DSi

Eryn's DSi that she paid half of is her favorite toy of the moment. That's a good thing, because otherwise it would be an incredibly expensive paperweight. She has a horse game, that's sort of boring because there's only so much excitement you can get from brushing a horse and waiting for it to grow up. I downloaded her a brain age game that lets her do a bit of voice acting, drawing and math. The photos she's taken while doing the voice acting and a bit of drawing under the covers are hilarious. And I picked up the Star Wars Lego game so she has something to do while the horse is resting. But her favorite feature is definitely the twin cameras that allow her to take pictures of everyone and then mess around with the pictures in creative ways. Here a few examples of her artistic endeavors (and two of mine).

One of her very first pictures. Very serious in her candy necklace.


Still very serious, despite the mustache. French art.


Finally a smile.


Pictures of glass blowing next to Grandpa's studio at Art a Whirl. He was very nice and gave Eryn a glass bauble to hang in her room.


Grandpa's art. Birds on pool balls. Uncle Mike was several feet to the left. He's a carpenter who can make some exceptional pieces of furniture, but seems to have created a nice market niche selling planters.


Bird on pool ball, an individual specimen.


Grandpa Larry at Art a Whirl, as everyone pictures him.


A framed bird on pool ball. They each carry something unique in their beak.


Me, playing around with the top/bottom distortion feature. Or AM I?


The creepiest picture I managed to take, by playing with the kaleidoscope feature. I had another that made good use of my balding head, but it just wasn't as interesting.

The Gone-Away World

On Klund's recommendation, I put myself on the waiting list for Nick Harkaway's The Gone-Away World. It purports to be sort of science fiction, but so far the first 120 pages have primarily been a flashback with no science fiction whatsoever. Regardless, it's very well written and I'm enjoying it immensely. More than anything, it reminds me of the parts of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" I read (its incompletion a result of work escalation). The parable about the three old hags and the cannibals has been worth the effort alone. And the explanation of modern production to accidents is inspired. But so far, this is my favorite part:

"Dick Washburn, known for evermore as Dickwash, is a type D pencilneck: a sassy wannabe paymaster with vestigial humanity. This makes him vastly less evil than a type B pencilneck (heartless bureaucratic machine, pro-class tennis) and somewhat less evil than a type C pencilneck (chortling lackey of the dehumanising system, ambient golf), but unquestionably more evil than pencilneck types M through E (real human screaming to escape a soul-devouring professional persona, varying degrees of desperation). No one I know has ever met the type A pencilneck, in much the same way that no one ever reports their own fatal accident; a type A pencilneck would be a person so entirely consumed by the mechanism in which he or she is employed that they had ceased to exist as a separate entity. They would be odourless, faceless, and undetectable, without ambition or restraint, and would take decisions entirely unfettered by human concerns, make choices for the company, of the company. A type A pencilneck would be the kind of person to sign off on torture and push the nuclear button for no more pressing reason than that it was his job--or hers--and it seemed the next logical step." (p 15).

Long Weekend Bicycling - Bunker Hills, Hugo, St. Paul

I spent a sizable chunk of my weekend on my bike. Not the majority, mind you, I'm not on a cross country 20 hour a day road trip, but more time than doing almost any other activity (and yet I did go to both Terminator Salvation [eh], and Night at the Museum Battle for the Smithsonian [good, if you have a six year old]). Saturday, Eryn and I took a late trip into St. Paul, covering about 26.7 miles down into the valley with a hard push back out to give me some hill climbing practice and make it to Chipotle and home before dark. Eryn liked the water fountain at the park that the kids had set open so they could play in a little lake, and walking up next to the Mississippi River.

I liked, in no particular order, a.) the two women singing "You Cut Me Open" a capella by the river, with the frequent break to take a long drag off a cigarette. I know, from Facebook, that it's one of Ming's favorite songs, so perhaps he could head down there to join in, b.) the little kid - age 2 or so - whose grandpa said, "Don't go in the water", and who then ran over and jumped in shoes and all. At that point grandpa told him the day was over. When he took off to do something else, grandpa said, "no, you're all wet and it's over", at which point the kid whacked him with his plastic shovel. Time seemed to stop. I compliment grandpa on his patience. He took the shovel, and the plastic water bottle that could have doubled as a secondary weapon, and pointed him at the car. A complete jumping all out fit followed, but I think grandpa considered anything after the shovel tolerable. c.) the large woman straddling her boyfriend next to the family trying out their model rocket at the park. It would have been inappropriate if it ended there, but the 40% visibility on the red thong took it to a whole new level.

Sunday, Ming and I went riding the Sunrise Trail from Hugo to North Branch and back, about 48.7 miles. The most exciting development was a new place to eat breakfast at the end of the trail in North Branch, just to the right of the trail. The last two years we had to settle for a coffee shop and find some old guys who could direct us to the Lone Oak restaurant. They picked a good summer location. There were a number of cyclists eating there, including a guy who was on mile #700 of a tour around Minnesota, and a former-coworker turned contractor still working at our company who was on a ride with his 12 year old son.

I didn't take many pictures as I've documented that ride to death, but I found the idea that this place would soon be "Eden" amusing.


