the augmented fourth

This blog has moved

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:24:00 +0000

I've migrated this blog to Wordpress; the new version has a new path:
link here. You might subscribe to the new feed there.

I've intended to try WP for a while and was finally motivated by Google's discontinuation of FTP publishing from Blogger.

Is Chicago

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:28:00 +0000

Described here, this week's three-day vacation trip to the windy city. Both it was, although temps were only cold (not bitterly cold) and only cursory snow was seen. The impetus for the trip was Beautiful Wife's attendance at the Midwest Clinic; since airline travel and status in a family way have poor compatibility, we opted for a family road trip. Weather and traffic cooperated on Tuesday, and we made it door-to-door in about six hours, the latter door being that of the lovely Palmer House. Junior traveled quite nicely: minimal fussiness in the car (we don't do in-car TV or any of that mess; staring out the window builds character) and at restaurant meals. Then again, you'd travel nicely too, if you had a sharp new Land's End coat to show off.

Tuesday p.m. we hit one of those make-your-own-stirfry places and crashed. Wednesday morning we had breakfast at a Corner Bakery (that's a brand name, alas); here we are awaiting food.
J and I split off for a two-year-old's #1 big city attraction: the train! After the 6-minute red line ride (and 12 minutes of watching trains come and go), we hiked to the Hancock Center for an elevator ride up. (J's first suggestion: "no elevator, walk stairs.")
No line there at 9:00; we checked out the city views and sat coloring on the (ninety-fourth) floor for a bit, then back down and on to some evaluation of Michigan Ave. decorations and a trip to the Lego store. Yup, Lego store. Awesome. Then, snack time (for some, coffee time) in the lobby of the Intercontinental (it was toasty; we discussed the bulb ornaments on their tree). Then, back to hotel for naptime, followed by a trip by the bean and supper at The Berghoff. After bedtime, I wandered a bit, happened across Orchestra Hall, chatted up the loitering ushers and tiptoed in the back for a few final Nutcracker movements.

Thursday morning, continued public transit adventures as we tracked down the 146 for a bus ride to the museum campus. Note: Shedd is great at opening on a weekday. We chatted with some fish trainers on the bus, then I mostly pivoted whilst J scurried from species to species, identifying subtle differences among features. Below, sitting on a bench at the Caribbean tank; watching performing dolphins at one of those run-of-the-mill aquarium shows.

Then we bussed back to the hotel for lunch and naptime, during which I caught the el back uptown for a trot through the Museum of Contemporary Art. I particularly enjoyed a collection of Calder mobiles, some bizarre Carrie Schneider with a lot of extra arms, and a brilliant exhibit entitled "Hide and Seek", in which unlabeled art is installed incognito around the museum spaces. Either this is one of my favorites from that collection, or I've been fooled by a disgruntled signmaker.
After nap, a stop at the Architecture Foundation store, then on to the Art Institute for a quick tour (mostly admiring the space, with a quick focus on The Supper at Emmaus and, being John Hughes fans enough, Seurat's Sunday Afternoon, then on to large bowls of pasta. Friday morning, chow at the Artist's Cafe, an hour or two at the Museum of Science and Industry (note: mid morning on the last day of public school classes before break; zoo) and six hours return flight on the interstate.

Candidate Christmas card photos

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:06:00 +0000

Happy December and such from the 3.8 Kolthammers of Ohio. I note that I've now exhausted my supply of sweaters, so I'll need to invest in a new one in 2010 lest risk repeating a previous year's photo outfit.

Pfthanksgiving weekend: the report

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:43:00 +0000

Thanksgiving week was a rough one. Monday was off work, one of many such days, thanks to a change in vacation policy that requires us to burn more banked days before year's end. Tuesday and Wed were slow, thanks to everyone else doing the same to comply with said policy. And Thursday, turkey.

