stuff until the display read 0.40 lbs or so. She had a worried look on her face, but nervously she started to slice. As she approached .4, I made encouraging noises. She put another slice on, got to .43, heard the encouraging noises stop, then asked me "is this enough?". I told her it was. AFter getting a 1/2 lbs of something else (no problem there) I then asked for (once again) .4 lbs of salmon, saying "you didn't know there was a test!". Luckily she passed. I decided not or ask for .6 lbs of ham - decided to quite while she was ahead or she might poison it of something. We'll try her again in a few days.
Tomorrow we wake up early and look for those flying feathered things that sit in the trees. It will be fun. Then I will start getting my brain around to sailing season.
Published: Saturday, 15 May 2004
11:17 PM
Well, let's see what's been going on. First, a Sunday summary - birding, sleep, skating, sleep pretty much summarizes the day. We finally ended up with 52 species of birds in the morning. We started with trusty Island Cottage Woods, where we, little by little tallied a pretty respectable list, although due to lots of leaves it took us a lot of effort to actually SEE the birds - quite a few species were only heard. << Digression: which for those who don't follow this particular obsession, hearing birds "counts" if you know what you are hearing, but isn't very satisfying - a really good birder (not me) can reliably list recognize over 250 species of birds by voice alone. Since one of the purposes of birding is to get a feel for where the birds are when, this acheives this purpose, but unless you are listening to a winter wren (or simply "wren" in Eurpope) you don't fall in love with sheer existance of these magical creatures without seeing them!>> After ICW, we drove over to Braddock's bay, where you tend to see some different birds, since there is water there. Well, along the way G noticed some birds just alongside the road in a willow tree. We stopped, and lo and behold, we had found one of those magical "hot spots" where the birds just happen to be. The birds don't seem to care that cars are wizzing by - they just were. After another 45 minutes while not managing to be hit by cars we had found another dozen species. Very cool.
Ice skating was uneventful, which is a good thing, since "events" are usually negative, relating to falls, etc. I worked on edges and waltz-8s - seem to be getting a good handle on them. Still don't have any BI edges, but heck, neither does anyone else.
On Monday I went running - in this case on a dirt trail beside the canal. Distances were unknown, but based on time and heartrate I think I managed to run probably about 3.2 miles at about a 9:30 per minute pace. So there's hope. I walked a couple of miles to cool down and declared success. Success = kiddie baby cone == yum.
AFter far too much internal struggle finally decided to buy myself a heart rate monitor. I will save you all the details about how I picked what I did - in the end I have ordered the Timex Bodylink system, which in addition to the heart rate band also has a GPS gizzy to tell you how far you've gone (and your pace, of course) and a USB link to download your heartrate in detail to your PC for analysis. In case anyone's interested, the prices range quite a bit on these items, so shop around. My final choice was www.bike-run-walk.com - fantastic prices. I don't do gadgets very often (usually try to blame them on G), so spending money on this is sort of scary. But G sounds like she may use this also, so maybe I can make it her fault! :-)
Ballet tonight was sort of blah. I am getting about as much out of this as I am putting into it, which is not much. I think the solution is to put more into it, which means practicing. Hmmm.
Tomorrow one of our Russian friends and her dad, who is visiting from Russia is coming over for dinner. He doesn't speak English, so G will have her work cut out for her. We intend to show him the web - put the keyboard in Russian, put him in front of Google and let him go. If he has never done anything computer before I expect this will be interesting!
Onto another obsession - copying all of my CDs to the computer for storage. I sometime will talk more of the details, but the general project is as follows - some time ago I bought a 160 GB disk drive on special ($79!!!). If all goes well, I plan to copy 300+ CDs to this, either in high quality MP3s (320 kbps) or lossless compression. When this is done, I can do the following at will: a) quickly produce lower bit rate MP3s, WMA, RTA files for palm pilots, iPODs, etc. b) Not have to worry if I scratch a CD, c) (perhaps) someday I could replace the CD player with one of the evolving "play from your computer to your stereo system" boxes - they look like stereo system components, but network to your computer for playing your music collection.
So far I have just been defining the ground rules and process - you really want to get this one right. The actual project is huge, and will probably span over many months, assuming an average rate of 2 CD's per day.
