Random things

Premature Walruses

While the whole article is interesting, this bit from Joel Spolsky’s recent article in for Inc really rang true:

Think of it in these terms: Mama walruses deliver their calves at the end of a 15- to 16-month pregnancy. You might ask the mother to commit to 15 months and she might say, “No problem!” Or you might say, “Fifteen months? Are you crazy? We need this in eight months!” Of course, haggling like this can’t possibly make things happen any faster, and even if you get the walrus to agree to an eight-month timetable, I’ll let you in on a little secret: It’ll never happen. You can have a schedule that says 11 months, but you’ll still ship in 15 months, because that is how long it takes to make a baby walrus. Sixteen, sometimes.

We have a project going on at work now that was originally supposed to be in field trial by the end of the year.  The principal on the project is leaving the company, so now it’s gotten tossed over the wall to us.  We need to come up with a new date by the end of the month.  We only have a rough idea of what the final solution will be, and all kinds of interesting questions about the scope of the project.  Thankfully the project is actually fairly interesting, and our management is generally pretty understanding of justifiable schedule slips.

New Toy: Macbook Pro

So after a year or so of nagging on and off, work agreed to buy Macbooks for the people in our group that wanted one.  As a result, I’ve ended up with a 15” Pro.  So far there are some things I like and don’t like.

• The screen is beautiful.  I wish it were a little higher DPI, but the resolution is better than I was expecting.  The LED backlighting should also mean that I won’t be horribly disappointed that the screen isn’t as bright as it was the first day in a few weeks.
• Magsafe is neat.  Magsafe plugs shouldn’t fit as well into usb ports as they do into the Magsafe plug.  No, this didn’t end badly, but on the 15” MBP, they’re right next to each other and it’s easy to put the plug into the USB port if you’re not paying attention.
• The keyboard is ok.  I find it a bit awkward, but I suspect I’m just not used to it.  It seems really stupid that I have a dedicated eject key, but no home/pgup/pgdn/end keys, but with DoubleCommand, it’s livable.
• The trackpad and gestures work very well.  I’m generally fairly indifferent about input devices.  I’ve used mice, trackpads, trackpoints, trackballs, etc, and I find that I get used to all of them fairly quickly.  The right click with two finger tap works much better than I expected, but I’d still prefer to just have two mouse buttons.  Hint to Apple: Make it look like one mouse button, but make the mechanicals underneath be able to tell if you clicked on the left or right hand side.  Then make OSX consider the two sides to be one button by default.  That way you don’t confuse anyone, and people that want two mouse buttons have it out of the box.  Consider this my proof for prior art when you try to patent this idea.
• Sound is definitely better than any Thinkpad I’ve used.  It’s unrealistic to expect it to be fantastic, but it’s completely workable, compared to IBM who likes to put speakers on the bottom of the laptop…
• Power brick is kind of large, but no larger than average really.  Power cord is longer than average I’d say, which is nice.
• The thermal design, for lack of a better term, sucks.  The MBP is generally always a little warm, and if the CPU is maxed out then the fans kick up to really high RPMS and it becomes too hot to have in your lap.  None of the other laptops I’ve owned in the past 5 years (Including a CoreDuo and Core2Duo) had any thermal issues.

All and all, I’m pretty pleased with it so far.

C&O Canal Trip

So, if everything goes well, next Wednesday I’ll be leaving to from Cumberland, MD to ride the length of the C&O Canal. It’s 184 miles, fairly flat, and should be mostly downhill to the end point in Georgetown. I’m planning to do the trip self supported over 4 days or so, although Caitlin will be staying in the area for the first day or so, if something comes up and I need something.

I’ve been stressing a little bit about the prep work, but it’s mostly coming together now. I’ve got 80-90% of the gear I’m bringing with me gathered together, and the tent, sleeping bag, etc are already packed up.

It’s going to be a little tight, since I’m traveling to Tampa for a business trip on Monday night, and coming back on Wednesday morning, but I’m planning to head home when I get back into town and finish my packing. Then we’ll load the car up and Caitlin will drive Paul and I up to Cumberland. I’m tentatively planning to ride the first 10-15 miles of the path that evening, and then I’ll setup camp.

If you’re curious, there is more information on the C&O canal at Bike Washington and the National Park Service.

Sometimes you get more than you paid for

Either I’m insanely lucky, or Etymotic ER6’s are incredibly well made.  I ran mine through the washing machine and then through the dryer (on high heat, for about an hour).  I had a horrible sinking feeling when I saw them fall on the floor when I was taking clothes out.  However, the net effect appears to be that the foam ear tips are cleaner.

I’m listening to Pandora through them on my laptop now, and they sound great as usual.

Biked 1000 miles.

I noticed this morning when I uploaded 8 tracks to Motionbased that I’ve apparently passed the 1000 miles ridden point, almost 1100 miles. If I ride in 4 times a week on average, then I’ll come pretty close to 1500 miles for the first year of bike commuting to work. I’ve also lost around 40-45 lb over those miles, although dieting had a lot to do with it. I’m definitely in better shape, and I definitely have a lot more defintion in my legs than I did before. I also have some really weird tan lines, especially on my feet since I usually wear sandals when riding. Overall I’m pretty happy with bike commuting. It takes about twice as long to get to work (30min vs an hour, with showering), but it’s still a lot faster than going to the gym, plus it’s a lot cheaper overall.

Bike store suckage

I’ve been fairly disappointed with the bike stores in Fairfax. Occasionally I’ll merely get mediocre customer service, but usually worse. On top of that they generally treat me like an idiot, when I it’s not unusual for me to know more than they do about the topic I’m asking about. Perhaps this will get better when the weather gets worse, and all the college students go back to school.