Before Turkey, though, a trot. This was the first time I've run the big Turkey Trot downtown. Let's call it 2500 joggers, with street closings, chip timing and charity benefits: the whole works. Another benefit: a free low-res photo! (As I understand it, with some connection to the photographer wanting people to order the real print; I don't know anyone who actually has.) As with all such photos, I look reasonably athletic, but the less-athletic folks in the background give a better perspective to my pace. According to Garmin, 5.00 miles at 8:30/mi. That being that, we did various family turkey-related things, driving from place to place. Friday was turkey day at 2211, complete with stuffing, potatoes mashed, roasted brussels, saucy cranberries and dinner guests. Our bird was brined [*] and roasted, bought fresh (that is, cleaned and refrigerated, just not frozen). Saturday involved some sort of walk to the library, and some sort of car trip to the Home Despot. Par for the course.

Sunday morning was our first running group run in some time. Starting at our place, we ran a lake loop (5.8 @ 9:25), then chowed some brunch. Good times. Then a little stretching, naptime routine and a hop in the VW for the 6-hr drive to Chicagoland. Busy highways on a holiday weekend aren't a boatload of fun, but I'll take them over airport delays. The tollbooths each required a ten-or-so-minute wait, but other than that, and a few interchange slowdowns, the only costs were 350 miles on the odometer, 11 gallons of premium, $20 in tolls and an incredibly dry reading of Heart of Darkness (audio books for road trips: highly recommended; check out twice as many as hours needed, since ~50% are intolerable).

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[*] Ohio was part of the 'Brine Belt', according to this nifty NYT map of recipe search popularity by geography.

Extra hour

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:28:00 +0000

With the extra hour of daylight savings, we enjoyed a wild and crazy game of Agricola. Still the house favorite, as far as board games go.

This, using the variant in which each player picks 10 cards and keeps 7 for play, rather than the standard 'draw 7 and eat them'.

Baby names

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:15:00 +0000

(Though it's not the names of babies I'm concerned about, so much as their name when they grow up.)

The SSA website has some simple data queries for names. (I'd prefer access to the raw data and wonder if that's also available online.) Julian was born in 2007, and part of our goal was to pick a name that wasn't outlandish, but also wasn't all that popular. We settled on the 65th-most popular name given to boys in that year (in the US). I think we're catching an upward trend: Of course, this is rank (i.e. "200" means the 200th most popular name), so increased popularity is down. I'd prefer to plot "% of total boys given that name", if I could figure out how to extract that.

I'm surprised that there's only a factor of 3 difference between the most popular name (Jacob, in 2007 just over 1% of all boys) and Julian (about 0.3%). Anecdotally, it seems like everyone has a Jacob, Michael or Ethan, and I don't think I've met another J in his generation. Perhaps they're all in a different demographic, together on a distant social island.

For boys, the popularity decay constant over rank is at 52 (that is, the 52nd-most popular name is 1/e (37%) as popular as the 1st), suggesting that (in the first moment, at least) there is more variety in boys' names than girls: for girls, the 30th most popular name is 1/e as popular as 1st. Or, slicing another way, the 65th most popular girls name (Jennifer) was a factor of 5 less popular than number 1. I'm sure the Freakonomics guys have a theory about the difference in distribution, perhaps having to do with sex equality and Ivy League admissions.

Brewzilla 2009

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:00:00 +0000

I attended Brewzilla 2009 this weekend, the culmination of Cleveland's Beer Week, which I otherwise celebrated by being especially snobby in any discussions of beer and hacking my wine fridge to store ales vertically.

I'll give the event a 50% approval rating. There were a fair number of tasty choices, and not bad people-watching (particularly after the kegs started to float). And, the setting was a fun idea (at the old Arcade, with tasting stations set up in each storefront). However, there was a lot of useless filler on the beer list, it was too loud (or I'm too old) and there wasn't really enough room to taste and chat. They issued drink tickets, which were applied with the same formality as we used to use drink tickets at undergrad parties.

