My Last Thought

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I think this is what I want my headstone to say as well.

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My Favorite World Cup Moment (So Far)

I was sorta-watching the match between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Nigeria over the weekend. Sorta-watching because I was at work and the game was on my phone. Wee tiny soccer.

Nigeria had a 1-goal lead and time was running out for the Bosnians. Suddenly, a rash of horrific injuries swept through the ranks of the Nigerians, injuries so awful that all the poor men could do was to lie on the turf in agony. Play stops in these situations, but the clock keeps ticking!. The ref adds a bit of time at the end of the game to make up for the stoppages, but when a team really commits to lying on the grass, they will chew up far more game time than the ref adds back on.

One of these terrible injuries occurred right by the sideline. The Nigerian was so blinded by pain he couldn’t even manage to roll three feet to get off the field of play. FIFA officials and doctors hovered around the seemingly-mortally-wounded athlete, wringing their hands. FIFA people are under strict orders not to risk exacerbating the injuries of world-class athletes, and the team doctors had no interest at all in seeing this man to a speedy recovery. Not while he was on the field of play, anyway. Once a player reaches the sidelines the restorative atmosphere suddenly improves to the point where the stricken lad is often able to rejoin the fray in a matter of seconds.

If only there was a way to get the wounded man to the sidelines and the instant relief to be found there! To be so close to the sidelines but still unable to get that last couple of feet must be pure torment.

Happily, the Bosnian goalkeeper was level-headed enough to provide succor to his foe. The goalie ran over, grabbed the Nigerian under the armpits, and pulled him bodily off the pitch, to the alarm and consternation of FIFA officials and team doctors. I’m sure the Nigerian player was grateful, however, because in a few seconds he was completely healed. I imagine that after the game he probably bought the Bosnian goalie a beer in gratitude.

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Thwarted!

Yesterday morning I had my best ride to work yet. I just felt strong, and my time showed it. Yesterday evening I thought I would be tired after the energy expended in the morning, but I crushed the ride, averaging 15 miles per hour over 14.5 miles (not counting time at traffic lights). For many, that’s not so spectacular. For me, it’s huge. 29 quality miles yesterday.

As I was pulling up to the house last night, my bike suddenly started making a funny noise. I thought one of my panniers was rubbing on the wheel; I thought little of it.

This morning I was ready to continue my streak. I had no illusions that I’d be able to repeat my performance of the day before, but the morning air was crisp, my legs didn’t feel heavy at all, and even if it wasn’t going to be a fast ride, it was going to be a pleasant one.

Except it turns out that funny noise was a flat tire. I drove to work today.

I’ve been really fortunate in my cycling career, I guess; back in San Diego I would ride to work a couple of times a week, and I’ve never had a flat before.

Brief tangent: Unpacking all the stuff I’d put in storage from my time in San Diego, I came across a pair of bike shorts. Back in the day, I realized I was overweight and getting worse, so I resolved to ride to work a couple of times a week — 17 miles and three significant hills. I bought the shorts mainly for the padding in significant places. The thought of putting on those shorts right now is laughable. My target weight is what I weighed the last time I started biking to lose weight. Sigh.

Now I just want to ride my bike. I’ve got the newbie enthusiasm and I’m not ashamed of it. In fact I intend to milk it for all it’s worth. First, however, I have to learn how to change a tube.

Are You Sure You Have the Right Event?

This is the logo for the FIFA World cup:

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One of the F’s in FIFA stands for ‘football’, the more-descriptive name for the most popular sport in the world. It is the least hand-oriented sport I can think of.

Yet… look again at that logo. It’s made of hands! It looks like multiple people grabbing for the ball — something that never, ever, would happen in that game. It’s like using swim fins in a hockey logo. I’m sure the folks at FIFA had thousands of designs to choose from; surely one of them actually represented the game being played.

Day of the Hoobajoob: Prelude

Today I opened the box of Moviprep and carefully read the instructions. It sounds benign enough – something you would use to prepare for a movie, right? And that’s exactly what it is.

