A sort of sister blog....

And now a word from my sister, living in the great Midwestern plains of Canada, in Saskatoon:

"Here's my house after the big blizzard. That white building in the background is actually a treehouse when the ground is at the normal level."


...Perhaps I should add that my house usually has two stories showing rather than one. Next picture is after I hired the guy with a front end loader to dig me out.

...Needless to say, two days after the guy with the front end loader dug me out ($150), another storm (termed a "sub-blizzard) hit, followed by -40 degree temperatures. Couldn't get car near garage, so that;s why the 150 foot extension cable.

(In case people don't know what the long extension cord is for, that is to plug in her car, so the oil will run and the car will start in the -40 degree temperatures!) Also look and see that in the picture before, you can see all of the garage door - compared with only half in the pic directly above!- Chuck

Running and Spring

Today was a very nice, sunny day, with a high of around 16. Since I got to work on time for a change, I left at a reasonable time. We ate dinner, and then I got to go our for a short run before it got dark outside.

The last time I ran it seemed soooooo hard, especially at first. THAT was on a treadmill, indoors. Today it was much easier, as I finally got to run outside. The birds were chirping, spring was in the air, there were interesting things to look at - good distraction, I guess.

When running on the path (trolley trail) I met a rather large (35 cm?) snapping turtle trying to cross the path from one pond to the next. (S)he was in no hurry. I didn't stop, but rather told myself I would look for her on the way back. Well, when I returned, no surprise, there was no turtle.

On the way home, I heard my first spring peepers. These are small frogs (actually I have never seen a spring peeper) that sing in the spring - by the hundreds! They really make me smile, and remind me that spring, and then summer, with all of the various night sounds, are coming. Winters long quiet is now done, being first replaced by the trickling sound of melting ice, to rain and thunderstorms, to peepers, and to birds.

Also, at the top of the road I saw a fox again. I am always amazed at how FAST foxes run! They look like the streak fast at twice the speed of any other animal! Nina tells me that they appear so fast because their body travels absolutely flat and straight like an arrow, while the little legs just fly underneath, at the speed of sound. Or rather at the speed of quiet.

Peeps!

OK, it's that time of year again to talk about peeps. These are as American as, well, anything! But for now, I am going to just send you to some fun links about peeps.

First, the official web site, the classic web site (a must see), and the all important Peeps Wikipedia entry!

Enjoy!

You know you are a geek if....

... these cartoons make sense to you at all:

http://www.xkcd.com

And some specific ones:
http://www.xkcd.com/c55.html
http://www.xkcd.com/c152.html
and finally, a classic favorite of mine:
http://www.xkcd.com/c123.html

Enjoy!

Cool puzzle..

This is simple to explain and really interesting. You are given 9 eggs. 8 weight exactly the same, and the ninth is slightly heavier. You also have a balance beam (you know, a balance with two pans). How many weighing are required to find the heaviest egg? (no, this is not a trick question, and the answer is not "none required - just use your hands to find the heaviest, etc.)

Been too long...

Well, between one thing and another, I have not really run for over two weeks, and even then, only occasionally. Well, my brain, the weather, and my waistline says to get back to it.

Last night ran for a "mere" 5 km. Boy was it a fight! Like my sister once told me, "the first 2 km are the hard ones". Well, these were. I kept telling myself to keep going, but it was hard. After that, it got easier. My heart rate was higher than normal for my (treadmill) pace, but that is probably because I am 3 kg heavier. But only one good way to solve that.

Spring will help! It was 16 degrees today! OK, it was raining much of the time, but still, I think Spring is really coming this time!

Happy Vernal Equinox!

Imagine a world where night and day are the same length, and where the sun rises from the same place and sets in the same place in the sky... every day.

Well, some day I would like to travel there perhaps, but that place is most definitely not Earth! I have no idea how it happened, but our Earth rotates at a skewed angle relative to it's orbit around the sun - 23.5 degrees tilted, as it happens.

But today (or yesterday, depending on your concept of time and what time zone you live in), we get a sample of that world. What does this mean for us? Well, for long-time readers of this blog, write down the answer now, and compare with the rest of this post - this is a quiz. Otherwise, read on and remember - there will be a quiz next year.

Here are the special things for today (and also on September 21st):

• The "equi" and "nox" part - everywhere on earth today (unless you are at the exact poles, in which case you are probably quite cold at the moment) has 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night, at least theoretically (we will ignore diffraction for now). No long summers or short winters for Russia - everything is the same, everywhere. And, since most roads run exactly east west, if you are driving at the crack of dawn or dusk, you will have the sun exactly in your eyes or rear-view mirror. (I have to check to see if the car accident rate statistically goes up this time of year).
• Unlike most of the year, the sun actually rises in the (true) east, and sets in the (true) west. From now on, until June 21, it will start to rise more and more in the north, then start moving back until Sept 21. Actually, if you get technical it is a bit more complicated. If you want a good explanation, go to http://www.analemma.com and click the "other phenoma" link.
• At its highest during the day, the sun's elevation (angle above the horizon) will correspond to 90 degrees minus the latitude where you live at. For us in Rochester, that is 47 degrees. For those in, say St. Petersburg, it is 30 degrees above the horizon. I know it seems higher, but go measure it - that is the highest it will get today. (To see the highest it will EVER get in the peak of summer, add 23.5 degrees - got it?).
• Lunar and solar eclipses strongly cluster around the equinoxes. To understand this you really need to get out an orange, paint an equator around it, and imagine a moon orbiting while it (tilted, remember) orbits the sun (a light source). Read about it - this is the stuff everyone needs to know! :-)

There will be a quiz, so study hard!

SNOW!!

Big white fluffy snow! Friday morning we had green grass all over, now we have 10 cm of snow, with another 10 cm possible today!

Should I be happy? Should I be sad? Should I be angry? Should I be glad? (That little ditty is in the spirit of the Suessical, which is high school musical we went to last night)..

Here again, gone again Spring

Well, we certainly aren't surprised. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday it was really warm here, with highs getting up to 16 several times. But this is March - and sure enough, the thermometer early this morning was at -7.5. Tonight they say we could get 15 - 20 cm of snow.

Are we surprised? (No). BUT - we have daylight savings time three weeks early this year (it's a new law to save energy). So it actually doesn't get dark until after 7 pm. Soon, maybe we'll have both long days and warm!

Classic ChuckDream...

Last night was one of those strange, fractured sleep nights. I was initially too tired to sleep (go figure....) but eventually fell asleep around 3:30 am. I must have dropped into a pretty deep sleep quickly, because I had this long dream, then later woke up and saw the clock read 4:15.

This is yet another in a long series of classic dream I would have, all revolving around school. I pretty much stopped having these about 10 years ago, but perhaps walking through the crowded halls for Fairport High School while delivering Nina to the nurse's office brought them back again. Here goes, at least what I remember:

I am in a class room taking a math class in Calculus. There are about 20 students in the room. The classroom is wide and three tiers of desks deep. I am in the middle row. The clock at the front of the classroom says it is 11:15.

I am clueless about the calculus. The teacher is talking about something, and although I for some reason have good grades in this class, I am feeling like I am a fake - that that was all just a trick of mine somehow, and in reality I don't know what I am doing. And impostor.

Furthermore, I can't remember my class schedule - I can't remember what over classes I have to go to next. In fact, the entire semester I have never really learned it, and there is a chance that there are courses that I am registered for that I am not showing up for because I forgot what period they were. And as a result failing in them too.

Since I can' t understand the math being taught, I am very restless in my chair. I squirm around and am generally uncomfortable. There are girls behind me and to my side - unlike "normal" for some reason they are flirting with me, and I have to ignore them because I don't what them to see me like this.

Then the teacher passes out a test for us to do. I am filled with dread - there is no way I can do this material. When we get it, for some reason the lights in the classroom go out, and there is not quite enough light to read. Everyone else just takes out their flashlights and starts to busily work on the test. I just sit there and get depressed.