I did enjoy having access to attempts from the small, local micros (Indigo Imp, Buckeye/BeerEngine). Although I hope to see another one next year (this was the first "annual"), I'll probably spend my money on one of the smaller, brewery-sponsored events like Victory night at The Cave.

Hey look, I appeared in an event photo on Metromix. Used without permission.

I haven't seen anyone post the beer list yet. Let's see if I can scan and OCR the printed one I received at the event for future googlers.

Cleveland Brewzilla 2009 Beer List
Founders: Red's Rye, Dirty Bastard
Brooklyn: Local #1, Local #2
Goose Island: Matilda, Pere Jacques, Sophie
Victory: Prima Pils, Hop DevillPA, Yakima Twilight
Bell's: Amber Ale, Sparkling Ale, Double Cream Stout
Dogfish Head: Raison D'Etre, Red &White, Festina Peche
Troegs: Troegenator Double Bock, HopBack Amber
Hoppin' Frog: Silk Porter, Hopmaster's Abbey Belgian Double IPA
Chimay: Premier Re, Grande Reserve Blue
Stone: Levitation Ale, Arrogant Bastard Ale, Old Guardian Barley Wine Ale, Smoked Porter
Ithaca: Alpha Alpha, Apricot Wheat , Cascazilla
Southern Tier: 422 Pale Wheat Ale, Hop Sun
Magic Hat: #9 , Seasonal
Weyerbacher: Merry Monks Abby Tripel, Old Heathen
Pyramid: Haywire Hefeweizen
Sierra Nevada: Pale Ale, Chico Estate Ale
Miller/Coors: Killians, Blue Moon Belgian White
Samuel Adams: Boston Lager, Octoberfest, Imperial Stout
Bluegrass: American Pale Ale, Queen's Knickers, Bourbon County Stout
Leinenkugel: Sunset Wheat, Hazelnut Brown
Anheuser-Busch: Hoegaarden, Leffe Blonde, Stella Artois
Ommegang: Abbey Ale, Hennepin, Adoration, Biere de Mars
Thirsty Dog: 12 Dogs of Christmas Ale, Siberian Night, Cerebrus, Pumpkin Ale Unfiltered
Fat heads brewery: Sonoma Aroma, Bumble Berr, Oktoberfest, Shock the Monkey
Indigo Imp: Winter Solstice, Gatekeeper, Blonde Bombshell, Jester
The Brewkettle: Red Eye PA, Tripel, Jack Hammer Barleywine, Old 21 IPA
Buckeye: Commemorative Brown Ale, Hippie lPA, Heidi, 76 IPA
GLBC: Dortmunder Gold Lager, Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, Eliot Ness Amber Lager, Commodore Perry IPA, Christmas Ale
Dixie: Blackened Voodoo, Lager
Hook & ladder: Golden Age, Backdraft Brown
Abita: Turbodog, Purple Haze, Amber
Avery: IPA, Hog Heaven
Flying Dog: Snake Dog IPA, Gonzo Imperial Porter
Allagash: Tripel, Black
Harpoon: UFO Hefeweizen, Raspberry Hefeweizen
Anderson Valley: Bamey Flats Oatmeal Stout, Hop Ottin’ IPA
New Holland: Mad Hatter IPA, Dragon's Milk
Napa Smith: Wheat Beer, Amber Ale
Ayinger: Celebrator Double Bock
Lindemans: Framboise
Sam Smith: Oatmeal Stout, Stingo
Carlsberg: (ibid), Grimbergen Blonde
Fuller's: london Porter, london Pride
Erie: Railbender Ale
Southampton: Double White Ale
Rogue: Dead Guy Ale, Hazelnut Brown Nectar
Franziskaner: Hefe-Weisse
Spaten: Oktoberfest, Premium Lager
Left Hand: Jackman's Pale Ale, Polestar Pilsner
Two Brothers: Moaten Aemish Red Ale, Heavy Handed IPA
Clipper City: Heavy Seas loose Cannon, Heavy Seas Winter Storm
Unibroue: Raftman, Ephemere
Jolly Pumpkin: Luciernaga "The Firefty", Bam Biere, la Roja, Maracaibo Especial

In the news

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:00:00 +0000

From the gay confectionary department: What's not funny about this? As if the phrase "classically trained bassoonist" didn't already provoke a smirk.