There are only two problems: Where the movie will be shot, and what is required to prepare for it. Moviprep requires a prescription, and unless there’s something pretty crazy going on in there, it’s not likely to be playing at a theater near you.

Yep, you guessed it. I turned fifty a couple of months back, an age at which men must become more vigilant, which includes letting strangers stick fiber optics where there is no ambient light.

My doctor said, “I’d like to tell you it’s not so bad, but… It’s pretty unpleasant.” Not as unpleasant as discovering cancer too late, though, so here I go.

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Numbers, English, and Lazy Programmers

While doing research for an episode you will likely see shortly, I went to YouTube and did a search. This is what I got back:
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Note that it says I got “About 1 results”. Obviously, “results” is incorrect. There’s only one result! And About? What’s the standard deviation on that result?

This from a company that was bought by Google for a billion dollars or so. You’d think they’d have someone who could spend five frickin’ minutes to put in

if (results.count == 1) {…

and to only include the word “About” when the code rounds off the number of results (which it does for very large result sets). Neither of those things should be difficult, and I’d be embarrassed if my program were so sloppy. Yet there it is on one of YouTube’s most oft-loaded pages.

MapMyRide.com made a bit more of an effort, but didn’t test all the cases:
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11st place! The rule that works for 1 and 21 doesn’t work for 11. Crazy English and the words we have for the low teens. I sent off a friendly report to MayMyRide letting them know; the bug was in a new feature, and MMR doesn’t have the resources that YouTube does. We’ll see if they fix it before I fall to 13rd place.

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I am BOMB

Yesterday as I was riding to work I was making pretty decent time when I heard “on your left”, which is what courteous bicyclists say when they are passing you. I get passed pretty often.

“Good morning,” the guy said as he breezed on past. “Mornin’!” I wheezed back to the receding member of the Spandex Crowd. Just ahead was another cyclist, one I was actually overtaking, and the man who had just passed me did not wish that dude a good morning. Another data point in my current study of human nature.

You see, when I ride for an hour in the morning and again in the evening, it gives me plenty of time to ponder the loosely-knit fellowship called ‘cyclists’. Under that umbrella there are several varieties of cyclist, including but by no means limited to Asian grandfathers riding purple little girls’ bicycles complete with white wicker baskets (that is a very small group), heavily-laden commuters (I’m in that group), hispanic men on fat-tired cruisers, and at the top of the heap, there is the Spandex Crowd.

Soon after I started my bike commuting regimen, the local Bike to Work Day went off, and I saw cyclists of every description. I watched cyclists interact with each other (myself included – I am inscrutable even to myself), and I observed a few patterns.

For instance, there’s The Nod. It’s a little upward head movement passed between cyclists who make eye contact. I didn’t get nods from the Spandex Crowd. Not because they’re snobs, not at all, but because they’re riding. Their heads are down and they’re locked to their pedals and they’re not at some high-school mixer where you say hi to every stranger who comes close. Heck, the design of the bicycles they ride makes socializing more awkward.

There was one group, however, a subclass of commuter, with whom I exchanged many nods. I have dubbed them Bearded Overweight Men on Bikes, or BOMB. In the days following Bike to Work Day, the BOMB population slowly dwindled, until I rarely see another BOMB anymore. For a while I was a BOMB, now I might be the BOMB.

So how did it come to pass that a member of the Spandex Crowd wished me a good morning? I think it’s because he honestly wanted me to have a good morning. I think he also remembered passing me a few days before, and a few days before that. I think he said ‘good morning’ but also said, ‘Welcome to the brotherhood, Bearded Overweight Man on a Bike. I hope to pass you many more times in the future.”

I’m looking forward to it as well.

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E-mail Privacy

Apparently, it is simply not possible for an American company to offer secure email. Sooner or later the United States Government is going to come knocking, and they’re not above judicial film-flams to get what they want.

Google doesn’t want your email encrypted, either. They want to read it and sell what you’ve written to advertisers.