Sometime here I then go outside of the classroom (taking my test with me) - I am in the basement, sitting in the hallway. Prisoners dressed in black are walking by me to go to the bathroom - they ignore me. Later I return to the classroom. The lights are on, everyone has handed in their tests, and they are going onto the next topic. The clock reads 12:45 pm - this seems to be a long class.

I take the teacher into a corner, start to cry and tell him that I don't know what to do, that I don't know the math. He is very kind, reminds me that I am a fine student, and to come back some other time to take the test. I open it briefly and then notice that the questions are really simple - all of this panic was for nothing.

For some reason at this point , while it still feels like math class, everyone folds up their chairs (they somehow have changed from desks to wooden folding chairs), turns around to face the back of the classroom, and sits on the floor. Somehow the topic has changed to photography.

Today the teacher is teaching how to develop color prints. This is a complicated process, but I have done it many times before, so am happy to hear that for once I will be ahead of the class.

Later on, the teacher demonstrates something having to do with colored dyes. He is teaching us how to do pysanky. The designs they are doing are very elementary, and I have done much more complex designs myself. I tell him this (privately) and he is glad to hear it.

That's where it ended for some reason. I remember being surprised when I was awake again and the clock said 4:15 - about one third the time the dream had felt.

My normal school dreams (and I am certainly not the only ones to have these, I think they are quite common) revolve around several central themes:

• (most common) - cannot remember my class schedule, or what classes I am taking. It is the beginning of a new semester, and I have lost my class sheet.
• It is the end of the term, when I suddenly realize that there is a class (almost always an English class, usually taught by a Mrs. Bickle, who is a high school teacher I had that resembles the Calvin and Hobbes kindergarten teacher) that I have to take a final exam in. I don't know the material, because I have forgotten I had this class all along, and had not attended for months.
• I can't either find my locker (they all look the same), or can't remember the locker combination.
• I somehow have succeeded in some class, but (don't ask me how) it is because somehow I have deceived the teacher - in reality I don't know what I am talking about.

Nina broke her foot! :-(

Or rather, someone broke it for her....

Not the most pleasant news, but news never the less. In gym on Monday, while playing speedball one of the girls on the other team which Nina describes as "one of the lightest, smallest girls in her class" tried to kick the ball and kicked Nina's foot instead. It took several hours to figure it out, but later that day the x-ray confirmed it - one of the bones in Nina's foot was broken. Technically this is called an "avulsion fracture to the fifth metatarsal", but to Nina it is just a big pain, both literally and figuratively. The pain, especially at first is quite severe, and Nina will be in a cast for a month or possibly more. May everyone wish her the best!

Hmm - an obsession about obsessions?

Maybe I need to find a formal way to categorize obsessions, so I can accurately refer to past ones and people will know what I am talking about - sort of like a library of Congress indexing system for obsessions.

Such a system would need to be able to group associated obsessions, sub-obsessions, and past revisions of current obsessions.

I'm sure such a thing would just be sooo helpful to people reading this blog - NOT!

Gee, I am a strange person, am I not?

One obsession closed, but new ones soon to be born...

OK, the "market research for digtal SLR" obsession is now over with. And the winner is: the Nikon D80, with the Nikon 18-200mm VR (vibration reduction) lens.

The first part (the body) arrived Friday, and I understand that the lens arrived today, and is waiting for me at home.

Now we can start a few new related obsessions! Here they are:

• Obsession 1 - understanding the camera and playing with it. Soon to begin.
• Obsession 2 - hard case for the SLR project: I have a "semi-soft" case, but that doesn't really help me pack the camera in a backpack or suitcase. So I need something stiff. I am looking into either making some sort of clamshell case, or a wooden box that can hold the new baby.
• Obsession 3 - digital workflow. OK, I'm going to try to defer this one for a while. For most of my photography, I expect to continue to use .jpg mode in the sRBG color space. However, sometimes I will use raw mode for fancy stuff. This raises more questions than it solves, however. Here are a few: do you use the sRGB or Adobe RGB color space? Do you always keep both the raw and final file (and is that .jpg or photoshop, or .tiff, or what? And what color space should THAT file be in?

Brussels – impressions

Brussels calls itself the capital of Europe. Although I don’t know how accepted that claim is, it makes sense to me. I cannot separate out the residents from the visitors to the city (of which there are many), but there is a definite multi-national character about the place. While on the surface, it strongly resembles Paris in many ways (with everyone speaking French supporting this illusion), the sum total of the people make it different.

It is not pretentious; it is not a city with an attitude. Time seems to flow a bit faster than in Paris, with a less dreamy feeling to it. Things happen here. People come here for a reason, even it that reason is just to shop.

And shopping it has. Street after street of shopping, and food. Even in mid-winter the streets in the shopping district were swarming with people.

Ah yes, the people of the city. They are alive, they are enjoying themselves, and many times they seem to not worry about anything beyond the current moment. It felt, in the winter, like St. Petersburg felt in the summer – groups of teens and young women walking down the streets laughing, holding hands, giggling. Couples in love, both young and old, hanging onto each other, with timeless looks in their eyes. The future and the past.

The architecture in the city seems similar to Paris to my untrained eye, although the narrow, tall buildings with sharply peaked roofs seem more prevalent somehow. And there are the European parks that I have grown to love (they form the destinations of my walkabouts). There is a certain formality about the two I visited that I did not see in either Paris or St. Petersburg (although less formal than England). No, it is not that everything was geometrical. Indeed, I think they located their parks where there was interesting topology, favoring “bowls” that you could look down into. But even when looking wild, you get the impression the paths were crafted, designed and controlled. They seemed to be a bit more about design and luxury compared with utility, perhaps. Beautiful, however.

And then there was the food. We will start with the first food group, chocolate. Belgium is the capital of the chocolate world – I doubt many will dispute it. Never before have I seen more chocolate. Good stuff, and even affordable. And I should know – I researched the topic completely. Yumm.

Waffles. No crepes in this city, but waffles. I had one. Quite good, with chocolate and whipped cream. But I missed the romantic idea of crepes in Paris. And chocolate is tastier.

Beyond that, the stores and restaurants seemed to match those of Paris. You had your standard repeating sets of stores, and multi-ethnic restaurants – not only French, but Greek, Spanish, Indian, Italian, etc. The food I had was quite good, although I had a limited sample (save my one “big” dinner, which was great). The desserts were French standard – in other words, perfect.

Oh, and one final thing – something completely unanticipated by me. Effective in January, 2007, Belgium has banned indoor smoking in all public buildings (except bars, I think). And I understand that the rest of Europe is following. This is the beginning of a new age indeed.

I wonder what’s next?

Brussels, Thursday

Return day. Due to being unable to find an ATM which dispenses less than 60 Euros, I wake up with 6 Euros in my pocket. A bit less than the EU 60 taxi fare to the airport, but I have another plan – this morning, under pressure to get to the airport, I am going to take my “Public transport in French” exam.

The plan goes like this – get on the trolley just outside my hotel, then transfer to the Metro (same fare, or at least I think), then transfer to the train station and figure out how to get to the airport.

Things got off to a bad start, as I had planned to use my credit card to buy my trolley ticket, but this did not work. So I spent my 1.50 to get a ticket. 4.50 left.

The trolley (which in this case was indistinguishable from the Metro – you got on underground and exited underground) and the transfer to the Metro went fine. And I managed to figure out the underground connecting tunnels to the train station (Gare Centrale). I bought my ticket (EU 2.50) to the airport, was proud of myself for finding the correct track, and although the train to the airport was delayed a bit (they run about every 20 minutes), all went well. Total time from hotel to airport was just under an hour – only about 10 minutes slower than the cab ride.

Airport check-in was uneventful once I found the Delta counter – no real map, you just walk around a huge terminal until you find the familiar symbol. And security was essentially identical to the US, although they don’t make you take off your shoes. From entering the terminal to being at my gate took about 15 minutes – there was no line at all in security.

The flight back was boring – the plane delayed on the runway for 2 hours for de-icing, and frantic run through JFK airport to catch my connecting flight, but otherwise normal stuff.