And today, Eryn and I went up to Grandpa and Grandma's to pick up some keys and went for a bike ride around Bunker Hills while we were there. She was tired, so we only went about 10 miles, but that was probably enough to remind my legs that they better buck up and worry about doing a few days of hills in a row.

The bad thing about Bunker Hills is that the wildlife is vicious. I've been told to stay away from hippos, but I didn't realize they might try to attack you in a Minnesota park.


Eryn took it calmly. I was much more frightened. Perhaps because I know that hippos have nasty flukes. Ick. I realize you usually have to be on the other end to be near the flukes, but I was still concerned.


It was Memorial Day, so Bunker Hills had their flags at their memorial at half mast. I looked at their main monument and thought, "Wow, Coon Rapids lost almost 10,000 soldiers in World War II? That's huge!" Then I realized it was the number for the VFW Post. It was a nice monument, and although no one was there when we were there, there had obviously been a ceremony with a floral wreath.


That is the front end of a tank in the last picture. Here it is more fully. Eryn chose that position herself. I did not encourage her in any way whatsoever. Pooteewheet pointed out that she's been to that tank before, as a girl scout! E.g. when she was younger, not in some little twisted fetish game of ours.


Here I am on the tank. I picked the pose. Eryn did not encourage a particular pose or choose it for me in any way whatsoever. I was sort of struck by either how big I am, or how small a World War II tank was. I would have been very uncomfortable in that thing. It's also surprising how small it is compared to a modern NATO tank of the sort that almost ran over Dan'l's van in Canada in the middle of the night in 1987. This tank was a bit bigger than a van. That NATO tank towered over his van.


Tank drivers are slobs.


My latest artistic endeavor. Reenacting famous photos, but with my bike. Here I recreate the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. You have to admit it's a step up from the hippo photo, or the many photos of me touching animal statues inappropriately.

Star Wars v. Star Trek

For Ming, who told me he's a Star Wars fan, not a Star Trek fan. And for Mean Mr. Mustard, because he liked the new Star Trek and I didn't. The Current notes that it was an issue over whale poaching.

Quotables

At Bunker Hills Park in Coon Rapids:
Eryn, as I'm pushing her on the swing: "Please stop."
Me: "Why?"
Eryn: "It's making me scared."
Me: "It's making you scared? Why?"
Eryn: "I think its the place where grandpa pushed me and I broke my arm."

During the Land of the Lost marathon on comedy central before we went bicycling this morning, Eryn on Chaka, who's trying to explain that someone was taken by a Sleestak: "I think he might speak a little bit of Spanish."

Stinky

If tomorrow wasn't a workday, and I wasn't certain that it would give my allergies an overload, I'd be sacked out in the hammock in the backyard overnight.

A note - I'm not typically as crabby and judgemental as the next paragraph implies. But you had to be there to appreciate the smell.

As for you, if you're at Cub Foods, and I can smell you over the produce, across more than the width of a fruit stand, across more than two, you need a shower. I understand that Cub Foods produce is often limp and lifeless and devoid of the best fruit and vegetable smells that would normally cover up funk, but it makes up for it with the rotting apples and grapes that they don't take off the floor. Those weren't complementing your smell, they were competing. And losing. And while it's a possibility that you're poor and can't afford water, but still need food, you should be leaning in favor of a minimal water bill or stealing the neighbor's hose at night rather than treating yourself to the $6.49 raspberries you put in your cart. Everyone is stinky at some time, but there's a limit. I didn't get looks and that much avoidance space from other shoppers when I was fruit shopping after an 80 mile, 100 degree day at RAGBRAI. I didn't put that much space between me and anyone else I've ever met, and I used to ride the 18 and 21 downtown. And your wife. Does she have no nose? Has the smell deadened her nostrils? Does she only eat rice cakes and raspberries because everything tastes the same with that smell cluttering up the background? I hope you smelled like that before you married her and that it was some sort of attractant, because you shouldn't subject it to her as a relationship development.

And don't tell me you have Trimethylaminuria. It wasn't a fishy smell. I believe it was more of a Isovaleric acid reaction with Staphylococcus epidermidis, resulting in a strong cheese type smell, but much worse. B.O. on Wikipedia states that diet is a common issue. If the raspberries are a common habit, I'd recommend dropping them and seeing if that helps.

Educational Post

I still poke around for possible work for Klund, hoping that something churns up in between searches. Today I found a developer who rents his services (via rentacoder) out of St. Peter. He's done a site for fainting goats (Misti Rose's Fainting Goats). I found this to be helpful, so I'm hoping it also helps you.

"Reproductive System Bucks: Testicles should be 2 of equal size, fully descended, and showing firmness. Teats should be 2, symmetrical and nonfunctional. All bucks entering the IFGA herd book shall have no more than 2 symmetrical and nonfunctional teats."

Bowling - Incident II

Yesterday, during the birthday party, I walked into the bathroom to use the urinal. At the same time I was parking my car (so to speak), a guy unlocked the stall, walked out, and then walked directly out of the bathroom.

No handwashing.

Sir, do you know where you are? Because I do. Which means I KNOW WHERE YOU'RE GOING TO STICK YOUR FINGERS! I just don't know in which one. F*ing lotto! I'm glad adults weren't bowling. I'm not sure bringing my own sanitizer will even make me feel clean enough next time I bowl.