In a semantically related note, Cleveland will host the 2014 Gay Games. Good for us. Coincidentally, "Participation, Inclusion and Personal Best" is a pretty good motto for all of my athletic endeavors.

Watt census, take 2

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:48:00 +0000

[Continued from Watt census, take 1]

Measurements
Making a pot of coffee (decaf): 80 Wh
Running the dehumidifier on 55% for 24h (August): 5.7 kWh
Box fan on low (medium): 88 (118) W
Amplifier: 133 W
Toast: 944 W (16 Wh)
Washer: 0.27 kWh for our usual cycle
Dryer: 0.42 kWh for our usual cycle
Charge cell phone: about 4 Wh
Desktop computer: 1.2 kWh for 24h typical use (1.1 kWh day, 70 Wh sleeping overnight)

And, our Boom eats only 5 Watts while playing music (streaming over the wifi). That strikes me as impressive; I think our old tabletop boombox drew ten with its standby lamp.

So, it costs me two cents' electricity have coffee and toast and listen to Red Headed Stranger. Huh.

weekend ride

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:00:00 +0000

I rode a homemade century a couple of weekends ago: not a fancy-event century, that is, just an email out to friends saying "Saturday. 100 mi. 6 hours. BYOB."

Three of us hit the road at about 6:30. We started at North Chagrin metropark and rode Cleveland's "Emerald Necklace" counterclockwise. Our early start was successful in getting us mostly across downtown with little traffic interference (the rest of the ride is 95% parks; on Valley Parkway, traffic watches you!).

Two bananas, a clif bar, 160 oz. or so water and a sandwich zip of gorp was plenty to get through in 6:09 of riding time. Clock time was a non-negligible amount longer, since my riding buddies hadn't memorized the directions as precisely as me (and didn't have good enough reaction times when I was executed split-second maneuvers to follow said directions). I'm looking forward to picking up a few more riders and leading a similar route in a few weeks.

I shared the route at mapmyride, since I couldn't find a complete 100-miler around the necklace there already.

Here's our route:
And here's the necklace, as illustrated on the metroparks website. I wonder how much longer the route would need to be to hit all 16 parks...

Eclipsed

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:00:00 +0000

we were not, but word has it that in other parts of the world, folks experienced the longest solar eclipse of the century. The wp article has a good overview, or experience it through a public collection on Flickr.

Watt census, take 1

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:00:00 +0000

Now entering our third full week in the new house, I think we have most of our electricity-consuming appliances unboxed and in use. I've estimated our household power consumption; the total amount for the bill seems low (i.e. less than in the old house), but maybe I've just left off some significant extra charges in my $0.12/kWh assumption, or the omitted 5 watt control electronics in everything adds up.

The initial goal was to determine, relatively, how much our music-listening habits (which involve leaving a server and wireless router running during the day) impact our consumption. At quick glance, and without any real measurement, the answer is 10%.

The highlights:

Big computer: 100W x 16h = 48 kWh/month
Small computer: 40W x 4h = 4.8
Television: 120W x 1h = 3.6
Big stereo: 150W x 2h = 9
Small stereo: 40W x 6h = 7.4
Modem and router: 15W x 24h = 10.8

Living area lighting: 200W x 3h = 18
Kitchen lighting: 250W x 4h = 30
Security lighting: 13W x 24h = 9.3
Ceiling fans: 50W x 6h = 9
Clocks: 7W x 24h = 5
Dehumidifier: 500W x 6h = 90

Fridge: 600W x 4h = 72 = 72
Dishwasher: 1200W x 1.5h = 54
Clothes washer: 500W x 1h = 15
Clothes dryer: 300W x 1h = 9
Electric oven: 4000W x 0.5h = 60
Microwave: 1200W x 0.1h = 3.6
Coffee and toast: 2200W x 0.1h = 5

Total monthly consumption (estimated) = 460 kWh.