Sorry... I can't help it - I did say this blog was about obsessions, didn't I - you were warned!
Published: Wednesday, 19 May 2004
11:36 pm
Gosh, it's been three days since I have written! That's because I have been at the computer. This apparently has been the social week. On Wednesday night, J's dad (visiting from Russia) and J come over for dinner. I cooked salmon grilled on a cedar plank - it turned out quite well, and was tasty. He doesn't speak Engligh, nor I Russian, so a lot of work for J and G performing translation - otherwise is just listen. J's dad is (it seems to us) a bit atypical - he asks lots of questions, and not quiet in any way, and just sort of begs to be talked to. He also apparently wanders around the city during the day, stopping to talk to people and takes lots of pictures. Fearless. Either way, it was fun, and G got a language workout - just what she needs.
Thursday we went to a friends vocal ensemble concert, which was followed by a party. In my classic styly I avoided any interaction with anyone else by finding a friend of ours that is getting a PhD in anthropology, and asking millions of questions about skull sizes, etc. Another day ending at 11:30 pm.
Tonight had two accomplishements - first and most importatnly, I took my collection of gadgets, set off to Farmington, and ran a 3.5 mile course. If anyone cares, the following circuit is also exactly (to within .03 miles) 3.5 miles - the loop formed by Green Rd (I used to own a house there), Bowerman Rd, Allen-Padgham rd and Hook road. Either way, I succeeded, and had times far better than I have any right to expect - I worked at keeping an even to increasing pace, and pretty well met my goals - since I am proud of it, here are my splits, based on GPS position:
Distance Lap time Av. Pace Av. Heartrate
0.5 4.20 8:34 /mi 160
1.0 4:24 8:49 164
1.5 4:24 8:50 154
2.0 4:20 8:43 157
2.5 4:20 8:41 159
3.0 4:09 8:18 158
3.5 3:52 7:38 161
Overall: 29:52 total time, average pace 8:32 / mile, peak heart rate 179. So I'm allowing myself to gloat a bit,and just ate another chocolate chip cookie.
After this, J's dad came by and we went ice skating together. He enjoyed this a lot, which makes sense since otherwise he was just going to stay home and watch television in a language he doesn't understand. And by the end of the night he remembered quite a lot of the skating he had done 25 years ago. Afterwards, with G as interpreter, I asked him lots of questions that I had from our exchange student experience, such as:
- What freedoms do 17 year old kids really have, and what do they not?
- Do you generally have a clue where your daughter is? (answer, no, but Mom has a better idea...)
- Do Russian parents check up on how their kids homework is coming?
- What happens if you want to kill your spouse - is it OK to do it in front of the kids, or is this just not done
The answers were very interesting, but I'm not telling anyone what they were. The take home answer is that some things are just universal, and other things do differ a bit culture wise (but not as much as our exchange daughter would have us believe).
Oh yeh, forgot an important event, although not a very fun one. My Mom, who has been having continuous problems with an infected knee finally passed over the threshold today and decided for once and for all that it's time to amputate her knee. We all agree that this is the best thing for her health, but still the thought of someone actually making such a decision is hard to bear. I have made all of the necessary arrangements for her, and we are going to do what needs to be done then move on in life.
Finally for the good of the web community, here are my observations so far about the Timex BodyLink system:
- The chest strap - works just fine. As per instructions, you do need to moisen it a bit to ensure contact, unless you are already sweating. Ideally I assume EKG electrode gel would work best, but I just use Aloe Vera gel and it works great. Of course just spitting on it would do as well.
- Watch - connectivity is fine, although interestingly enough it loses contact with the chest strap when I set my wrist on top of my keyboard - presumably some interference thing.
- GPS unit works as advertised - once it locks on it even works in the car at 50 mph, but remember - this advances your odometer on the watch, so don't get impressed by how far you have run! You want to use smoothing, no doubt. Also, when you turn around and walk back on your path (lunchtime walks) it takes 10 seconds for it to determine you turned around, which somewhat messes up your pace. But for gently curving stuff this is a non-issue. One item I still don't quite understand is when the GPS is synched (flashing green light), the watch still takes a minute or two to pick it up - and yes, I did press the "find device" button.