I described the situation to Eryn, who mentally drew the dots and said only three words. "Bowling ball! EWWW!"

Somewhat Unfortunate Domain Name

I was in Lakeville this afternoon at a kid's bowling party, and noticed this domain advertising a chiropractic clinic (Okeson/Burke): OBPAIN.COM. That doesn't seem quite right.

Speaking of bowling, I have an etiquette question. I was sitting in bar chair at a table near the bowling lanes, watching the kids bowl. Lakeville's Brunswick Lanes are party-central on Sunday afternoon, and there were parties going on to each side of where I was sitting. During the party, a mother, not from the party I was attending, was helicoptering, and checking on her son approximately every 60 seconds. This involved stepping between the table I was at and the table to my right, and bending over his much lower party table to see what he needed: juice, cake, reassurance, whatever. (I got to see another kid at this table fall to the floor on his butt, slamming his chin against the table on the way down. He was so anxious to get lemonade that he just didn't bother to look where his chair was). Anyway...this mother would check on her son, and bend over in front of me. Not several feet away. Not a foot away. But a couple of inches. A** almost in my crotch, moving back and forth. As the party went on, she kept getting closer and closer, and the last time she even bumped my knee. Not that she cared. She just kept on doing what she was up to.

So the question, should I have moved, even if it was obvious I was moving to avoid her by moving my pizza and cake? What if it impacted my ability to watch my daughter bowl? Should I have said "Excuse me?" Does the fineness of the butt matter? Does it matter that I was in a comfortable spot for sitting with a nice foot rest? Do you pay attention to where you're bending over when you're in public, or to where your wife or husband is bending over? Should I have slipped her a dollar?

Postpourri - management, hills of Iowa, happiness

I enjoyed this article in The Atlantic about happiness (What Makes Us Happy, by Joshua Wolf Shenk) and the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a longitudinal study that tracked a number of Harvard students over their entire lives. If you're looking for some advice from the study, this is the crux of it, "seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically. Employing mature adaptations was one [humor being high on the list]. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight."

I've been practicing my strumming lately. Erik sent me this good link from Heartwood Guitar on How to Strum with numerous exercises. Here are a couple of online metronomes if those are helpful.

Slacker Manager's top 5 management videos. Erik says the Tribes one is good. I intend to watch it soon.

Scalzi referenced this: is creativity linked to drinking in some people?

Training for RAGBRAI: Iowa is NOT flat.

Cinco de Ocho

I was sitting in the cafe' at work today and overhead one woman state to another:

"She's been dating him for a while. I think she said they met at at some celebration, like Cinco de Ocho."

My first conclusion was that the woman speaking was dumb and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near coworkers of Mexican heritage. But then something about Cinco de Ocho tickled my brain, so I went searching and found the reference:

Marge: Poor Ned. This is his first Jellyfish Festival alone.
Homer: I know. And it doesn't get any easier from here. There's the Tongue Kiss Festival, Cinco de Ocho, the Hobo Oscars. Days just made for lovers. Not widowers--lovers!

So now I'm faced with a number of possibilities:

1. She's dumb.
2. Her friend is dumb,
   
3. She's cleverly making fun of her friend.
4. Her friend is cleverly making fun of her.

Conundrum!

F****** Piece of S*** G****** I Hate You B**** S*** Farmtown

I hate Farmtown. I hate it. I hate it. IHATE IT. F***. What the hell is wrong with this game. I do not want to harvest F****** plums, apples and corn. I do not want to worry about G****** donkeys and dogs. GEEZ** F****************** C**********. Why? Why do I even think twice about the game? I could achieve the same s*** on Webkinz. At least Eryn would be happy in that case.

Screw you. Screw you all for even making me think about playing it. If you play Farmtown I hate you. No exceptions. And that includes you Kyle. And Matthew. May your children and nephews and nieces disown you for the wankers you are. May they promise you food when you're old and poor and then laugh as they give you g****** bits that are undigestible.

Why? Why would I ever consider owning Joy as a slave? Why would I consider it some sort of fun unless I was a masochist? See. Here? In the piture below. Joy harvests my farm. She's been a slave so long she knows not to havest the last field so she can harvest trees instead. THAT'S F****** WORTHLESS INFORMATION!!!! I quit Farmtown. I quit. If you're one of the 19-5000 "here's a f****** coconut tree" notices, I disown you. Seriously...I'll virtually beat you for your virtual tree/animal next time I see you. You anger me in a way I've previously reserved for Steely Dan.

I mean it.

Liberal Agenda at Work!

Go ahead...figure out who this quote is alleging is a victim of the liberal media. I bet you can't.

"The incessant character assassination and distortion the liberal media has engaged with its increasingly desperate arsenal is highly discriminatory against a new set of fast becoming oppressed voices."

Did you guess Miss California, Carrie Prejean? I hope if we liberals control the media, we find better things to do with it than worry about some harmless photos. Oh! We're supposed to be leveraging the photos because of her stance against gay marriage. Sure. That makes sense. Except the outrage over an odd nipple, or an even number of tasteful nipples, isn't really our thing. And states are endorsing gay marriage (go NY) despite Carrie Prejean's stance, and I don't think she's really going to have any sort of impact on that legislation and social change.