November

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:00:00 +0000

It was sometime in the fall of 1995, when paper postings appeared at Brazoswood High courtesy of the yearbook staff. They proclaimed something like

NOVEMBER IS THE LAST MONTH
(to order your yearbook)

With the last list in barely-legibly-pointed font.

Since then November has kept rolling, since there are no months after it; and, today we celebrate November 5000, 1995. Happy 5k, everyone. November is the last month!

In Tuxedos!

Burlington, VT

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:31:00 +0000

Experimenting with the Canon's handy panoramic mode, and just sqeaking in under blogger's 8MB upload limit.

operation dinner out

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:31:00 +0000

notes to self

try:
momocho
russos
melt
red
mint cafe

return to:
lolita
players
lopez

Obligatory chill post

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:12:00 +0000

I seem to be the slowest among local bloggers to comment on our chilly weather. But, I haven't seen anyone else present their observations around Friday lunch-time in graphical form. The data are from a nearby PWS via wunderground, but match a few points from my garage-mounted sensor. In related news, I've been trying internet radio as background to housework and building towers out of oversized Lego. Aside from Car Talk this morning via the WCPN feed and the WGBH classical stream, I also have Kent State's Folk Alley channel and groove.monkeyradio.org [1] on my bookmarks list so far.

[1] Admittedly, I added that one before I even listened to it. But, I did keep it there after switching it on.

Blue

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 03:01:00 +0000

It's 9:30, and the nets have called Ohio for Obama. That'll do, pig. It's too early to shut down the laptop, so... landslide watch!

Trick, or treat

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:55:00 +0000

From David Kurtz at TPM:

There should be a support group for all those beleaguered progressives who over the years anxiously awaited elections in the futile hope that the polls showing their candidate behind would turn out to be wrong -- but who this year are fretting just as much that the polls showing their candidate ahead are wrong.

I plan to dress as a beleaguered progressive tonight for trick and/or treating. Julian has elected to go as a giraffe. Gordon will pretend to be a dog who's deathly afraid of children in costumes; tonight is right down there with independence day fireworks in his book.

Some photos are here. No photos of G, since cameras fall right behind fireworks, thunder and costumes on the scary list.

Cantaloupe

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:25:00 +0000

The first snowfall of the season, I pose. Noted through the windows of the CVBD Phoenix [1]: a place not quite home, not quite work, but that comes with a cup of yirgacheffe, a stack of Nature Cell Bio papers and an overrepresentation of Death Cab in the lift music rotation.

This weekend I was an invited speaker at a local meeting of medical physicists. This might be the first time I've given a talk to a group of which I'm not a member; I'm an instrumentation guy, and clinical radiation oncology folks comprised the audience. Although the subject matter was stuff I'm comfortable with in front of a white board for an hour, wearing a tie and standing at a podium somehow makes it nerve-wracking. Nonetheless, it all went well: their challenging questions were easy, the softball questions required clarification, and they had to smile and nod at my powerpoint drawings because they asked me to attend.

In addition to a nice discussion over lunch following the talks, I was treated to a drive through the easternmost part of Ohio and western bit of PA; the first half of the round-trip was completed before sunrise and in not-quite-icy rain, but the return revealed terrain molded by the Beaver and Ohio Rivers and glazed in peak late-October foliage.

[1] The link here is to a nice collection of blurbs about local history, a topic whose interest to me has only a weak space variance. Some updating attention would benefit the site, perhaps even a wiki-like implementation with review by the history department authorities that currently host it.

Run for the Cheetah 2008

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:00:00 +0000

A few Saturdays ago I attended the Run for the Cheetah, a 5k at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. The zoo is a fine place for a run; the entrance and savannah (and race start) are about 100' lower in elevation than the primate building and aquarium. The route, as we found out a few minutes before the starting whistle, would encompass two laps of the hill.