Brussels, Wednesday

Nothing special for this day. We got out early at 1 pm (government only meeting in the afternoon), and I went on another 3 hours walkabout. This time I bought some things, and ate some tasty sorbet. I then did some work in my room, and ate Greek (or sort of Greek / French) – a steak like thing with a cream sauce and lots of mushrooms. Then I came back, packed, chatted with Nina, and did some more work.

The plan was to start to reset my body clock by not going to bed until 2:30 am. This didn’t work, as I was then unable to sleep much, until maybe 5:30 am. My alarm went off two hours later.

Brussels, Tuesday

Tuesday was entirely a work day, and I had no time for myself. We took a cab to the NATO headquarters, and wait in the cold for about 30 minutes waiting for an escort – somehow our security paperwork did not get processed, and we did not have a pass.

Once inside, the conference center (where all the working group work is held) was very new, very impressive and huge. Our room was moderately sized (probably 9 x 14 meters), with a large oval table in the middle, and chairs around the outside. The table had one seat per country (actually 2 for the US, for some reason) (with official looking tags in English and French), and a microphone and headset for every seat (complete with little red lights to indicate who is speaking). This is where the delegation’s primary representative sits and talks. The seats on the outside had headsets only. There was a large windowed area that would normally hold French and English translators (the windows were labeled), but none were present nor needed, as everyone spoke wonderful English with multicolored accents.

The meeting itself was uneventful and not particularly exciting, so I will skip the details.

I got back to my room at 5:45, slept for 30 minutes, chatted a bit with home, and then went to social event number one – beer (I drank wine…) at the Royal Lion. This went until 8 pm, and then was followed by a (god, I wish I knew), four course dinner at “The Belgium Mussel” – which ran until 11:30 pm. Tasty food – champagne, something rather like shrimp scampi for an appetizer, a “fish trio” for the main course, chocolate mousse for desert, and more red wine than I will own up to. I stumbled my way back to my hotel – a rather typical French experience, all told. For some reason when I remember Paris, I remember always feeling this way after meals.

Brussels, Monday
The flight over was uneventful, although I managed to get virtually no sleep on the plane – a bit unusual for me. When I got to the airport, I originally intended to take a cab (after all, I’m not paying), but the queue for the taxis was very long. So I decided to chance a train. I bought a ticket, and got on. I didn’t really have a plan, and didn’t know the stops. But I figured that once anywhere near Brussels, finding a cab would be easier, etc.

I had three choices – Gare Nord, Gare Centrale, or Gare something else. I chose Centrale, which proved to be the correct choice. Once there, I wandered around outside, looked at the maps, and tried to find my hotel. No luck (it didn’t help that I was looking for “A”, which proved to be the first initial of the real street name). So in the end I got in a cab, and for EU 8 he took me to my hotel.

Once settled (very nice room, no complaints at all), I went on a walkabout. These work the same in any city I am in. I find a map, take a camera and set off on foot. I don’t worry about where I am going, don’t even keep track. When I get tired, I find a metro or trolley stop and assume I can work it out.

Once I got oriented, this worked pretty well. Brussels is quite tourist friendly, with a big map on most major intersections. So I wander, occasionally look at a map for parks, then wander off that way. I stopped for “lunch”, otherwise known as a patisserie, and had a tasty piece of rather French looking cake. Four hours (and probably 15+ km on foot), I take the metro back. This got me much of the way, but I hadn’t figured out the trolley system yet, so I had a final 1.5 km walk to my hotel.


Here are some pictures, taken during Monday's walkabout:

First, this was very near my Hotel:


I liked the roofline in this picture. When I took it at first, I didn't notice the little white figure at the left - a clear talkoff on Mannekin Pis, a famous statue in Brussels (and several other places):

The following was a rather fancy indoor shopping mall. Reminds me of GUM in Moscow, and the Eaton center in Toronto:


I found a really bright shop window absolutely glowing in the late afternoon sun:

I took so many "typical street scenes", and won't bore you with them all. Here are a couple:


I like European city parks. Each city has its own character. Here is a wonderful, if not particularly wild park downtown:


Ending back new my hotel, at the main square again:

Traveling again, but this to Brussels

Well, I’m sitting on a plane and it’s freezing. I’m covered in as many blankets as I can find, and wondering why the plane doesn’t seem to have any temperature control. At least in the cabin I’m sitting in, there seem to be only two temperatures – darn cold (my guess is about 15 degrees, or beyond balmy (perhaps 30 degrees). One requires a jacket, and the other makes me regret wearing a long sleeve shirt. It stays one particular way, until someone complains, then it flips the other way. Strange.

I didn’t even know about this trip two weeks ago, but here I am, heading to Brussels, Belgium. A small adventure for Chuck. I am going to attend a NATO working group meeting on software-defined radios, which are a bit of a specialty of mine. Previously this was a government-only working group trying to determine what NATO should be doing in this area. They are now to the point or needing to involve industry, since we are the ones who actually not only make software-defined radios, but as a result also understand the technology the best. As a result, I am one of a group of four US delegates to this meeting.

I am comfortable in the overall subject area that I am going to cover, but far from comfortable with the political arena of the NATO working group. When I look at past attendance lists, I recognize very few people (OK, a couple from France). So this meeting I am going to lay low, listen, take notes, and try not to talk too much.

As I am writing this, I have awoken from my “nap” during the “night” on the plane. They fed me a bagel for breakfast (Delta airlines is NOT Air France, that is for sure!), and just turned off the cabin lights. We are flying into the sun, and I can see that we are over land – England, I would guess. The local Belgium time (according to my watch) is 7:49 am, but the sun is still far from rising. I can see an even glow on the horizon, and since we are flying more than one time zone per hour, I expect that I will be able to see a complete transition from darkness to sunrise in “faster than real time”. In fact, as I have written this paragraph, I can start to see what I think are clouds taking form, rather than just patchy lights from the land far below.

I don’t feel very tired at the moment, which is a bit strange, since it is just before 2 am local time – about the time I went to bed on Friday night two days ago. I will arrive in Brussels at 9 am Monday morning, and plan to take Monday to wander the streets with a camera and stop in all the pastry shops I can find J.

I now see a sea of clouds below. At 7:56, the world is. Grey blue clouds against a darker blue sky, with shades of orange and yellow on the horizon. I am on the “north” side of the airplane – when I look through the cabin out the windows on the other side, things look considerably brighter in the southeast.

Six hours, six time zones. I will now be offset 2 hours from St. Pete time, and 6 from home. It reminds me of traveling the other way, when a non-stop flight from Moscow to JFK can arrive before it departs.

Strange world, this.

February is going to be one busy month – crazier than any I can remember in the past with a combination of business travel and vacation. This week (we will call it week 1), I am in Europe. I get back near midnight on Thursday. The next week I spend at work. Then Nina’s winter break begins that Friday (end of “week two”). On week three, we plan to travel to San Diego for a week vacation. Week 3. We return the following Monday. Gwendolyn and Nina return home, and I remain in San Diego for several more days to attend a meeting there, returning on Thursday – week 4. When I get back it will be March. And sometime in early March I need to go visit my Mom Busy, busy.

The sea of clouds is a light lavender now. It is day, although the sun has yet to rise. We are now over the English Channel – a long way to swim indeed. Next we pass just north of Lille, France, and soon to our destination.

The last time I was in Europe it was to Russia – the time before, Paris. And Russia before that. And Russia this summer. Perhaps not as much variety as possible, but wonderful visits. Every trip is different. Our life is very rich indeed!

Obsession #1 continued: Digital SLR evaluation, continued

OK, this tiresome post will continue - skip it if you are not really into these things.

To reiterate, four cameras very worth considering. All have received very good reviews.

The first step, to contain the obsession, is to drop the field to two contenders. To do this, I used two techniques.

The first was to compare the camera features and performance against my requirements. The dropped only one camera - the Sony DSLR-A100. Although I would love to think of myself as some great, famous photographer climbing mountains in the west taking pictures, the truth is, that I end up taking as many pictures indoors and at parties than anything else. Compared with the other three cameras, the Sony, while perhaps giving the "best value for the dollar", fell short in ISO 800 and 1600 performance. The lens relief with me wearing glasses also cut off the edges of the viewfinder.