Maybe I should have saved this for your Facebook page, Klund. I notice you're all about the serious issues over there.

Postpourri - tires, breasts, blackberrys, Facebook quizzes

Why does Tires Plus offer the fourth tire for free? I went to Discount Tires, and paid for all four, and based on the online price, it was cheaper than three at Tires Plus. Does anyone ever buy three at Tires Plus and say, "Eh...I don't need the fourth one. No thanks." Or, "Yeah, I'll take it, but I can't use it. I'll give it to a friend." Of course I had to buy Kumho tires, which make Ming laugh, but it was still a better deal. That's right, cheap Kumhos are a good deal. A shout out to Amy at Outback Steakhouse (I apologize for the textual positioning) where I ate while I was waiting for the tires to be installed. She was a great server and, while I realize some people might not have appreciated their waitress sitting down opposite them at the table to chat, for a guy who was obviously on his own for dinner, it was the right move for a better tip.

I saw a woman talking to her Blackberry today at work. That's not so unusual. If you're using the phone.

I was behind a woman on the corporate skyway today. Didn't know her. Couldn't see her face. But no less than five guys walked past going the other way and in every single case their eyes immediately dropped and lingered. I didn't get a chance to see what was drawing so much attention. Maybe it was Christy.

Finally, I have a new hobby on Facebook. I make up my own answers to quizzes. I consider this to be somewhat on the level with Klund's Mix and Match popular Yahoo story to popular Yahoo photo activity. Most of the quiz answers on Facebook are mundane and predictable. I like to mix it up a bit:

For a fairy tale quiz: "Scott just took the "which fairytale do you belong in?" quiz and the result is Godfather Death. If you met a man with thirteen children, you know the best gift you could give him is the location to magical cannibis in the woods and a trick candle."

For which Godfather character are you: "Scott just took the "Which Godfather character are you?" quiz and the result is Khartoum. You're a $600,000 stud. No doubt about it. But you know the wrong people and you date the wrong women. Get your life in order before a friend finds your severed head in their bed."

For If You Ruled the World: "Scott just took the "If you ruled the world, what would it look like?" quiz and the result is Dystopia. You believe that everyone should be under the thumb of a dispassionate, inescapable, unknowable, government, and because of this, Earth would be a consistent and productive world in the hands of someone like you, albeit a world where people imagine someone is stamping a boot in their face--forever."

For Which X-Men Character are you: "Scott just took the "Which x men character are you?" quiz and the result is Amanda Sefton. Flight attendant. Nightcrawler's girlfriend. Her name is the anglicized version of Jimaine."

And for What's Your Patronus: "Scott just took the What is Your Patronus quiz and the result is Your Patronus is a budgie."

I think I'm getting much better...

Awkward

Because I prefer to post things for my blog readers rather than for all those Facebook people I know, some special links, just for you.

Awkward Family Photos - watch for the tall guys that are in photos that, no doubt, share many similarities with photos of Tall Brad or Klund. She Says. Can you find the photo that reminds me of your husband?

Awkward Boners - no more need be said. Really. No more. You know what's at the other end of that link, and it's probably nsfw.

New Tagline

Ming's wife told me, while I was waiting for AAA to fix my flat tire, that she saw something that she wanted to take a picture of so I could put it on my blog: two birds humping under a car.

So in the future, if I decide to remove "Pretty much as it says, a lot of nothing about nothing" as the tagline, I will replace it with, "What you imagine when you think of two birds humping under a car."

Actually, it seems appropriate.

Climb Climb Climb!!!

The dentist decided as long as she was going to replace one metal filing that was getting old, she could replace three others that were equally old. I was fine while my mouth was numb, but after that wore off I had a pounding headache that managed to cut through Tylenol and Advil. I also learned today that I have no fetish that involves two women shoving four things into my mouth at once. No thank you.

Eryn and I counted up her money for the DSi she wanted. I told her if she paid for half - about $100 (tax, screen covers, first game), I'd pay for half. She misses out on those sorts of arrangements because she's an only child, although she comes out ahead in not having to fight over the timesharing. We counted up her change last night and after running it through the bank counter today, it came out to be $99.66 because a.) we'd counted wrong by 1 cent and b.) we had $0.35 in Canadian money.

It's a pretty nice little machine and can take 410 pictures (modifiable) without a memory card through two different cameras and can hook to our internet connection. For her first game, Eryn bought National Geographic's Ponys, allowing her to raise her own pony. Someone will have to tell me what I should buy to amuse myself whenever she "misplaces" the machine.

So...on to the main subject. Climbing. After pedaling the MS60 and realizing I was tired, I thought, "I wonder how that compares to RAGBRAI on its worst day?" So I went out to MapMyRide.com and took a look at the MS60. Checking the elevation revealed climb between -1% and 1% with an ascent of 702 feet and descent of 702 feet. Ok...good baseline.


