Thinking about Next Year’s Ride

Except for a slightly sore butt I feel completely recovered from Saturday’s 100 km Tour de Cure bike ride.  Next year I think I’ll start training just a little earlier, and go for the 100-miler.

To everyone who donated on my behalf or for anyone else, thank you so much for the support.  The Tour de Cure is much more than a fund-raising event; it’s a festival, the first of many festivals held during our wonderful summer months, when the glorious weather brings out the best in us.

Last week was also the Greek Festival and this weekend it’s the Allentown Art Festival; then the Ride for Roswell; and shortly after that the Taste of Buffalo and the Italian Festival and many other great places to gather and celebrate.

Buffalo’s great for that kind of stuff.

Songs in Odd Times

Regardless of what Wikipedia says about Radiohead’s Pyramid Song, it is cannot possibly be written in 4/4 time.  If you ignore the first three-and-a-half beats and meter eighth notes then the piano consistently plays in 11/8 while the first measure is 7/8.  Maybe Phil Selway is playing drums in 4/4; with all the syncopation I find it impossible to pick up and hold the beat when the percussion enters halfway into the song.  But listen to the piano and you get a sense for what plays out as consistent 11/8.

Pyramid Song is one of many Radiohead tunes using sophisticated rhythm patterns that are not for the faint of heart.  In the jazz scene there’s Dave Brubeck, who’s always good for one or two oddly-metered pieces per album.  It’s interesting how our minds resist rhythm that is not in 2 or 3 or 4.  I personally love the edginess that weird beat brings to music.

On Thursday, June 11th this radio station will dedicate 2 hours (starting at 2 pm) to rock songs not tied to our natural rhythms.  Should be a great listen, but probably not something you’ll consider dance music.

Strange Dreams

Why is this?

Sure didn’t seem like a dream while I was dreaming it.

And I dream this, regularly.

R.I.P Dick Bob

I’ve never been good with eulogies, especially for those dear to me.  At times of death I’m generally at a loss for words, not knowing how to convey my thoughts or bring comfort to those in grief.

This past week my colleague and friend Dick succumbed to his battle with cancer.  Anyone with more than 10 or 15 years in Buffalo’s manufacturing circles probably knew this guy.  He was a whirlwind of energy, not easily forgettable.

To the very end he insisted on coming to work – it was his passion – never complaining about the chemotherapy or the radiation, treating each day like all the others.  He did not bemoan his fate, but rather reveled in his life’s accomplishments.  He had many.

Two days before he went into hospice he was still calling clients, weak but alert.  Six days later his life ended.

I can only hope that I face my mortality as bravely as he faced his.

The Tenderest Moments

The most touching moment of my life was looking into my fiancee’s eyes as she recited her wedding vows to me.  Witnessing the birth of our children were close seconds.  Those tenderest of moments embody humanity’s great beauty and are unforgettable.  They are as clear to me as the day they occurred; I have but a handful of them to cherish.

Last Saturday I walked a young woman down the aisle and gave her away to her husband-to-be.  This was an unexpected gift – one that a father of boys does not normally receive.  And looking into her eyes as we reached the altar, I realized that she had just added one more tender moment to my life.

Thanks, J.

Food Poisoning

So I had all these thoughts inside my head to write about.  More on the economy and those crazy credit default swaps, Zogby Research, the upcoming presidential debate, Geoge Bush’s recent words to soothe America (or perhaps himself; notice how the phrase “The fundamentals are sound” isn’t being said anymore)?

All that has been put aside while I recover from what I think is a bad case of food poisoning, brought on by my wife, the chaplain.  Actually, it was probably brought on by some Maryland crabs she bought while in Baltimore.  They were delicious, for about an hour or so.  Since then I’ve been dividing my time between laying on the couch in a fetal position and running to the bathroom to vomit.  Ooh; too much information there.  I won’t mention that that’s not the only bodily orifice that’s seen more than enough action for a while.

I can’t eat, and the general weakness that goes along with that is probably more a revelation than the nausea.  It’s only been a day since I’ve been able to digest anything and already the fatigue and inability to stay focused has set in.

Pity the many poor whose lack of a next meal is a constant, whose life under these conditions is not rare, but commonplace.

For the Sake of My Hands

Today I could no longer take the wrist pain that develops while typing so I purchased the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.