This got me down to three cameras. Time to apply another technique:

How? Well, I applied one of my lessons learned over the years - "if you are going to use and keep something for a number of years, don't sweat minor or even moderate differences in initial cost. When amortized over the useful life of the product, even hundreds of dollars (over 10 years +) make very little difference in the end. Buy what meets your real and psychological needs".

I really feel this is good advice, at least if you are not really short of money (in which case you immediately buy the Canon or Sony - you win either way).

It was hard to let go (because initially this had been my #1 choice, and, as it often happens, the camera that got me into this market, along with my price expectations) - but this dropped out the Canon XTi.

The Canon is a great camera, and a fantastic value. It's image quality is essentially tied for first place. However, it has several small drawbacks that I think would have bugged me at some low level once I had seen the Nikon (and the Pentax, which I have not yet touched). First is the viewfinder. The Canon viewfinder image, which uses a pentamirror instead of a pentaprism, is visibly smaller and a tad darker than the Nikon and (I am told) Pentax. The camera is also a bit on the small side for my hands, compared with the Nikon. These are still fairly minor nits, however - but there nevertheless.

Finally, lens choices for the Canon vs. the Nikon lean a bit away from the Canon. Both manufacturers have image stabilized lenses (see future post on this) that cover wide angle to telephoto. And both have ultrasonic focusing inside the lens. However, with comparable image quality, the Canon requires two lenses for this, while Nikon makes a single lens (if one can get a hold of one) that covers the full range, with similar max aperture and quality. In the portability realm, this could actually make a significant difference.

This puts Canon in the #3 position.

Then there is the Pentax. I have not yet got to touch this camera. The reviews, though not perfect, have many positive things to say about it. It has built-in image stabilization, which is a plus, even if it may under perform the Canon and Nikon in-lens stabilization by a bit. At the moment, it really is not a contender, although this could change in the future.

Why? Lenses. Once again, I return to a SLR principal - "Make sure you consider the lenses at least as much as the camera. The camera just records the image. The lens makes the image."

As I write this, Pentax does not have any lenses with the quiet, fast internal focusing based on ultrasonic motors. Instead, a motor inside of the camera body turns the focusing mechanism. This is a bit slower and noisier. In addition, the newer Pentax lenses tend more toward the professional market, with none being particularly "wide range" lenses. At best, the zoom range of these lenses is a bit less than Canon's, and no where near the Nikon 18-200 mm "miracle lens". Pentax will introduce several in 2007, but they are also going to be full weatherproof, and I expect not very cheap. Especially since I will eventually need 2.

This leaves the Nikon D80. This will get its own post, but for now the biggest problem is availability of the lens, and cost of the overall system. If we can overcome these, I think we have the right long-term solution for me.

Obsession #1 - Digital SLR selection

Well, I think others would judge this to be my #1 obsession, so I will start here.

It is a particularly good candidate in the obsession category, because I seem to be stuck in an endless loop - market research SLRs, visit the same web pages over an over again, check prices, do nothing, repeat the entire cycle.

Part of it is that there is no good solution with works for me right now, and I am not in a real hurry, and part of it is that now that I am used to checking these things out, I don't know how to stop.

Here is how it started. In the beginning, many, many years ago, digital photography started to be used by real people. But film was still better. Then, around 2002, after watching patiently for years, I finally determined that the high-end point and shoot market was mature enough - that in this area it did everything better than film point and shoots. So I finally bought a Canon G3.

This turned out to be a great decision. Almost 5 years later (they are now on the Canon G8!) my G3 still does a great job, and it has literally revived photography for me - changed it completely. So, even if my camera which cost $850 5 years ago is now about $200+ on the used market, it still solves most of my day-to-day photography needs.

During this period, digital SLRs were just a niche market at the low end, or WAY too expensive at the high end. Simply put, the SLR market was not ready yet for me - anything I bought I figured I would need to replace in several years because something better would come out. So I waited.

Meanwhile I continued to use the point and shoot (a rather nice one at that). I am amazed at how much of the normal SLR things I could do with it (and some things I could not do with an SLR). But, I still longed for my SLR, which I have not used since getting the G3. With time, I knew that I would end up with another camera.

About 3 years ago, a friend of ours (Yana) bought a Canon Rebel. This was the first viable "consumer SLR" camera. I was impressed by the pictures it took, and it effectively started the clock ticking on the selection of a camera.

The whole SLR scene has almost come together in late 2006, with four dominant SLR models, from four different manufacturers each offering a fantastic feature set - and one with which one could live for many years without buying a new camera. These are:

• Canon XTi - http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos400d/ - this is a 10 MP successor to the Canon Rebel line. Great price, possibly the best image quality sensor wise, and a good feature set. Not perfect in several areas, but very good indeed.
• Nikon G80 - http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond80/ - to me this very closely approaches a perfect SLR, with great ergonomics. It is my front-runner at the time. Nikon also has one of the most desired lenses on the market - a 18 to 200 mm zoom (!!!) that is actually very good. There are some issues (see a later post), but none are with the camera itself. Frankly, if I could get the len I wanted now for the list price, I may have already bought it. But everyone wants this lens, and it is either back ordered for 4 months (at the list price), or sold in-stock at $300+ above list. So the package at this time is out of my price range or not available. Hence temporary paralysis.
• Sony DLSR-A100 - http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonydslra100/ - very interesting camera indeed, and probably by many standards the deal of the year. Image stabilization built in, good lenses, and a very low price for what you get. For the market they are reaching for, a best buy, it seems. I think they are a little off my market, however, because first of all, I don't yet trust their ability to make an SLR, and some of the features are a bit, well, Sony-like. And I have not forgiven them for using a proprietary SONY flash hot-shoe. Very Sony. But for many, take a serious look at this late-comer to the party.
• Pentax K10D - http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/pentaxk10d/- this WAS my leading contender a bit back, and is now in second place. It got dinged in its review on JPEG image quality, but this can be fixed in a future software upgrade, which they will probably do some day. It also has in-camera image stabilization, and very good Pentax lenses. But lenses when you look at the details are the problem here. To make a long story short, they don't have (yet) any wide-range lenses that are also ultrasonic motor focusing yet. Pentax will introduce them in "2007 and beyond", but I am worried about the price.

Well, that's enough for starters - I will continue this in a future entry.

Winter, finally

Well, the last 3 days have proven that winter is not going to pass us by entirely. It is now the end of January, and sure enough, it even feels like it. High temperatures around -8, and lows around -16 (Celsius). And about 15 cm of fluffy snow. Maybe this weekend skiing will be possible!

Nina is going through mid-term exam week, and still seems to be alive, although at times we may have to change that to be "barely alive". Gwendolyn is keeping herself quite busy even without classes at the moment. I am I pursuing my various obsessions. I think rather than corrupt this post with them, I will write separate entries for them.

Evil things to do to your roommate!

I was talking with a female co-worker of mine, and somehow the discussion of evil things to do to people came up. Much to my surprise, said person (whose name is being withheld to protect the guilty) did indeed have an evil past! Here are two of her dirty deeds (as opposed to "the" dirty deed - an entirely different thing....):

Story 1:

She and her roommate had bunk beds, one on top of another. Her roomie's is on top. One night she made sure she was not seen arriving home when her roommate got ready for bed. But she watched from afar. Knowing her roommates routine, she waited until said roomie crossed the hall to the bathroom for that final bathroom stop. After the door closed, she quickly went into the room, crawled into the top bunk, and buried herself completely in the covers. And waited. And waited... Finally, roomie comes in, sleepily climbs the ladder, and starts to climb into bed..... and .... suddently out pops my coworker, arms agape, yelling "Ahhhhh!!!!". As it happens these arms than had to GRAB the roomie, who was starting to fall down the ladder. (Apparently they are still good friends)

Story 2:

This is a real treat! Different victim (not her roomie but rather a suitemate). This joke turned out a bit better than planned, as it happens. Here is the setup - in the suite bathroom. Victim showering in the next stall. She had been in there a while. My brave co-worker takes a packet of cherry crystal light powder (a diet drink mix - essentially powdered red dye), and throws a handful over the top of the curtain. And runs.