Next I scoped out the RAGBRAI 2009 site. Day 2 is the hilliest and listed 72.6 miles with 5,096 feet of climb. 5,096 feet! That was 7 times what I'd done on the MS60 in almost the same distance. Terrifying! But it occurred to me that MapMyRide and RAGBRAI might have different terminology, so I did a search for RAGBRAI 2009 Day 2 on MapMyRide for an apples to apples comparison. WAY better. But still, 1906' ascent, 1663' descent, between -2% and 2%. Ugh. Still three times the climb and from the looks of the elevation profile, the last 2/3 of the ride would trend uphill for the most part.


This scares me. That's a lot of climb. I can do 72.6 miles. I'm not sure I can do 72.6 miles uphill into the wind. So I thought I'd look for an appropriate training route in the neighborhood.

Here's Cliff, Pilot Knob, McAndrew's, Blackhawk (actually, reverse that). 7.59 miles, 194' of ascent between -2% and 2%. To get to what I'm doing on RAGBRAI, I'd have to loop it 10 times. If you're familiar with that route, you'll appreciate how daunting that is. It's going to be my morning training route. The eventual goal is to make it through the route twice in an hour (16 miles) before work. We'll see how long I can keep that up before timing myself against myself gets boring. I only have 58 days or so until RAGBRAI, so I'm hoping I can hold out that long.


To alleviate the boredom, I suspect I'll need to tackle Gears, Tears and Fears on the weekends. This is probably the ride that will get me ready for RAGBRAI. It's between -5% and 5% and 1283' of ascent over 32.35 miles. It's the ride that got me to retire my steel framed Bianchi in favor of a sporty new road bike. When I got midway up a hill in St. Paul and found myself literally in stasis (literally - trapped without moving forward or backward, all my effort pushing forward on the pedals toward the sole purpose of remaining absolutely stationary), I knew it was time for a new bike. So twice around that ride should be equivalent to Day 2 of RAGBRAI, if not a little more challenging because the hills are steeper, specifically picked out for difficulty, rather than a gradual climb out of some river valley.


Ooooo...I'm so excited about burning out my knees. That seems like it's going to be fun. Kyle, I could loan you The Brike, which requires no arms whatsoever. Then you could ride. Eh?

MS 60

Yesterday, I got up bright and early to ride the MS 60. Last year I did the 150, but given that I'm going on RAGBRAI this year, I thought I'd try to do something before that event as a way to train, and to decrease the time away from home. I hauled along the mountain bike, the one with the wind plane, and met Ming at his house as the start of the ride was just down the road.

I'm not sure I was up for a 60 mile ride, particularly with the wind and hills. I was definitely feeling the burn by the end of the ride, and even a bit today. My lower back had a bit of a crimp which is usually a sign that I've overdone it. But we finished, despite the headwinds and hills, the 45 degree temps (somewhere in that range - hard to tell as the clouds were coming and going and sometimes it was really cold and other times not so bad. I wore a fleece pullover the whole ride, but I was also in shorts), and even a very brief threat of rain, where a few raindrops scared us near the end.

Ming. It probably looks like he's getting back on his bike after taking a dump off the Gateway trail, but he was just adjusting his seat. Not too far before this spot we rode through some white paint that had been spilled on the trail. I got it on my tire and bike. No big deal. One of the other guys on our team had it spatter up onto his jacket, shorts, and shoes. After seeing that, I was much more careful on the way back.


Me, looking a little tired in Scandia at the reststop. There was watermelon. Yum!


Ming got hit in the eye by a bug. Guess which eye.


Maybe this will help...


Scandia...home of some of the first Swedes to settle in the state (1850 or something).


I believe this is the settlement.


These painted horses are a Swedish specialty. I think. At least they were all over the place in Scandia. This one is at Barton W. Johnson Park, right next to the settlement. Sort of looks like I'm riding it. I decided against molesting it as there were lots of bicyclists coming down the hill and eating watermelon across the street. I'm not sure why I have an Elvis sneer on my face if you check it out in the larger version.


Woo hoo! 57.x miles. It was quite 60. You can see how cloudy the skies were. It seemed warmer here. Up the Gateway, volunteers were wrapped in multiple layers of clothes and hunkered down and shivering.


The end of the ride, at Ming's house. It doesn't look flat, because I already have it jacked up. And it's not off because the tire was stuck on there so solidly that I had to call AAA to come and get it off. Fortunately, the guy who showed up had a great big bar so he could wack it off from the other side. My legs weren't feeling too bad at this point. But after sitting down and kicking the tire as hard as I could, alternating between legs, I was in much worse shape. Come to think of it, that's probably where the twinges in my lower back are coming from today. Doh!

Ignite!

I never mentioned I went to Ignite. Or to the MHTA Conference (I may have started that post and bailed). Both were great. MHTA was more general this year than in previous years - I sat through Agile in your projects instead of self-measuring valves - and had a lot of good content. Ignite was much like Minnedemo, but more focused on social networking and a bit of humor. Topics like Comic Sans as a font. Using Twitter to socialize at a party. Risk (and blowing off your thumb as an indicator of your willingness to take risk) - which I saw at both events. Etc. The audience was VERY different than most tech events I attend. Seriously. I've never been to an event before where a 40-year old cougar was hitting on Erik the Swede. That was unique.