My memory of the race: beep, escape crowd, gradual uphill; monkeys! Left turn, winding path, giraffes! Past the flamingos, hang a right, big uphill. Tortoises, cheetahs, big downhill. Kangaroos lined up along a fence, snouts flopping side-to-side like tennis spectators. Lap; repeat. The attentive kangaroos made my day, and I enjoyed walking around the zoo afterward seeing the unusually attentive critters pre-opening-time.

Unless I'm mistaken, this is my first 5k running race. 23:07, a 7:27/mi pace averaged over this elevation profile.
Given the coincident start of the fall semester, this concludes the bulk of my 2008 training as well, for a total of about 700 miles of cycling, 600 miles on foot and 10 miles in the water. Time (no time?) for some mild strength training and occasional anti-stress running before rebuilding a winter base.

Early Voting

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:28:00 +0000

I just sealed up my absentee ballot. I'm always impressed at the plethora of choices for president, although the Green, Socialist and Libertarian parties were the only minor candidates I recognized.

A bit of a mess has brewed in our executive branch, and only one candidate is fit to sort it out. My scantron-style oval to Senators Obama and Biden; godspeed!

Economy of scale

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Anyone [1] who hadn't already heard of Spore will after reading today's XKCD. "It looks brilliant," reports a self-identified addict of sandbox games. Coincidentally, the increasedly-having-been-misnamed [2] Sim City series of games already spanned many such orders of magnitude [3]; IIRC, one of the sequels expanded from cities to interconnected cities. There was an early knockoff called "Sim Earth", and a miniature version in "Sim Ant"? Furthermore, I've long suggested that an MMG consisting of many Sims, a few Sim Cities all within a giant game of Civilization would make for a good time. The thousands of players removed from the game when Vladivostok gets knocked off the map by a top-level schmuck arbitrarily razing cities for a few more civilization points at the end of the game will offer an instructive allegory to our often tacit support of our presumed representatives' warmongering ways.

If the moral remains translucent, we could try Nuclear War instead of Civ.

Anyway, I hope Spore sells like hotcakes, so someone I know tires of it and passes it along. After I graduate, of course.

[1] Always defined as the set S of people who are likely to read this post; Pr([Reads XKCD]S)~=1.
[2] Ouch. How do I quote Douglas Adams' description of The Trilogy, in the past tense?
[3] Ah, I see now that Will Wright is behind all of this. And, according to Wikipedia, it all sprung from his map generator for Raid on Bungling Bay. Will Wright for Hegemon!

Spam

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:08:00 +0000

In today's snail mail, an RNC/McSellOut fundraising letter.

I need individuals like you, [...] who have done so much to help our Party in the past...

Whoa. I've been paying pretty close attention since I came of voting age, and I'm pretty sure I've never lifted a finger to help that particular party. On the other hand, I can't imagine that the McCain campaign would outright lie, so maybe I'm mistaken.

We've all seen the Democrats' massive rallies, record-setting voter turnout and colossal fundraising efforts. It is obvious they are pulling out all the stops to win.

Fascinating. It must be bad when people get so excited about politics that they show up and vote. Instead, why don't we just stick a ballot box right at the entrance to church, then scare everyone else away with lies, lies and more lies about taxes, sex and, yes, the bridge. No comment yet on whether the 'other' Ohio is drinking the cool-aid, or just enjoying the post-drooling-mainstream-media-coverage-of-the convention bounce.

Friday fun

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0000

Whoops; I missed Friday. I've been a bit behind lately, as it is. I didn't hear until recently about the GOP (grandpa's oligarchy?) anointment for VP, and let me tell you, I'm thrilled. We now have a win-win election: either a palatable pair of intelligent experts [1] who might deviate just enough from business-as-usual to inject a bit of deference to the proletariate and respect for the bourgeoisie, or a spooky sell-out accompanied by a lumberjack.