Well, here is what she did NOT know when she did this. Her suitemate was apparently shaving at the time, with shaving cream here and there, sharp blade in hand, against skin.

Heard while running out of the door: Oh my god - I'm bleeding!!!!

Evil, very evil!

Three cool web sites to spend your money on....

http://www.sciplus.com/ - just cool science things. Very amusing text
http://www.widgetsupply.com/ - best gadgets and hobby tool site around!
http://www.firefox-fx.com/ - firework and rocketry site. One of the few sites still selling chemicals, so probably an FBI front :-) Buy your oxidizing agents while they are still legal! :-)

I doubt I can exactly blame president Bush, but...

It is really warm today. All week it has been at least 8 degrees, and now it is a balmy 13 degrees (56 degrees F)!!! And what am I doing? Sitting in the basement of my building and working!

Oh well, no complaints, at least when its this warm. I think the immediate blame is now formally attributed to El Nino. But for that I will try blaming Bush!

It is amazing on how busy things are. A full week of Christmas vacation has gone by, and I did not even find time to write in this blog. Wow! In the meanwhile, check out our photo site. At least there are some pictures of what we did. If I get a chance (no promised today) I will try to "bloggify" it here.

Finally, my toilet entry for the month (some readers have been telling me I am obsessed by toilets, based on several previous posts). The only thing we have are clogged and overflowing toilets here at home now and then. And that is not that funny...

Atlanta airport

On way to San Diego (OK, Carlsbad, for those who care) California, I flew via Atlanta, GA airport. This is not normally an airport I fly though except when going to Florida, and it has been a while. This is a fairly new airport (maybe they built it for the Olympics 8 years ago, I don't know), and it has several peculiarities.

After eating lunch, I was walking to my gate I needed to attend to my biology, so to speak. No problem, just follow the signs. Well, I walk, and walk and walk down the terminal corridor, and the helpful signs gave up directing me. No bathroom! I turn around, and walk the 100 m back to where I had started. I go the other direction, and finally have to walk another 150m before a find a place. Do they really space their bathrooms 250 m apart?

Inside it was very clean, very modern, very new. And of course had a fancy sink with a "touchless" design. Two faucets, identical - one to the left, one to the right. Well, I want HOT water, so I select that one.

Green soap gets deposited onto my (dry) hands. Not what I wanted, and not my style. So, without thinking I go to the right. Yup, a gushing stream of cold water is deposited on my hands, what takes the dose of soap and splashes it onto my shirt. Really, I am not lying!

GRRR. I look at the taps - surely these should be labeled! Well, they were - when you hold your head just right with the light you can tell that "soap" and "water" (they didn't say cold) are etched into the shiny metal. A bit too subtle for me, I guess.


The rest of my bathroom experience went normally, I am happy to say.

Now back to the airport corridor. I bought a strawberry smoothie (only on business trips, I am always too cheap to pay for them myself). After drinking it, I throw it in one of the many shiny trash containers every 10 meters down the hall it seems (guess they figure more people throw out trash then go to the bathroom). No problem. I then stand nearby waiting in line to board my flight. Several minutes later, the garbage can I tossed my drink into starts making noise. They are electric trash cans! A light goes on, there is a whirring and crunching noise, the can burps (just kidding), and it becomes quiet and smiling again.


Next time I come back to this airport I think I'll bring a really heavy weight plastic bag, and fill it with some air!! Or bubble wrap. Or an aerosol can of, say shaving cream. THAT ought to be fun!

Speaking of such things, while I was standing in the luggage screening area in Rochester, I overheard a snippet of conversation - don't know how it turned out--

Screener person, sitting at the X-ray machine to traveler: "Hey, is that a football you have in your bag here?"


Passenger - "yup, you got it - bringing with with me to Florida to play on the beach!"

Screener - "Yeah, only one problem - we're going to have to cut it open, you know to see if anythings inside".

Passenger - "You gotta be kidding!"

Screener - chuckles..

Sometimes you just have to say something, and this one is a week overdue now:

It took several years, but certainly no one can say you hardly know each other! We look forward to your upcoming wedding, presumably this summer.

VERY cool!

Aurora watch...

Today has been really warm - it got up to about 12 degrees today. Now, just around midnight, it is still a bit over 10. I walk outside - there is a warm wind and it is very quiet. I hear the dry oak leaves left on the tree cracking in the wind. A coyote is heard in the distance. Wth some imagination I could easily believe that it late September instead of mid-December.

There is an aurora watch tonight! Here we are, in the minimum period of the solar sunspot cycle, and there was a big solar flare yesterday. Well, I was looking during my walk, and unfortunately there are some low scattered clouds filling in. Did I see some light green flickering in the northern sky? Well, maybe. It would be good to believe. But I expect it was my imagination.

Today's highlights

Christmas is coming! 11 days until Christmas! I have actually started my shopping, if you count mail order as shopping. Next week is going to be pretty busy because I am in California!

I am surrounded by students. Two in my own household. I came home from volleyball at 10:30 pm, and both Gwendolyn and Nina were working on papers, each due Friday. For Gwendolyn, this is the end of a semester. For Nina -- well, just the end of a week.

Now 11:15 - G is going upstairs to "rest" - I'm supposed to come get her at midnight so she can start on her next paper. Nina also is getting done with her first paper, and has not started her second one yet. Me? Typing a blog - a waste of time by comparison.

Speaking of volleyball, Thursday night pickup was very good tonight - everyone was good, and I was one of the weaker players on my team, which is how I like it. Everything went well, and I didn't kill myself (always an option).

A new solution to an old problem...

Here is the problem - you have a canal, and it either needs to change height (think long "sloping" canal), or intersect another canal system or river at another height (this would correspond to the "waterfall running into another river".

Well, there is a classic solution to this problem, one that has developed over the years into a fine art - the "Lock". If you never actually sat down to think how they work, it is fascinating in its simplicity. Here is a cool simulation that shows the basic idea.

Summary of cool points:

1. The lock can operate in both directions - boats can go up and down


2. It theoretically takes no energy to run the lock, if you don't count the change of height in the water. Put another way, no water is pumped, and there is only friction on the doors.


3. It is pretty fail safe. By angling the doors slightly toward the upstream end, it can be arranged that the pressure of the water against the doors forces them closed - only after the water level is equalized will it be possible to open them. Terrorist-proof!

This does not mean that locks are not without a few problems:

1. There is a practical maximum height to a lock. If the lock gets too high, those really tall doors have to be quite strong to hold back the water. Note that the door height it not the depth of the canal, but rather then drop required plus two times the canal depth. When there is a big drop, a sequence of locks must be used - in some cases upwards of a dozen. It takes a long time to traverse these, and people get bored.


2. You have to fill those big locks full of water each time, and the water height is again twice the canal depth PLUS the drop across the lock (this is true even with cascaded locks). And of course the volume is proportional to the length of the lock. All of this filling takes a lot of time, and it can actually take a lot of water. If the drop is high and the canal shallow, the canal gets to flow like a river, even if it is flat!

Well, there is another way, it has just been impractical until recently. Consider if you could take a strip of the canal, ship and all, lift it with a crane (think LARGE bathtub!), rotate the crane and place it alongside the (lower) canal. Then open the walls to the bathtub and off goes the ships.

Well, cool idea, but not practical. Consider:

1. One hell of a big and heavy bathtub! No crane is going to be able to life it.


2. It would take a lot of energy to move the bathtub uphill! Bundles of energy.


3. Big disaster in the making. Heck, we can't even build bridges without them falling down occasionally.

And that's how the world stayed - until 2002. But not so fast - it wouldn't be fun for me!

The first step is to take a lesson from a vernicular. There are the cable cars that ride up and down a mountain, usually in pairs. They take little energy, because the car going down helps to pull the car going up - if the passenger weights match exactly no energy is required.

How does this relate to our canal problem? Well, let's take the bathtub now, put it on wheels with a cable arrangement, and make a vericular. Now we have solved the energy problem, provided the cable does not break. And you get a bonus - it doesn't even matter how much the ships weight, because they displace exactly their weight in water (think about this some...).