And Ignite was the first event I've been to where Twitter dominated the scene. People used Twitter to post ideas, and other people would find them by matching their profile picture to their face in the audience. People would put their Twitter IDs on their nametags so if you met someone you liked you could follow them. There was a dedicated screen for Twitter commentary using the Ignitempls hash tag. During presentations, keen eyed prsenters would comment on derrogatory comments about their presentation as they appeared in the stream. Definitely different. Definitely made me feel old in some respects (despite being a Twitter user).

Here's an example from Ignite Comic Sans as a Font:


You can find many of the others (Yammer, Peer to Peer Financing, etc) at this search on YouTube.

Saturn's Children

I recently read Charles Stross' Saturn's Children. I'd like it noted that the book was on the new releases shelf at the Dakota County library and I passed it up at least seven times in five visits to the library because of the cover. While a sexy fembot might be intriguing to some (and I knew she was a fembot because of the inside cover, although it spells fembot "femmebot"), it has no allures for me. At least not as a reading exercise.

And then John Scalzi, whose writing I love, pointed out that it was in the 2009 Hugo Voter Packet along with Zoe's Tale (good book), Doctorow and Gaiman. In some respects, that makes Scalzi a dick, because I had to come to terms with whether I was avoiding the book because of the breasts when breasts would naturally attract me to many other things. Chicken for example. But then Scalzi has met Mean Mr. Mustard in person, and that never improves my perception of anyone. He probably steals wifi bandwidth when no one is looking.

My trust in Scalzi being enough to conquer my fear of a book with a bad cover, I checked it out. And then found I was embarrassed to read it in public. Particularly at the hospital while Pooteewheet was there. I can only imagine what the nurses thought of the husband who was sitting in the chair next to the hospital bed with a book with a purple-haired, large breasted, unreal looking woman on the cover.

However. The book was good. I've read Stross. Liked some of it. Disliked some of it. This was worth reading, although I wouldn't rank it in my top 20. I think it could have been a little tighter and dispelled some of the confusion, but I did have to pay attention while I was reading to determine who was impersonating whom, whether there was really a human left alive in the universe, who was channeling whom via their SD card, and what was afoot. It's a mystery novel in some respects. It just happens to be set in a future where humans have gone extinct and their robots are left minding the shop. I don't agree with some of the Amazon reviews that it was too complicated and that not knowing definitively what happened to us, the humans, was a problem. Stross explained himself shortly after particularly confusing sections. And as for the humans, it was clear access to copious amounts of media and sexbots had done us no good in the reproduction arena. Stross took our extinction a step further and expounded upon the fate of societies that employ slave populations and the inward thinking that can arise, distracting from expansion and devoting time to more intellectual pursuits. I also don't agree with the reviewer that was upset that there wasn't enough robot sex. WTF? If you're deprived, Wired has a clip of the Sex Life of Robots (so NSFW), including robot breast feeding (just for you LissyJo).

And then there were the extras. Sometimes a book is just full of this and that which make me think, that's not something I ever thought about before.

Item 1: How to count to binary on your fingers. I had never really thought about this until Freya, the main character, quipped that she ran out of fingers while counting, but not really, because she could count on them in binary. I felt a bit stupid being a (former) programmer and having never tried this. Try it. It's simple, but a digitary challenge. Just be careful when you get to the number four (4). You can count all the way to 1023. There are a number of variations, such as senary, where you use the first hand to do a base 6 system and count to 35. Or Chisanbop, a Korean finger counting method to get to 99. Here's a visual tutorial. And here's a page that talks about varying base-counting systems using fingers, including an applet (4 is censored).

Item 2: A discussion with Eryn, who saw the front of the book, about whether people could really have purple eyes. They can. Ignore the crap about Alexandria's Genesis and Elizabeth Taylor. It has to do with albinism. The BBC link seems to be the best explanation: "Red irides1 are a result of albinism. Albinism is where there is no melanin in the melanocytes at all. Therefore all of the blood vessels (in the iris and retina) are seen and a redder appearance is given. In practice only very few albinos have red eyes, the blue reflections of the collagen show up stronger and so most have blue/grey or even brown. The mixing of red and blue reflections can also give rise to violet eyes." Elizabeth Taylor, known for her violet eyes, thinks they're red (Larry King on Milk and Cookies), giving a bit of credence to the albinism explanation.

Item 3: Stross refers to Scalzi Spaceport in his book. This led me to tell Mean Mr. Mustard one day on Skype, after he'd mentioned he was going to see Star Trek, that it was cool he'd get to see Scalzi in his bit part as a Red Shirt. MMM was very excited, until I told him I was yanking his Vulcan lyre. Nerd taunting at its finest.

Item 4: Stross uses the phrase snicker snack. Only moments earlier Pooteewheet and I had been discussing where the phrase came from as it was used in the Fables series of graphic novels when Boy Blue is hacking off heads with his vorpal sword. It's from Lewis Carroll's Jaberwocky:

"One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back."

Wiktionary says it means "countable and uncountable" and is onomatopoeia perhaps referring to sharpness. It also pointed me at snickersnee, a long sword-like knife, and snick or snee, to thrust and cut. So if my timelines are correct, the action (cut and thrust) became the object (a long sword-like knife), became a sound/metaphor (Carroll). That's some fascinating language work.