Not that I like Microsoft very much; on the contrary, their gorilla tactics, legal tactics and marketing tactics all leave me wanting for other options.  However, the reviews on this type of keyboard were quite positive, I was at Office Max anyway, and I was desperate.

The pain from repetitive strain injury is alarmingly chronic:  It doesn’t go away for a long time, and mine has been with me for much of the past year.  Most of my achiness was coming from having my hands cocked at a funny angle over a very flat laptop keyboard.  The 4000 lays out the keys so that my hands are in a much less strained position, almost as if I’m trying to shake hands with the keyboard rather than lay them flat.  Although the photo doesn’t show it well, the middle keys (the ones nearest my index fingers) rest on a hill higher than the keys nearest my pinkies.  It took me all of twenty minutes to get used to that hill and the obviously split keyboard.

The reduction in pain was almost immediate, and I recommend this to anyone suffering from even the slightest wrist pain – it will only get worse.  Now, if only they would bring back those tactile, spring-loaded keys like they had on the IBM Selectric typewriters.  Those were the best.

Trayless Cafeterias

Colleges are going trayless.

At least at some colleges.  The Associated Press reports that West Virginia’s Glenville State College has eliminated all cafeteria trays in an attempt to conserve.  Colleges in Georgia and North Carolina, two drought-stricken states, are doing it to reduce water consumption.  Some college studies are finding that in addition to saving water and energy a side benefit is that it reduces food waste:  Students don’t/can’t stack up food while holding a plate like they can when they’re holding a tray; and maybe it’ll help fight the Freshman 15 to boot.

Cafeteria trays were very popular when I was in college, but not because they carried our food.

They were popular because they carried our asses down a small hill next to the Freshman dormitories, during the winter months when we needed a diversion from studying Differential Equations or any myriad number of engineering courses.  Those slick-bottomed trays didn’t take long to ice over the hill, which tended to make it all the more dangerous – and fun.

We learned physics (at least, acceleration and generally rapid deceleration) on cafeteria trays.

The Mission

I’ve had a darkroom since 9th grade.  (That’s not my darkroom above, it’s an attempt to dry some negatives in my study).  With the advent of digital photography the darkroom has been abandoned, but in the intervening years I took approximately 20,000 photographs, most of which never saw the light of day.  The negatives, however, were developed, dried and stored, and are now being digitized.  Slowly.  Agonizingly slowly.

My Nikon Coolscan V ED negative scanner takes about 2 minutes to turn a black and white negative into a 25 megapixel digital image, and about 5 minutes to render a color negative. The results are pretty impressive:  The scanner will capture every nuance of the negative along with every freakin’ scratch, dust speck and fingerprint I happen to leave on it.  So I have to clean – and usually re-clean – each strip before inserting it into the scanner.

Not even that is enough for my old negatives.  Kodak recommends storing your negatives “in a cool, dry, dark place”, and now I understand why.  Under not-so-ideal storage conditions, the film emulsion will retract from the acetate backing, basically leaving you with a mess that sort of resembles a web built by a spider on acid.  Most of my negatives going back more than 20 years look like this:

With a little experimentation and before I start scanning a group of negatives I’ve learned to soak them in a very weak and lukewarm Photoflo solution, then squeegee and dry them .  The emulsion, after wetting, tends to swell just enough so that the cracks all but disappear.  This is the result:

This is an impressive improvement but to my chagrin this is also meticulous work.  Emulsion – especially wet emulsion – is notoriously fragile and great care must be taken not to damage the negatives further.  So my project, which I thought would take a year or so, is now consuming the better part of most evenings and there is no end in sight.

To date I have only dropped two strips of negatives on the floor.  I’m sure that more will follow.

Death of a Cat

Mandy, our 20-something year-old cat, died in my wife’s arms this evening.

We knew she was going; she hadn’t eaten in a week, and was barely able to lift her head today.  Yet for some reason my wife (the chaplain and nurse) decided to pick her up and hold her, and 15 minutes later the cat was gone.

Eerie, but touching.  My wife was also present at her father’s and mother’s deaths, 11 years apart, at the hospital.  We knew that they appreciated her presence.  As for the cat, I think Mandy was holding out for my wife to hold her one last time.

I hope my wife is there when it’s my turn.

Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac: The Pending Bailout

For sale signs (courtesy http://realagile.wordpress.com/)

A frugal investor that I know very well, someone who doesn’t buy what he can’t afford, will once again pay for the sins of those less frugal than him.  That him is me.