Now we get to our modern solution. Since pictures are worth a thousand words, take a look at this link on the Falkirk Wheel.

Talk about cool things! If you want to see it in motion, click this link and select the "presentation video".
Now, a couple of things I find are really cool about this:

1. The two sides exactly counterbalance each other. They claim that to perform a rotation uses about as much energy as boiling 6 tea kettles of water!
2. It is pretty fail safe - no cables to break
3. It uses some really techie gear work to keep things from spilling. Interested? Read about it here.
4. Form followed function, but the form is really nice!
5. It uses very little water - only to the depth of the canal. And water is returned, in a way. Put another way, although some mixing occurs, the same water keeps going back and forth (except that "vacated" when the boats leave). So you could say that no net water is transferred between the canals (or two rivers). Compare that with the canal lock system (it is estimated that if the Falkirk wheel was built, the previous system in the same place took 11 locks).

Isn't technology wonderful?

Normal weekend day, nothing special

Well, today has turned out to be pretty normal. It was finally time to put the snow tires on the cars (OK, only one car, havn't gotten around to the others yet). Chocolate chip cookies were baked (yumm), and Nina cooked some Borsch. Ok, LOTs of Borsch. Also yumm. So I guess it was a yumm day.

Oh, one other amusing thing. G now officially has purple hair! This just proves that you are never too old for this. Here she is:


Heck, not only is her hair purple, but she can be color coordinated as well!

Engineers will be engineers...

In our building at work, they are replacing all of our conventional phones with brand new "Voice over IP" phones. For now, don't worry about what VoIP means. The only important thing for this post is that the phones are really cool, and have big, 7 x 10 cm graphical displays. There are lots of "soft" keys whose function is labeled on this nice, graphical display.

You can program many "speed dial" numbers in the phone. However, since this is a VoIP phone, you don't program this into the phone, but rather you go to a web site to do this. Here you enter your user id (which is our standard ID we use inside the company) and there is an initial preset password set to "12345".

You log into the web site, change the password, and then program your phone with your speed dial numbers. For each speed dial number, you can also give it a name that displays on the screen. Your first speed dial number is always displayed, and is activated by pressing the button to the right of it.

I programmed some numbers, changed my password, etc.

As it happens, this saved me!

Engineers, you see, like to play! And speed was of the essence, since most people had not used with their phones for the first time yet. So, guess what, since everyone's user IDs were known (they match our email addresses), the game of the day was to set someone ELSE'S speed dial number and the all important label which displays. Some of the favorites were:

• "Speakerphone"
• "Configure"
• "Redial"
• "Mute" and
• "Help"

When the victim walks up to their phone, of course all they see is this string - they never realize that someone actually set it to do something. Said victim may press the 'configure' key, only to find out that it calls the local pizza shop. Another favorite trick was to call your own phone - as it turns out, you can do it, and yes, its very confusing if you don't realize what you did.

And then there are the poor guys whose "new" password is being held for ransom, until the appropriate bribe is paid.

How NOT to design a toilet stall....

Several years ago they renovated the Univ. Rochester's Strong Auditorium. This included the men's bathrooms. Very nice, very clean job. You could probably play a four person bridge game around the single throne in the handicap stall.

There's only one small problem...

First, lets talk about the design. You walk into the stall and a very nice, automatically flushing toilet is sitting there staring at you (looking inviting, of course). So you turn around, and sit down. On your wall to the right, near the door is the all-important toilet paper roll.

So far, so good. In fact, you start to notice that it is a WARM toilet. U/R is heated by steam, and the water supply line seems to run near a steam pipe.

We'll skip the part you do between sitting down and getting ready to leave.

Now, time to finish up. You reach for the toilet paper. Damn - can't easily reach it! (What were they thinking - what DO people with wheelchairs do? Well, you leeeeaaannnn forward. There - got it.

Now comes the unpleasant surprise. Remember that automatically flushing feature? Well, the darn toilet now flushes with abandon. And guess what, just like Niagara Falls, the rapids at the bottom throw up lots of spray! Result? Wet cheeks! Well, what do you do about that?

You learn forward to get some more toilet paper....

Orlando, FL day 2

I know, I'm starting in the middle of something! Well, when you haven't been writing in a blog for a while, sometimes it is better to write rather than think about explaining.

Orlando, Software Defined Forum conference. This year I am just attending, no presenting, so it is a pretty easy trip. Wake up, eat, listen to some papers, eat a morning snack, listen to some papers, eat lunch, listen to some papers, skip listening to some papers and do some "work work" sitting alongside the pool with my laptop, listen to some papers, eat dinner, visit vendors booths, talk too much until I am silly tired, then my evening begins.

Tonight the evening began at 8:30 pm. I started by just resting and recovering (i.e stay away from people, read and daydream). Then, I put on my running cloths (it is around 20 degrees C here at night), and walk out to the main road we are on. I get on a local bus (doesn't really matter where it goes, as long as I watch WHERE it went), ride it for about 15 minutes, get off, and then run home.

Actually, it was a little more controlled than that - in the part of Orlando I was in, there is a really great trolley bus that has numbered stops, and essentially works like a metro. Here is a link: http://www.iridetrolley.com/ I measured off 6 km on my map, figured out which number that was, and then I actually knew how far I was running. It worked great!

Tonight I was walking on the trolly trail with Anya and Chimay (our occasionally visiting poodle). After running this path so many times it was a rare pleasure to just be able to enjoy walking it and enjoying all of the nature that is there. The frogs are croaking away, the birds are nesting, and I even saw a fish in the swamp.
Anya managed to actually corner a groundhog! This is luckily a rare event – usually she chases them, but they magically disappear down on of their networks of holes, leaving a poodle intently staring with a madly wagging tail…. But not this time! She had run off the trail, and was barking and barking. I called her back and Chimay came but Anya continued barking without moving – uncharacteristic for her. I run towards her saying to myself “please, don’t let it be a porcupine!”. Well, no, it was one, brown, vertical groundhog, standing its ground for some reason. Nose to nose. Anya’s tail wagging wildly (does she like want it to play? Who knows!). So I pulled her back and scamper scamper off it goes.
Later on, I found a painted turtle, so I stop and look at it. Pretty thing, about maybe 15 – 18 cm large. Not moving. I sit there and watch, then I notice said turtle is backed up to a small hole, newly excavated. Look a little closer and, sure enough, there they are – a number of eggs (at least four) in the hole, with presumably more on the way. Plop, plop, plop! How she dug the hole I do not know – it had perhaps a 3 cm hole at the top, but was clearly “dug out” below, i.e. wider below ground than the hole itself – you could see the eggs spilling out to the sides! After watching for a while (the dogs weren’t interested it seems), I left her to do her thing. But I left a marker in the dirt to keep checking back as August approaches.
(For some great pictures of painted turtles, see http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/mpages/eastern_painted_turtle.htm )

This entry is primarily directed toward our exchange student-to-be, Nina, but for others out there, it gives some views of Perinton and Fairport village - suburbs of Rochester, NY.

Although this is a a photo essay, it does not pretend to be "deep photography".  Indeed, this entire gallery was taken on a somewhat delayed trip to buy some chocolate at Wegmans!

OK - Perinton.  40,000 people live in Perinton.  Let's start here:

Perinton is a township.  What is a township, you ask?  Well, at least in this part of the country,  you start with hamlets (smallest), then villages, then cities.  These are shaped whatever they are shaped like (often sort of roundish), and pretty much match up with the similarly named things in Europe.  Multiple villages and cities in turn sit inside of townships - which are generally rectangular shaped areas, each with its own local set of officials and local government.  Multiple townships are divided into counties, and then multiple counties are divided into states, of which there are fifty (although it would be OK with me if Texas were to split off into a country by itself).

OK, glad we got that straight!  Well, the best place to start is home - so here is the front and back of the house to give you a feel for it:

No, the dog Anya is not trying to eat anyone, it was hot out and she was panting!  The only thing she eats is tennis balls (or at least she tries), dog food, and carrots.