Malaysia is Within My Grasp

Dear Ming, soon Malaysia will be under my control. Prepare to do my bidding.

Wherein Kyle Disappoints Eryn

Eryn and I bicycled 37.7 miles yesterday. Me on my mountain bike. Her on the tagalong. Lest it stated she didn't really bike that much, she was pedaling every time I looked and that's enough mileage to do the short Ironman, which my sister has been incapable of doing both times she's gone. Yes, yes, she finished the first time, but she bonked. And she did do 20 miles the second time, but that's not even the short ride. In truth, Eryn and I biked about 35.7 miles and walked 2. Up from Eagan, across the river, through Minnehaha Park, along Minnehaha Creek ("everything is named Minnehaha!" noted Eryn), to Lake Harriet, flat...walked around Calhoun to The Cyclery on Lake, up (or down?) the greenway, down the Mississippi to Taco Bell on Lake near the river (just to tempt Swine Flu), to Minnehaha Park, and back home to Eagan. Hell of a ride.

When we got the flat at the bandshell, I let the remaining air out of the tube and grabbed my spare. I put it on, pulled out the CO2 pump, and it went "Psht." Just that short. Stupid high tech s*it. So we called Kyle, who was going to meet us in Minneapolis around 1:00, figuring it was 12:50 and he might be somewhere nearby. Instead, he was on his way to Monticello. Eryn asked if he was coming to get us and I explained the situation. Eryn sighed and said, "This is going to be so boring." So we walked to where I thought I remembered Calhoun Cycle was, but wasn't. And then walked some more, thinking we'd eventually get to Penn Cycle or Freewheel. We found The Cyclery first and they had tubes, but no pump to sell me. So we got the tube replaced and pumped with a floor pump and then biked on, catching Freewheel on the Greenway to find a new mini pump I can take anywhere, some sun tan lotion (44) because we were dumb and hadn't packed that either, and the world's loudest bell-compass for Eryn's tagalong to replace the kiddy horn.

Shout out to Susan and Peksun and Dave (whose last name I don't know) who we saw while riding. Plenty of coworkers out enjoying the sun. If you include all the coworkers I saw at Chinese language class the day before (Penny and Ming), it was a fairly coworker filled weekend. And no, I'm not taking Chinese language classes myself. I took Eryn to hang with Ming and Logan. She had a great time, and an even better time when they spirited her away to Logan's house for the afternoon.

So what's a story about a bicycle ride without pictures?

Eryn peeking in Fort Snelling. It was closed when we went past in the morning. It was a minute from closing when we went past in the evening. We felt it was a good spot to stop, have a taffy break, peek in some windows, and inspect the grave of Whiskey the Horse (just up the sidewalk). Strange fact. I believe I was bicycling through the fort grounds on the day in 2002 when they were moving his grave.

"U.S. Cavalry horse Whiskey was buried on the fort's grounds in 1943. The trick-performing horse was a popular resident of the fort from the 1920s until his death. Labeled a renegade when he arrived in 1921, Whiskey soon came to the attention of Lt. William Hazelrigg, who spotted the horse's uncanny intelligence. Whiskey was the top horse of the Fort Snelling Blacks polo team and he and Hazelrigg performed widely, including at the Minnesota State Fair. In 1936, at age 25, he was officially retired and lived out his life in leisure in the fort's old cavalry stables with his old performing partners, mules Nat and Snelling. Whiskey's remains, which were in the path of the new light-rail system, were moved to a new location near the Fort Snelling Visitor Center in 2002. Ironically, this location is near the long-gone stables where Whiskey spent his last years."


We were fairly certain trespassers were individuals climbing over the stone wall and that the sign did not apply to us. But there was no way to be certain what area it covered.


Our bike and tagalong on the left side. Further to the left, where you can't see it, the hill that Ming and The Boss couldn't conquer on their bikes the first time I took them riding in the river valley.


Minnehaha Falls. My interest in don't do this, danger, and don't go there signs is surpassed only by my interest in touching statues inappropriately. There was a big festival going on nearby and we kept getting drive bys from some women wearing shirts that said "Faster than turtles". Most peculiar.


In this picture you can see the top of the falls as Eryn puts on her Ireland shirt to show her disdain for any Cinco de Mayo celebrations in the neighborhood. Or her solidarity with May Day festivities. Hard to tell.


Dad...I'm sick of kissing movies. She read the rock dedicating the statue and couldn't tell from the inscription which one was Hiawatha and which one was Minnehaha.

"There the wrinkled old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rocked him in his linden cradle,
Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
"Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!"
Lulled him into slumber, singing,
"Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
Who is this, that lights the wigwam?
With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
Ewa-yea! my little owlet!" (source)


It was beautiful out. The perfect day to force a little girl on a 37.7 mile ride that seemed like it might never end. Cool enough not to be sweating profusely even with two shirts on. A bright sun and happy clouds. And multiple playgrounds to check out during down time. This is the park just before Lake Harriet (between Nokomis and Harriet) near where we used to live in Richfield. This year I bumped into Peksun there. Last year Ryan tried to run me over near there. Twice.