- The data recorder is the coolest thing - a must have. There is an issue, however - the device is rather subject to malfunctions due to static electricity. I called Timex on this (and read the web) and the story is that this is presumably due to Electrostatic Discharge getting into the USB contact, especially when it rubs against cloth (like while running...). You get your name on a list and when they come out with a fix they will exchange the units. In the meanwhile, you load the data to the PC and clear the memory of the unit and this fixes it until next time. Also, don't put it in your pocket, and put some black electrician's tape over the contacts when using it. This all seems true, but even with the tape, and strapped onto the chest strap (i.e. contacts against sweaty skin - not a high static environment) it still reset - not a feature. Next I will try carrying it in a antistatic bag to see if that helps.
- Suggested place to buy: www.bike-run-walk.com - great guy, great service, best prices you will find.
OK, enough obsessing for a day - time for sleep, as it is 12:30 am now...
Published: Saturday, 22 May 2004
6:27 pm
Today was mushroom soup day. I made lots (about 5.5 liters!), so it should last us a while. Of course we don't all eat it at once - instead we take it and package it into a number of 500 ml packages and freeze them. Since it is really yummy in my opinion, here is how I did it - please excuse the stupid english measurements, but that's how this strange country works:
C's Chicken / Mushroom Soup
Makes about 15 servings
189 Kcal / cup with no fat skimming
~ 120 Kcal / cup after fat skimming
Ingredients:
2T Extra virgin olive or canola oil
2T Butter
1 large onion
4-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb Crimini mushrooms
1 lb Shitake mushrooms
(if possible) 3 oz. Porcini mushrooms
6T flour, or enough to make a thick roux
14 cups chicken stock
6 oz vermouth
2 lbs boneless chicken thighs
1T rosemary, finely chopped
2T poultry seasoning
1T pepper
1T parsley
1 teaspoon thyme
Preparation (food processor):
1) slice 1/3 of the mushrooms 4 mm
2) slice 1/3 of the mushrooms 2 mm
3) grate 1/3 of the mushrooms
4) slice onion 2 mm
5) slice chicken 2 mm
Cooking:
1) In large stock pot, heat oil and butter med-high heat
2) Sautee onions 5 min til light golden
3) Add garlic, sautee a bit more
4) Add mushrooms, sautee 5 - 10 minutes
5) When liquid released, add flour, mix to make a roux
6) Add the stock and spices
7) Add the chicken, bring to boil
8) Simmer for 20 minutes
The weather has been wonderful - I think the entire last week in the half has been between 18 and 26. Sometimes it rains, but usually it does not - most everything comes down sort of all at once.
Published: Saturday, 22 May 2004
11:12 pm
Gee, when I look over the times in the evening that I tend to blog, it is pretty consistent. And it is also too late at the same time - I always thing this is going to take 10 minutes, and when I am done I look at the clock and a half hour has past. I guess we'll go back to Saturday evening. Gee, I can't remember what we did on Saturday - must not have been much. We did have Chimay, our friends standard poodle, and Anya's, well, "not quite twin" come to stay for the weekend - her parents were travelling, and we often exchange dogs. Here is a picture of Anya and Chimay together - sort of cute, aren't they?
Well, later that night I took them for a walk on a trail along the canal I often walk on. The plan was to walk most of the way, and run two, brief 1/2 mile "intervals" at a faster pace than usual (7:15 min / mile) to remind me what that feels like and to see if I can do it. Well, it was not to be. Why? It was the "pacer poodles"! In case anyone ever asks, I now know, with GPS and stopwatch accuracy that poodles trot an 8:30 per mile pace - not faster, not slower. They would run ahead, and I would catch up with them. When just running with Anya, this is not a big problem - I just say "Come on!", and she tucks her tail between her legs and trots off ahead of me for a while. But two poodles! Hah! They trot happily along at 8:30 / minute, and short of tripping over them there is nothing to be done about it. So that is what I did.