I saw this coming five years ago and I didn’t try to do anything about it. My bad.

Congress is currently mulling a bailout for Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac which will, no doubt, get one unless the housing market does a huge turnaround in hurry (it won’t).  Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com told NPR:

“Unless you’re a shareholder I wouldn’t be worried because there is no chance that the federal government would allow these institutions to fail — to stop doing business. It would just be catastrophic for the system, for our economy. It’s just not going to happen.”

Bloomberg’s web site was a bit more cautious, indicating that a taxpayer-fueled bailout was a last resort:

“The government would not step up to support the enterprises until they’ve exhausted all options, including acceptance of significant shareholder dilution,” [Joshua] Rosner, whose research firm is based in New York, said in a telephone interview. “And if the government did have to get involved, I would expect equity holders would lose everything.”

What irks me is that this is a repeat of the S&L crisis of the late 80’s, prompted by the deregulation of the banking industry, which eventually led to 1) a recession and 2) today’s banking system where savings accounts earn a whopping 0.3% a year while credit cards cost you somewhere around 1 ½ to 2% a month for outstanding debt. The subsequent S&L $157 billion bailout plus interest, to save the industy, came courtesy of Congress.

This decade the mortgage credit industry learned to wrap their riskiest tranches in sweet-smelling language, leaving the rotting carcasses for whatever investor was at the end of that food chain.  Typically, that is the small investor, you and me.  (Stan O’Neal, Merrill Lynch’s former CEO, only got $161 million when he resigned after leading his company to an $8 billion dollar loss in a single quarter; his shareholders got coal in their stockings.)

I am unclear on the concept of not letting foolish investors suffer the risks of foolish investment.  I am unclear on why one should receive any kind of reward for buying a house that wasn’t affordable in the first place.  Is there something wrong with a free market economy? Congressional attempts to prevent the greedy from taking advantage of the less-greedy seem filled with loopholes that allow the greedy to 1) become greedier and 2) shoot themselves in the foot knowing that they’ll probably get some kind of bailout anyway.

Today’s mortgage crisis was perpetrated by greed all the way around.  Any bailout will guarantee that I will pay for that greed twice, by living through the recessional fallout and paying for the bailout.  Ugh.

Wii

I got my first chance to use a Nintendo Wii a couple of weeks ago when my wife and I had 4 other couples over for dinner.  We bowled and we boxed, and our guests left sweaty and sore.  For a few hundred dollars, the electronics technology that goes into the playstation is pretty amazing, not to mention the physical workout one can get.

The Wii Remote, in particular, has captured the imagination of many games developers, and some have garnered a bit of fame making the Wii do things that it was never intended to do.  Take Carnegie Mellon PhD Johnny Lee, for example.  As one of the more (if not most) notable Wii special effects developers, he’s not only created some really neat software but then he puts it on YouTube for all to see.

The links from Johnny Lee’s website at CMU to other sites get pretty techy, pretty quickly, and are even for me a bit overwhelming and dry.  However, what fascinates me is the capability built into the Wii Remote:  A 1024×768 infrared camera with hardware blob detection and a 3-axis accelerometer, both running at 100 Hz sampling.  All in a device weighing a few ounces.  For about $39.99 retail.

Even if you don’t understand infrared, blobs and accelerometers, suffice it to say that this technology combination appeals to many:  space exploration, especially the use of robotic spacewalkers, just got easier and cheaper.  Intelligent automobiles that not only know how to maintain proper stopping distance from the car in front but also understand lane changes.  Total immersion into a 3D virtual realm running off a standard video display.  Completely foldable, interactive displays.  Motion capture.

All of this innovation has led both Microsoft and Sony on a fast track to catch up and maybe surpass Nintendo’s capabilities.  As a result of this competition the games industry will shortly turn Bioshock and Unreal Tournament into your grandmother’s Oldsmobile overnight.

After years of ho-hum single-person shoot ’em ups, gaming is interesting again.

On Bicycles

The social popularity of any one particular athletic activity is fleeting at best.  It used to be that baseball and softball were so popular in Western New York that there weren’t enough diamonds to go around; today the number of leagues continues to decline.  I remember when racquetball was greatly in vogue; today the former Waterfront Racquet and Fitness Center is a post office. Recreational soccer reached its apex about 10 years ago and its numbers are slowly declining.

In this decade bicycling has picked up considerable steam, and in particular, this year there is no end to the number of articles and blog postings giving credence to its popularity.  It too will have its heyday, and then taper back down to the diehards as the next sport du jour gets press time.