My favorite thing I overhead at this park, "I'm not an evil villain. Listen to me! I'm. Not. An. Evil. Villain." As if an evil villain would say anything different.


Lake Harriet. The good times. When we were enjoying our root beer float and before we realized we had a flat front tire and Kyle left us to rot on the north shore of the lake. Our flat tire did encourage us to venture further north as we were going to round the lake at this point and head home. Eryn got to see the site of the first house in Minneapolis on Lake Calhoun. At least I thought that's what it was, although some web sites seem to disagree. But this is at least fact, it was a, "cabin built by Samuel and Gideon Pond in 1834. The Pond brothers were missionaries to the Dakota at Eatonville. The cabin was located up the hill where St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox Church now stands. Two imposing structures preceded St. Mary’s on this site."


A loon! State bird of Minnesota and a propitious sign! A sign that you're going to get a flat and your friend will ditch you after he says he's coming to town, leaving you and your six year old high and dry with nothing to fill your tire but rootbeer float.

Here's a loon tale from geocities, because Yahoo is shutting it down (perhaps that's a lesson to me as a Blogger user instead of a DIY blogger). No doubt the idea that a loon can see through the fog will scare my niece senseless. And a link to all sorts of loon stories to put your children to sleep.

"The Indians in the Pacific Northwest traveled mainly by water, because the forest was so thick it was difficult to travel by land. This story tells how they were able to find their way back to shore.

One day, a little girl went deep into the forest. She walked until she found a family of loons. She stopped and played with the loons. In fact, she stayed for several days, becoming good friends with the loons. They taught her many things. But, soon, she knew it was time to return to her family, so she said good bye and returned to her village.

In time, this little girl grew to be a Mother and then Grandmother. One day she was out in a canoe with her two Grandchildren. All of the sudden the fog rolled in. They couldn't see the shore. They heard a splashing off in the distance. The children thought it was a sea monster. But, the Grandmother new it was something far worse. It was hunters from a tribe farther north. If they captured them, they would take them as slaves. The children would never see their family or village again.

The Grandmother told the children to get down in the canoe and be quiet. The other canoe passed by them with out seeing them. The children were still hiding in the bottom of the canoe. But, how would they find their way back to the village? How would they avoid the hunters in the other canoe? The Grandmother started to sing. This was a strange song. The Grandmother sung often, and the children new all of her songs. They thought. The children looked up. Where their Grandmother had been sitting, there was a giant loon. It spread its wings and flew out of the canoe. It circled the canoe and then flew off. The children watched it fly off into the fog. Soon, the loon returned and circled again. When it left, this time, the children followed it. It lead them safely back to their village. For you see, only the loon has eyes that can see though the fog.

When the Grandmother was a girl, playing with the loons, they thought her a song. If she ever sang that song, she would change into a loon FOREVER. So when the Indians were canoeing in the fog, they always listen for Grandmother loon to guide them back to shore. "


Back to Minnehaha Park and some of the oldest playground equipment still in use in the state. We took a big break here so I could prepare myself for the last chunk before home. Ming will sympathize with me when I say that as bad as the climb out of the river valley to my house is at the end of a long ride, it's worse with a tagalong. Fortunately, I think this puts me in good shape for the MS ride next weekend and it's a good start for RAGBRAI training now that we made the lottery and have started a bit of Scooter-clan bickering about RVs and pop up campers.

Last year Eryn wouldn't have gone more than a few feet off the ground. I think she's conquered her fear of heights.

Bike Plane!

This is my bike plane. It makes me go faster. Or makes it sound like I'm going really fast if I'm riding up behind you. It makes the guy at The Cyclery laugh. It also makes it almost impossible to hear Eryn talking to me, and might actually make it more difficult to hear an approaching car. Here it is in the wind off Lake Harriet near the bandshell. For most of this video it's going so fast it looks like it's barely moving. It goes faster and makes more noise when I'm riding. I like how the sun shines off it in the video. Sometimes that glare hits me in the eyes while I'm riding.

It took me a few hours before I realized I could push it forward against the brake cable so that it could take a well-deserved rest from flying.

Bathtub

This was the Scooter-family bathtub on Friday...


Because this was the state of the four-year old Scooter-family hot water heater. The bending of the insulator is my doing. I carefully read the instructions on line which stated (paraphrasing) "remove the screws and ease out the assembly". The reality was that with two feet and a lot of back muscle I was having an issue making the assembly budge at all, and when I called the company, they assured me it might just "be a little sticky because of the seal." Those dents are where I had to brace the hammer and pull as hard as I could to get it to even budge. I'm glad it was totaled as they suspected, or I'd have had a rather unsightly mess. They replaced the whole unit, but that doesn't include installation costs (yes, I could replace it myself, I know how, but this is one of those times when doing it myself might take 3-4 days that I've addressed before) and repulling a city permit for a replacement.

We got it replaced before the weekend was out, but Eryn got to enjoy a bath of stove and microwave water. I had some very clean pots and pans after round three of bath water creation.

Archaeologist

Eryn got a T-Rex archeology kit for her birthday. Here's the young archaeologist diligently at work when I got up from bed. As they say, the early bird gets the bird-like, reptile (bones).