Sunday was uneventful - mostly cleaning house and reading. For the entire weekend it seems we have been having a series of wonderful thunderstorms. What makes them particularly wonderful is that they are not isolated - for much of the weekend you could always hear distant thunder. When a storm finally passed over us, I always feel the incredible urge to run outside and dance in the rain with the heavens exploding overhead and the rain pelting down... But I digress.
Sunday night I just ran on one of our nearby streets - from our house to the "bed and breakfast" and back is exactly one mile. It was dark, and it was wonderful - again, the always present thunderstorms to the north giving a real show on the horizon. Where I was there was not wind, no rain. Very cool. Then, out of no where (really!) I heard what was wind about 500m away. I told myself that this is probably in advance to coming rain, so I should speed up a bit. Well, it was not wind, but rain. Less than 30 seconds from when I first heard it, I started pouring cats and dogs. My data recorder tells me I held a 7 / mile pace back to the house for the last quarter mile.
Gosh, I really apologize for all this writing about running, especially since I don't particulary love running. But my first (and perhaps only) race is this upcoming Thursday, so after that you will hear less, because I will be spending less time doing it. Looked at another way, three weeks ago I had no plan to run anything, and then suddenly I find I am signed up to race - this usually takes more like 2 months to do right, so I have to be a bit obsessive. So bear with me.
Monday night (we are up to tonight), was my final "full length" training run, around the Green road "course" of 3.5 miles. The temperature was good (about 18C), but the wind was rather strong (10 - 12 M/sec). I tried to make this into an excuse for not running, but it was not convincing. The good news was that I ran the course, and finished with a good time - given the conditions a bit improved from last time. But boy, doing this (for me) is a hard thing. After about the first 1.5 miles, my brain was pretty much continuously telling me "you can stop now - certainly a break wouldn't be unreasonable, and what are you trying to prove, anyways". Just walk for a while - you can blame it on something! After all, you have been running too much lately." On and on, and it never stops. From a sheer willpower thing there are very few things in my life that have taken more sheer determination to persevere - the urge to give up is very strong. And while this is happening, I am not really that tired - heart rate 160, pace 8:40. This goes on until mile 2 has ended (the first 2 miles are very slight downhill). The last 1.5 miles alternate uphill, slight downgrade, up hill again, then flat to the end. True, the uphills are only a 2.5% grade (don't ask, but I know this). Boy can you feel 2.5%! Heartrate up to 172 (this is where I have programmed my watch to beep), and pace drops to below 9:30 per mile (now my watch is beeping in two different ways simultaneously). But only a half mile to go! At the end my lungs can't collect oxygen fast enough, and I start to float several inches above the pavement - a very scary, and I expect dangerous, feeling.
For those interested in statistics, here they are:
Dist. Tot T Lap T Ave. Pace Av. HR
.5 4.07 4.07 8:10 124 Starting off too fast + slight downhill
1.0 8:20 4:13 8:25 156 Flat, downwind
1.5 12:37 4:17 8:38 160 Flat, downwind
2.0 16.51 4:13 8:25 162 Flat downwind
2.5 21:22 4:31 8:56 167 Uphill, into the wind
3.0 25.43 4:20 8:46 169 "" ""
3.5 29:31 3:48 7:36 178 Final pretty flat, anaerobic sprint followed by death
Final time: 29:31, average pace: 8:25
Here is the grahp (first .1 mile was warmup):
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In case I don't run the Green road loop again any time soon, I need to give credit where credit is due. First of all, this used to me my home (I indeed run past my old house). This was my first house, oh house surrounded by tall stalks of corn, and the area is my friend. The way I run it I do all the boring things first, and save Green road proper for last. Here (I will omit those hills for now) you run past field and farm, houses and corn. At mile 2.5 I always hear the bobolinks singing their amazing and impossible to describe "tripping over themselves" song, and the savannah sparrows buzzing the the background. And I can look over and see the hang gliders perched on the top of the tall hill and launching into the air (or the ground, depending on their skill). So after the oxygen is back in my brain, this is the memory it leaves me with. And if I did not go there running, I would probably have had no reason to return there.
Published: Tuesday, 25 May 2004
We will end with a cute picture taken in St. Petersburg of a merchant that really likes to sell watermelons. You've gotta love her shop!