What, not that Palin? Crap. Even so, once taken over by GOP 'handlers', M. Palin would probably end up more like his character in Brazil. Anyway, that's not the funny part; there's nothing funny about my baseline blood pressure being 20 points higher for the next two months as I'm reminded by poll after poll that an enormous number of Americans either don't see the world like I do or are too stupid to know the difference. *sigh*

Furthermore, why hasn't the phrase "hope-smoking hippie" come into the common lexicon? [2] I'm not sure what side it would help more, were it to; but, I hereby proactively reclaim it, just in case.

I may have posted a while ago about the XKCD geohashing comic. Brilliant. And now, posted to the associated blog a few days ago, this description of a bicycle-kayak trip to find the day's location. Again, brilliant. I wish the internet had been invented back in my school days, so I could have done cool things too.

Finally, kudos to the professor teaching a stochastic modeling class (read: math of random things) I'm taking, who's policy for late work reads

Homework that is n weeks late will be accepted, but its total score will be multiplied by p^n, where p is a random variable drawn from the uniform distribution on the interval [0,1].

[1] How have I heard eight thousand recent pop-media discussions about Obama's level of experience without a single mention of the fact that he has a J.D. and taught no small amount of law at a little school in Illinois? I drool at the prospect of hiring someone who understands law to enforce our laws.

[2] Props to Jason for the turn of phrase, which as far as I can tell was original when written in this post.

Lorain Olympic 2008

noreply@blogger.com (JAK) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:47:00 +0000

On Sunday was NCN's Lorain Sprint/Olympic tri, at Lakeview Park [1] on the far west side. I opted for the longer distance; I missed my chance at an oly earlier with the swim cancellation at GTC, and needed to offset a fair amount of couch-sitting watching the actual olympics.

First, if you're driving an hour to a 7am race registration, remember to leave time to find a bridge completely closed for repair and investigate detour possibilities. I did so, surprisingly. The sprint waves were scheduled to start at 8 but started late (par for the course, I learned), so the olympic wouldn't depart until 8:30. That left me just enough time to break off my front valve stem while topping off to 120 psi, then jog over to the Bike Authority tent for a quicker (and more reliable) tube change than I could have managed myself. I racked the bike, dropped my gear into little piles on my stripy blue towel and headed toward the beach.

The weather was beautiful, though we could tell at 8:30 that the run a couple hours later would be toasty. The swim was largely outside the breakwall and featured reasonable rollers, enough that breathing into the waves was (for me, at least) impossible. Once I got that rhythm down I reduced my intake of crisp, clean Lake Erie and was able to start swimming; yet, it took me a solid 15 minutes to do so. That swim ate my lunch like a sixth grade bully. [2] (Fortunately, it would be nice enough to return it halfway through the run.) Regardless, starting at about the halfway point I did really start to enjoy the swim. I was slow, and a wetsuit wouldn't have hurt, but I had a steady crawl going and it started to feel like a nice pool workout interjected by the occasional panicked search for and realignment toward the next buoy. I express my displeasure in histogram form.
The bike and run were uneventful. The bike course was fairly flat, two loops. I averaged 19.4 mph for 22-ish miles, which is about right for me but sub-median in this crowd, composed mostly of the 20-22 crowd. Transition to the run was fair; I had taken in one bottle on the bike but needed more, not having hydrated well before the race. That hit me on the run, which started off as expected (painful for the first mile, then picks up) but just died at about mile 4. I ran / jogged / limped through cramps and dizziness for most of miles 4 and 5; either my gel and generous use of gatorade stops or fear of a weak-looking finish in front of the crowd helped pick up the last mile or so. 10k at 9:19/mi, bringing me one bar further left in the aforeshown histogram.

[1] Not to be confused with Lakeside Park (willows in the breeze / so many memories?)
[2] As I recall, no bully ever actually did this to my lunch, not even on cucumber sandwich day