But there’s nothing stopping you from encrypting your own email, except the inconvenience of getting your communication channels set up with your friends. Unfortunately, that’s still a PITA, especially for friends who cling to browser-based email reading.

My perfect world: every email is encrypted. There is no reliance on a central authority for the encryption. No email company or certificate authority that can be hacked or subpoenaed.

My perfect world may be a tiny bit closer to reality: Apple has announced that the next version of the Mac OS will have streamlined email encryption. S/MIME is already supported in Apple’s Mail app, but it’s not nearly as simple as it should be. If I were in charge, setting up your computer would automatically generate your own identity certificate, and every email you send would have it attached. With a single click anyone who got that email would set up a secure, encrypted email connection with you. And that would be that.

We’ll see how close Apple comes. But it gladdened my crusty old heart to see a big company at least talking about the issue.

The Cost of Driving

One of the justifications for my new bike was that in the long run it would save us money. But how much? How long will it take to recoup the large wad of cash I just jettisoned at the neighborhood bike store?

I spent a few minutes last weekend poking around on the Internet for help calculating the cost per mile I drive in the Miata. I found some sites that were helpful, and some that were disingenuous at best. They all come to a false conclusion after they do the math.

Let’s start with this site: The True Cost of Driving, which undertakes to find a per-mile cost that considers everything, including the economic impact of paving over stuff to accommodate cars. While I applaud the effort, let’s face it the numbers they use vary tremendously by where you live and are worthless without showing the math. Societal cost is really foggy. Important, but foggy. Apparently every mile I drive costs us all about a nickel for cleaning up accidents. And am I to take it seriously when it says that every mile I drive costs pedestrians and cyclists 1.4¢ for “barrier effects”?

Not mentioned is the value of the time saved by driving compared to alternatives. That’s why we drive. This assumes my time has value; arguable considering the amount of time I spent on this little research project. But if the time lost by inconvenienced pedestrians has value, my time should have value as well, and should be factored as a reduction in the cost per mile.

Almost all the calculators I found include the fixed costs of owning a vehicle in the cost-per-mile calculation. Makes sense; the cost of getting my car insured should be amortized over the miles I drive.

So then we have a cost per mile that includes those fixed costs. I can’t find the calculator page for the more level-headed AAA cost-per-mile estimator, but here it says the average is around $.60 per mile.

But here’s the problem: those same people who guided you through the calculation will turn around and tell you that you will save sixty cents for every mile you don’t drive. That is false. Your fixed costs are, well, fixed. It costs the same to register your car no matter how many miles you drive. Drive fewer miles, and your cost per mile goes up.

So, while recognizing that driving less will benefit society as well by a difficult-to-measure amount, how much actual pocket money do I save for each mile I choose a bike over a car? (Note: all the bicycle folks out there apparently consider each mile on a bicycle to be absolutely free, even the advocates who have $10,000 bikes or who have had insurance-funded knee surgery.)

I found myself going back to the drawing board. I know that with my older, smaller car, my out-of-pocket cost per mile will be lower than average, but maintenance is the big variable. I’ve saved a few hundred bucks doing some repairs myself, so if you don’t count the intangible value of my time, maintenance costs are under control — for now. There’s a clutch out there with my name on it.

I had a long, rather tedious paragraph here showing my math, but to summarize: fuel, mile-based depreciation, tires, maintenance, and “other” comes out to about 25¢ per mile in savings that go straight to my bank account for each mile I don’t drive. That’s a little over six bucks per commute.

The answer to “how long will it take to recoup the investment?”: a long time.

If driving less extends the life of my car by a year, however, then all these calculations are moot; I end up saving a ton of money. The cost per mile of my next car will be MUCH higher — at least for the first few years. Delaying that uptick in expenses is also money in the bank, but harder to quantify without a time machine.

Remember, 25¢ per mile does not include the cost of repairing (or adapting to) the harm I do to our planet for each mile I drive. I may well save the world as a whole more money than I save for myself.

Finally, if all this riding extends the life of my heart for a year (a reasonably likely outcome, actually), the savings go off the chart. But that’s a different sort of calculation.

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