I’ve been a serious cyclist for most of this decade.  My desire to cycle has to do with my inability to run long distances anymore – too many knee surgeries.  Cycling is therefore merely therapeutic for me, never meant to be a means to save fuel costs.  In fact, I would argue that consistent cycling is more expensive in the long run because

• good bicycles, which you’ll need if you bike a lot of miles, are not cheap; and
• the extra food that you consume because of your increased metabolism will bite your pocketbook as much as a tank of gas will.

Nonetheless, we may soon be reaching a tipping point where the popularity of cycling will induce changes to transportation infrastructure that will further encourage cycling, such as biking lanes or just wider, smoother shoulders on roadways.  As its popularity continues to increase I can only hope that drivers start paying a bit more attention to whom they share the road.  I mentioned this before:  I have no desire to become road kill, so vigilance is a very important part of my exercise.

I do not get a thrill from sucking exhaust and dodging traffic, so my trips take me into the back roads of Wales, Holland, Aurora, Colden, Cowlesville, Sheldon and other small country towns where I breathe fresh air, enjoy the scenery and take on the hill climbs.  I have no desire to commute to work on bike, even less desire to ride a long, flat street from one suburb to the next.

Biking will never save me money nor help me reduce my carbon footprint.  It will keep me fit, that’s all.

Cutting Someone Loose

I hate firing people.

As necessary as it sometimes is for the sake of both the employer and employee to part ways it is never easy nor fun.  I abhor that part of my job.

My former employee and I will both go home tonight lost in thought.

Paul and the Romans

The Catholic church needs to dumb it down a little. Just a little. Okay, maybe a lot.

As much as I love the Mass and some of the tradition that goes along with it, the Vatican II Council made a big mistake when it opted for the vernacular to bring the Mass to the people. It should also have offered explanations.

Explanations for the readings prior to each reading, so that people would know what the readings were really about.

Take this Sunday’s second reading, from Paul to the Romans. On a difficulty scale of one to ten this reading is a twelve, with a sentence structure so foreign (read: ungrammatical) that it is impossible to decipher by just listening to it. The congregation’s eyes collectively glazed over. I should know. I was the lector reading it to them, and I studied it hard to get the inflection and oratory as meaningful as possible.

So what was the point? It would only take an additional 60 seconds to provide an explanation of the context and meaning of the reading so that the congregation would more fully grasp what the reading was about. I wanted to do this; our priest basically (but nicely) said no.

And before chiding me by claiming that if one really wanted to get more out of the reading that they would study it beforehand, I say that obligations aside, the Church teaches us to be all-embracing, not elitist. There are many, myself included, who need and want an explanation of the more difficult passages of the Bible, and Paul’s letters happen to be almost entirely of that nature.

If the Church is going to continue feeding us snippets, it needs to provide us with context for that snippet.  Otherwise, we won’t fully appreciate the meaning.

Calvin and Hobbes

I stumbled on this while Stumbling.

Calvin and Hobbes was a most endearing, satisfying comic strip, and it still is today.  Maybe because I could relate to Calvin’s curiosity cum trouble-making ability, or maybe just because it was timelessly funny, my life lost a little something when Bill Watterson retired this strip in 1995.

This comic has been gone longer than it was in existence.  I still laugh out loud when I re-read it.

Dump the Pump

Today is “Dump the Pump” day, advertised throughout the nation as the day we should all try to take mass transit to work. I heard about it on the radio while I was filling my tank at the gas station, how ironic. The fillup cost me $65 and will last less than a week. I do not own a big car. It gets around 27 city, 32 highway.

But I live a good distance from my job, and that job demands non-regular hours. It will never be 9-5 so I drive alone, daily, like 85% of all other commuters in Western New York.

Aside from downsizing to an even smaller vehicle my wife and I have taken great pains to reduce our carbon footprint – something Dick Cheney might call a personal virtue but what we consider to be absolutely essentially for sustained future growth. Since 1997 we successfully cut our natural gas consumption by 60% and this past winter saved about $1,000 in the process. Our largest gas bill was $110. I have not taken the time to track our electricity consumption but I am quite sure that it too is significantly less than what it was just a few years ago.

It has not crimped our lifestyle.

Conservation is, however, all about habits, about changing the little things: Turning off the lights when you leave a room, sleeping with an extra blanket, caulking the windows, wearing sweaters, and being especially conscious of how you are using and wasting energy.