The house was too messy to take pictures of inside, but here is the living room - a very cool room with lots of light.  Sort of like a treehouse!

We pretty much live in the woods, but on a road with other houses.  This is a picture of our street (our house is to the left),

And this is the end of the road where the school bus stop is.  I wish it was warm, green and lush like this all year - but I'm sure it feels differently when the sun is rising over the newly fallen snow in the middle of the winter (while waiting for the bus...)...  Oh well.... back to summer...

Speaking of school, here is Fairport High School.  I won't lie -- it is way bigger than the picture shows, but far too scary if I show the whole thing!

Now just a few pictures of the Fairport.  I know this gets confusing, because Fairport is a village located inside the town of Perinton.  So think "little city of 5,000 people".  This village lies on the famous Erie canal.  Here is a shot of the canal to give you the general idea.  Less than 80 years ago I think there were still horses pulling barges of goods down this canal.

Although much of Perinton is quite modern, Fairport has a bit of an older, more intimate feel to it.  Less than 100 meters from where I took the picture above, here was someone's back yard - OK, not everyone's back yard looks this pretty and rustic (often the are just mowed lawn with a wooden deck and chairs), but I just liked the juxtaposition of this next to the canal:

But back to the Canal.  You can't have a canal without boats. I thought this one looked kind of cool -- it is a real "work boat" that was being used to perform repairs to a bridge in downtown Fairport:

Next (again, remember I was taking this while driving to the grocery store), I thought I should take a picture of a typical suburban neighborhood.  Suburbs are a pretty foreign concept to anyone who has not been in the US.  In Europe, if you exclude the largest cities, you pretty much have a large, densely populated city, and then at the edge suddenly the houses thin out until you have country again.

In the US, it works somewhat differently.  Since everyone lives around their cars, distance is not a major problem.  As a result, you have a city, which although it has quite a few people, more and more it is where all the businesses and some shops are.  But often the people with more money don't actually live there.  You have a large road system going into this city, and then smaller towns and villages pop up within about 30 km of the city.  But in some cases you don't even have a village - instead you have a large area of houses and shopping centers and schools to support them.  They become small, independent communities with no real "need" for a city.  THIS is a suburb, and a good percentage of Americans live in one.

Our house itself is really in the country, not in a classic suburb.  However, here is a typical upper-middle class suburban street and houses just to get an idea on what they are:

Well, here my trip ends.  I have arrived at one of the most common destinations in the Rochester area, Wegmans food markets.  These don't look very impressive from the outside, but they are great markets, and they started here in Rochester.  They have also been voted in the past as the "#1 Best place to work in the United States".  But, I will save this for another story!

 All done!

Today we did something very cool, and lots of fun - I highly recommend it.  In the morning we rode our bicycles to the nearest bus stop, and waited until the bus arrived.  Each bus comes with a bike rack on the front bumper, and we put our bikes there.  Then then got on ourselves, and took the bus into Rochester downtown.  When we arrived, we took the bikes, rode towards the river, and got on the Genesee river loop trail http://www.footprintpress.com/Rochester/geneseeriverdowntownloop.htm.  This trail is part of the Genesee Greenway trail, which recently has been added to to the national trail system ( http://www.americantrails.org/nationalrecreationtrails/trailNRT/GenesseeRiverway-NY.html ).  We rode this trail until it intersected the Erie Barge canal, which also has a trail running its length (actually, the trail runs the full length of the canal, from Buffalo to Albany, over 750 km)  - essentially the same "mule trail" that was used to tow the barges long ago.  This we followed into Bushnell's basin, where we got off and had Abbot's ice cream cones.  From here we rode home on the local roads.

This was a fantastic trip, and leaves me wanting to do more.  The canal itself is very flat, of course, and it feels like you can pedal for miles. You can ride this trail all of the way from Rochester to Letchworth state park - the only question is how one would get home afterwards (buses don't go there).   Our trip was shorter, only about 40 km, we we did in about 2 hours on the bikes.

OK, this is kinda funny.  For my personal email, I use Google "gmail".  Gmail is very cool, and I highly recommend it.  Unlike many free email services, it does not flash random ads in all sorts of colors at you.  But they still need to make money, so instead they took an innovative approach - they take the text of the email you are reading, and use it (with some special artificial intelligence, or so they claim) to select several links (no pictures, just clickable links) for ads which are relevant to the email you just received.

Well, sometimes this works well, and sometimes it is rather amusing.  Take a note I received this morning:

Chuck,

You may be aware of this, but the formatting on the forum is all messed

up and I can't read your latest post.

Steve

And what ad did gmail think was "relevant"  for this?

 Put an End to Bedwetting    !

 

Just got back from an Adirondack trip yesterday.  Masha, a friend Elizabeth and I successfully climbed the combination of Algonquin and Iroquois peaks - the second and I think the 8th highest peaks in NY.  I have actually been up Algonquin three times before (all wonderful, BTW), but this was the first time on Iroquois.  This peak connects with Alg. along a ridge, which also passes through Boundary peak.  It is a "trailless" peak, although there was a well established herd path and even some yellow marks on the rocks.  But the news of the day here was that boggy MUD that one had to traverse to get there.  Actually, it was not mud, but rather a peat bog.  If you stepped in the wrong place, you were sunk up to your knees.  Luckily, I poked with a hiking stick, and never went in above my ankles.

Once we got there, it was worth it.  There was no one else, and the peak itself is "narrower", so you can see all around.  Very cool experience.

No injuries, although Elizabeth did have some non-trivial "toes are too wide for her boots" which caused here quite a bit of pain on the way down.  Overall the hike took 10 hours.  3.5 hours to scale up to the top of Algonquin (with several breaks), 1 hour at the top, 2 hours to/from Iroquios, and 3.5 hours down.  It was surprising that it seemed to take as long to go down as up - since it felt like it was much faster.  But the clock doesn't lie, I guess.  Strange.

Highly recommended.

Last night I was working in the front yard, and from the road I heard a "thump".  I didn't think much about it, but later heard several more - "thonk"........"thlump".....

Hmm.  Now this has my attention.  I watch the road, which is the general direction the sounds were coming from.  Wait a bit.  Swat at a mosquitoe.  Wait some more.  And then....THUNK!  A pinecone hits the pavement.  Well, we have some very tall pine trees that overhang the street, so I look in the top, probably 20 meters overhead and find a grey squirrel - we have lots of them.  He was busily chewing off the stems so the pinecones would drop!  Usually I thought that squirrels grab a cone and eat it in the tree,  but clearly this guy had a different idea.  How do I know?  Well, I looked out this morning, all of the pinecones were gone! :-)

 Once again, I need to bring this blog up to date.  Sooo much has happened.  It is one of those unfair things in life that when things get busy, lots of stuff happens that would be interesting to read about, but then I don't have time to write any of it down.  Gee, sounds like a time management problem for me! hmmmm.  Well, time to get to a quick summary.

First, (re)enter Masha:

Welcome back!  Masha spent the 2004 / 2005 school year with us, and has now recently completed her first year of Medical school in St. Petersburg (and doing very well at it).  The three of us had talked about her visiting this summer for a month or so, and everything worked out very smoothly.  She arrived in mid-July and is now happily eating watermelon, watching many DVDs (Netflix to the rescue), and of course hanging out with us and our strange summer activities.  Of course we are enjoying having her here immensely, and planning a full summer.  Updates as they happen (and as I have time to write about them).

The other piece of excitement is that we are going to be hosting Nina from Novgorod this next school year!  Her name is Nina, also known as  "Brave Nina"!  

It is a funny story, because the first person to tell Nina she had a family here for the year was Masha.  We were talking with her on the phone arranging her trip here, and told her about Nina.  She immediately asked for her email, wrote her, and then they met.  And you know the amazing part?  Even after surely hearing all about us, Nina is still willing to come and stay with us :-))) .  We have since exchanged a few emails and had a telephone conversation with Nina, but of course we still don't really know much about her.  But we do have pictures, so here she is - somewhere unknown in Russia with her Mom:

More about Nina as she arrives, I'm sure. In the meanwhile, the summer goes on, and busy it will be.