To give an example, I went into Spokes, Etc wearing this shirt and wanted to test ride a bike with drop-bars. I wasn’t real picky, I just wanted to ride something with drop bars since I’m thinking I may buy or build a new bike this winter. I walk into the store, look around a little, and find the Specialized Sequoia and Trek Portland. Pretty quickly one of the younger guys comes over and asks if he can help me with something. I explain what I’m looking for, and he starts explaining to me what carbon fiber is, and why I want it (I don’t), and explaining that I’ll want fenders on the bike, and a rack etc, after I tell him I already bike commute to work.

One nice thing about test rides at Spokes is that all they require is your ID and a credit card. The weird thing is that not only did they not require me to ride a helmet, but they didn’t even mention anything about it. I had bought mine and left it in the car, but I thought that was really odd. It seems like from a liability and advocacy standpoint they’d want to push that push people to wear helmets. I have to think that marketing concerns won out over the others (people are more likely to test ride, and buy a bike if it’s less hassle).

So I rode the Trek Portland two blocks down Maple Street and and about two miles down the W&OD and back. I noticed pretty quickly that something was making an awful racket, like one of the derailers were dragging on the chain or something. I pulled over on the side of the trail, and figured out that they didn’t remove all the packaging and there is a sticker on the front derailer that’s dragging on the chain and making all the noise.

Overall I liked the drop bars, but I didn’t like much else about the bike. The disc brakes were mushy, the shifting was loose, the seat was horrible, and the ride was generally really rough, even with the suspension seat post.

One thing I didn’t realize about the Shimano STI 105 brake/shifters (The Sequoia has the same ones), is that they’re setup so that you can easily shift with your hands on the top of the bars, and you can brake from the top of the bars fairly effectively also. However, I found it really difficult to brake with my hands down in the drops, due to the long reach required. This seems pretty odd to me, since I have fairly large hands to start with. In addition, it was really awkward to actually shift with my hands in the drops, due to the very large amount of travel required to get it to click over to the next gear. I wonder if the STI levers were installed higher up on the drop bars than normal to make it easier to shift from the top, and that compromised the shifting and braking from the bottom of the drops.

When I brought the bike back to Spokes, I mentioned that I thought the shifters were pretty awkward when shifting from the bottom of the drops. I was going to ask if I could test ride a bike with Ultegra or Dura-Ace levers to see if the feel on those was better, when the guy cut me off and basically blew me off with a line about how “you’ll get used to it”. I’m pretty sure my fingers aren’t getting any longer, so I don’t see how it’d be possible for me to “get used to” the levers being too far away.

Anyway, this just reinforces my idea that I’d be a lot better off doing all my own maintenance, and building out my next bike on my own.

First weight loss goal met

So I’ve finally managed to get under, and stay under 180lb for a period of time. Back a few months ago, I managed to weigh in under 180 once or twice, but never could stay under. So I guess it’s official that I’ve lost about 40-45lb now. I think I still need to lose another 5-10lb, but I’m pretty close to where I’d like to be now after about a year of on and off weight loss.

Re: Intellectual Bargain Shopping

Jeffery Veen quoted Nietzsche:

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence. - Friedrich Nietzsche

And he goes on to argue that this is another way of looking at the old “users are stupid” adage. He says “Users aren’t stupid, they’re efficient,” and I largely agree. However, this only works because users are generally providing value back, either in the form of payment, feedback, community, etc. This also applies to the “people are stupid” adage, but not in nearly so positive a light. An “efficent” co-worker, or friend doesn’t necessarily provide value back to you. It’s frequently just as likely that they’re efficent only from their own perspective, and they find it much easier to ask me to do whatever task for them, regardless of how long it may take me to do it. This is a good thing to keep in mind, especially in a work environment. It’s frequently not efficent for you to do things for other people even though they would love for you to. It may be more up front effort to teach them how to do something new, but if they’re going to be at your desk every other day asking for it, you need to ask yourself if that’s time-effective for either of you. Sometimes when you tell people you’ll show them how, or point them to documentation, will think this is “putting them off”, and refuse to put in the effort to try for themselves, but I try to emphasize that I’ll be happy to help them with any problems they have, if they give it a try. The flip side is that everyone can’t know how to do everything. There is a large gray area between the specialist and generalist, and both ends are gunuinely useful. Sometimes it does make sense for you to be the goto person for certain tasks, as long as there is some plan for when you’re not around.

Log and Pics from W&OD ride

I forgot to mention that I posted the log of my W&OD ride on Motionbased.  I also took some pictures of the Lucky Stone Quarry on my way through.

Cycling on the W&OD

I took my first ride out on the W&OD this weekend and I managed to do 40 miles, which is about double what I’ve done in a single ride before. I started out in Herndon, around the 20 mile marker, and rode out to Paeonian Springs. I stopped at a small grocery there and had lunch, mostly because they have the only marked bathrooms between Leesburg and Purceville.

I really enjoyed the ride and I’ve not seen so many cyclists in one place before. It was something I expected, but still a different experience. I’d also heard that the trail gets pretty crowded on the weekend, and it was, but not to an extent where it at all a hassle. One nice thing compared to other multi-use paths I’ve been on in the past is that none of the pedestrians seem to get phased by bikes passing them at 15-20mph, and all of them seem to know to stay to the right side of the path. I’m guessing this is because the bikes outnumber the pedestrians by a large margin, so they learn quick, but it’s a nice change.

I was really wiped out for most of the day after the ride. I wasn’t sore (although I am a little today), but I mostly just wanted to take a nap.
I think it’d be nice to be able to get out and do this sort of thing every week or two.
I’m thinking next time I’d like to do mile 20 to mile 0 on the W&OD or maybe Mount Vernon trail.