Four-dollar-a-gallon gas may have one saving grace: It may force all of us to make energy conservation a personal virtue.

Where Does the Time Go?

I’m fritterin’ too much time away on news of all sorts, in an insane and inevitable attempt to stay atop world events.

The upcoming Presidential election (because it does not leave physical scars like hitting myself with a hammer does). That Obama is a muslim (note to self: he is not). PTSD. Scott McClellan. More Scott McClellan. Mars Phoenix Lander. Tomato salmonella. Venezuela. The economy, stupid. ECMC versus the rest of the world.

My personal interests – regionalism, entrepreneurialism, science, technology, religion and politics to name a few – keep me traipsing through upwards of a hundred or more web sites a week, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Of late there appears to be a lot more Internet chaff than ever before.  As an information source, the Internet is destined to become mired in its own contradictions.  Or else to become self-aware, like HAL or Skynet.

Maybe both.

Faulty Intelligence

My pacifist sensibilities have been challenged ever since the Bush Administration and 9/11 crossed paths.  Today brought an article by the Senate Intelligence committee regarding the misuse of intelligence by the Bush Administration to justify the Iraq War, something that the media has reported for some time now.  That the majority of the committee members are from one party, you can be sure that the minority party would claim bias.

The report shows an administration that “led the nation to war on false premises,” said the committee’s Democratic Chairman, Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia. Several Republicans on the committee protested its findings as a “partisan exercise.”

The Republican members of the committee insisted that the report demonstrated that Bush administration statements were backed by intelligence and “it was the intelligence that was faulty,” a statement which to me tries to deflect the Administration’s accountability for its resulting actions.

Faulty intelligence?  Wouldn’t we also call that stupidity?  I wrote some time ago that pre-war planning for an Iraq invasion began shortly after President Bush took office, prior to 9/11, perhaps because “Saddam tried to kill my daddy“.  I still find this to be one of the more legitimate reasons for rushing headlong to war without regard to getting it right or wrong.  It’s the one truth that President Bush has spoken that stands up to the subsequent evidence.

This Administration had intelligence that was wrong about weapons of mass destruction, wrong about ties between Saddam Hussein and terrorists, wrong about the Iraqis greeting the American troops with open arms, wrong about the invasion being cheap and easy, wrong about the $50 to 60 billion cost for the war, and wrong about bringing the shining beacon of Democracy to the Middle East.

So am I wrong to think less of this Administration than all the other Administrations I’ve lived through?

I think not.

Talking to Inmates

This entry is about social justice.

Most of us adults are not as emotionally extreme as we were, say, as teenagers. I know this is not always true, but for the vast majority of us our emotional swings don’t stray off the center line nearly as much as they did when our hormones were raging, when our wisdom was limited and before we put more years under our feet.

People change with time. Last Friday I had to face that reality like never before when I sat with a cold-blooded killer, behind bars for the past 25 years, telling me that after doing his time he’s ready to rejoin society as a changed individual. Only if the New York State Parole Board has its way, his sentence will be “adjusted” so that he never gets out. It’s one of the ways that New York wants to show how tough it is on crime. It’s also sort of like the Parole Board playing the role of judge – passing sentence – and on those grounds it’s being contested in federal court.

There is no doubt that CBK should have gotten a long sentence for his crime. And our society seems willing to go to great lengths to prevent another Willie Horton from occurring, even if it means locking up all violent felons and throwing away the key, without giving merit to whether or not they change with time.

The problem is that most violent crime is not premeditated. It is a crime of rage, of emotional extreme. Now that CBK has spent half his life in jail and has had plenty of time to re-think his life – to come down off the emotional extremes where he lived as a young adult – the people he has worked with the past decade probably agree that he is neither a danger to himself nor to others. Yet he may never get the chance to have a second chance, something his victim’s relatives may wholly agree with but nevertheless makes two victims out of one crime.

Contrast this with the pedophile sex offender, whose crime is an addiction to a socially unacceptable form of sex. I would consider this individual much more likely to fall back on his addiction should he be released back into society. Under New York State law the pedophile will re-enter society after doing his time. The quiet, gray-haired guy who killed someone in his youth and spent an entire generation trying to make amends for it may never get the opportunity.

I’m not convinced that this is equitable justice. Cephus, Bissonette House and other social justice centers would probably agree.