We are planning something each weekend, and trying to squeeze everything we can get out of summer.  One month can come and go so quickly.  Hopefully in addition to sailing and walking and bicycle riding we will get to the Adirondacks and to the ocean in New Jersey.

Gwendolyn is not getting to play and rest as much as Masha and me.  She is working hard at her nursing training.  For the next three weeks in August she has "clinicals", where she follows other nurses around in various hospitals and practices her, well, "nursing stuff".  By the time she is done with this she will be qualified to do all sorts of stuff, from doing examinations, to diagnosis,  to giving injections and (gasp!) setting IVs.  She is practicing everything on me, but one rule remains - no needles! :-)  There are stories she has to tell, but they are almost rated R, even though they are hilarious!

During the summer my company has instituted summer hours, where we work four 10 hour days instead of five 8 hour days.  Interesting concept, and gee having that Friday off does seem to make the weekend much longer.  But those OTHER four days!  Work starts at 7 am, and runs until 5:30.  I feel like a high school kid getting up that early!  :-)  Now all we need is a school bus!

 

All told, I think it is actually a good deal for the company. Yes, it takes me a while to wake up and start working, but heck, that happens each day.  After that, I get a longer, uninterrupted work day.  But boy does that morning go slowly!  Once you get to lunch, you are good to go, however, as the time between lunch and when I normally go home is about the same.

 

Then you have Friday off.  Well, here

I just got back from giving Anya a short run on the trolly trail.  After a reasonably warm day, it is starting to cool off - down to 21 degrees now.  The lightning bugs are flashing, it is finally starting to get dark, with a deeping blue-violet sky.

But this is not a normal night - it is the Forth of July-- Independance Day.  Since the start of my run, the sky and soundscape is filled with the sound of random fireworks.  Some of city-sponsored displays, shooting high into the air with great sprays of colored flames, and many are just individuals setting off their charges of smaller fireworks.  A very cool experience.

In past years we have watched these from the water at the yacht club.  But on those nights we took the next day as a vacation day, so we could simply drop into a tent afterwards and sleep.  No such luck this year - I myself did get a "5 day weekend", so I feel like I have had a vacation, but G cannot claim being so lucky - she has a major paper due tomorrow (Wednesday)!  So she has been writing and writing.  She did camp with me last night at CYC and planned to stay today also, but the weather was on-and-off raining, so she came home.  I stayed and raced an awesome sailboat race (I will spare you the details, but it was windy!), and came home around dinner time.

Sailing this year is strange - it seems (and I am not the only one to say this) that it has been really windy this year.  Many weekends sailing was exciting, true, but not very relaxing, with much concentration required to just keep the boat upright.  But all told, no complaints.  Although a bit unusual with all of G's studying, I have actually been able to enjoy this summer quite a bit.  I am looking forward to more.

Well, no doubt, this has been a classic rainy day.  At the beginning of last week the temperatures were in the mid-thirties, but now we were lucky to get to 18 today.  It rained, and rained, and rained.  My accomplishment for the day?  I spliced a split-bridle mainsheet (don't ask, just don't ask!).  Exciting, huh?  And house cleaning, etc.

Tomorrow I try to sail (we have not actually gotten a race off in V15s yet - the first week it was crazy windy, and last week then canceled racing due to no wind at all), but if I do, it will only be for a bit - I have to fly out to San Diego, CA for a TWO HOUR meeting on Monday.  Groan.... I am trying to figure out how to make lemonade ("if life gives you lemons, make lemonade!") out of this lemon I have been given - still thinking how.

This entry is really for my own reference, as it is the most reliable place my history gets recorded that I can find again.  Everyone else, just skip this – it is boring.

Conditions – 22C, wind N 5 mph, cloudy, quite humid and wet, but not raining.

Everything here is raw data off the watch – no 20 second or distance corrections.  Also, my GPS gizzy had  lost sync just before the start, and presumably started a bit after the start, so the first lap distance is a bit messed up.  I also from memory know that the heart rate monitor was messing up for laps 6 and 7 – trust me, the average rate there was in the low – mid 170s:

            Lap 1: 4:22 -- 8:42/mi  -- Pulse 156

            Lap 2: 3:34 -- 7:09/mi – Pulse 166

            Lap 3: 3:48 --  7:33/mi – Pulse 169

            Lap 4: 3:41 -- 7:19/mi – Pulse 166

            Lap 5: 3:27 – 6:59 – Pulse 174

            Lap 6: 3:44 – 7:25 – Pulse 166 (?)

            Lap 7: 3:30 – 7:13 – Pulse 164 (?) - .486 miles

Well, it’s that time of the year again, and this last Thursday I once again ran the Corporate Challenge.  This is a race sponsored by Chase Bank that is run not only in Rochester, but in 11 other cities, including Frankfurt and Johannesburg (
Africa
).  This year there were 9,300 runners (and walkers), which believe me was MANY, but no nearly as many as had just completed the race in Frankfurt about 6 hours earlier – there they had 63,390 participants from throughout Germany!  So running is alive and well in !

In past years I have related the experience of running this race. It is the only race that I try to “seriously” run each year (my third).  It is an interesting mix of emotions in the week before, because at one level I am looking forward to it, while at another level fearing what I know from prior experience – that as good an idea as it sounds before the race, actually during the race you know you are going to feel SOOOO bad, and only want to quit.  This only happens when you run the race at the limit of your ability, but it is very predictable, and sure enough, this time did not disappoint.

This year it was about 6 degrees (C) cooler than last year, and no sun – both good things from a runner’s perspective.  It is hard to say if I was better or worse from a training perspective – my weekly mileage this year may be a bit worse than last year (Masha and I ran 5 km almost every day), but I have been doing more peak mileage – several 11 km runs, and many 7 and 8 km runs. 

My “official” finish time was 26.14, and my course time (removing the 20 seconds to get to the starting line) adjusts to about 25:55, for an average pace of 7:24 per mile.  This was a bit 18 seconds off last years pace, so no personal best for this race.  On the other hand, I didn’t almost pass out this year either, and generally I managed myself better – so we will call THAT an improvement.  For people who have never done it, it is amazing how strongly you want to quit mid-race.  I am still amazed at myself that I didn’t.  Sure, you are tired, but your brain also plays some mighty funny games.  But I won the will power (or is it stupidity) battle and finished at pace.  I don’t know where I stood with my company team – there were 150 runners and walkers from Harris this year.  If I find out I will post it.

Tonight I was walking on the trolly trail with Anya and Chimay (our occasionally visiting poodle). After running this path so many times it was a rare pleasure to just be able to enjoy walking it and enjoying all of the nature that is there. The frogs are croaking away, the birds are nesting, and I even saw a fish in the swamp.
Anya managed to actually corner a groundhog! This is luckily a rare event – usually she chases them, but they magically disappear down on of their networks of holes, leaving a poodle intently staring with a madly wagging tail…. But not this time! She had run off the trail, and was barking and barking. I called her back and Chimay came but Anya continued barking without moving – uncharacteristic for her. I run towards her saying to myself “please, don’t let it be a porcupine!”. Well, no, it was one, brown, vertical groundhog, standing its ground for some reason. Nose to nose. Anya’s tail wagging wildly (does she like want it to play? Who knows!). So I pulled her back and scamper scamper off it goes.
Later on, I found a painted turtle, so I stop and look at it. Pretty thing, about maybe 15 – 18 cm large. Not moving. I sit there and watch, then I notice said turtle is backed up to a small hole, newly excavated. Look a little closer and, sure enough, there they are – a number of eggs (at least four) in the hole, with presumably more on the way. Plop, plop, plop! How she dug the hole I do not know – it had perhaps a 3 cm hole at the top, but was clearly “dug out” below, i.e. wider below ground than the hole itself – you could see the eggs spilling out to the sides! After watching for a while (the dogs weren’t interested it seems), I left her to do her thing. But I left a marker in the dirt to keep checking back as August approaches.
(For some great pictures of painted turtles, see http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/mpages/eastern_painted_turtle.htm )