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March 31, 2006
Score:5, Insightful
Slashdot had an entry yesterday on Lowering the Odds of Being Outsourced.
Somebody with username rsilvergun had the first 5-rated comment:
So the best way to avoid being outsourced IT is to get into management? doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose of getting into IT? That's kinda like saying the best way to avoid losing your job in the steel mill is to get a degree in medicine.
I'm not sure working as a doctor is worse than pouring steel ingots, but I get the idea.
Of course wasting spare time on Slashdot is not going to lower your odds of being outsourced either. That's why you have to get Slashdot as a feed at Bloglines.com. RSS helps improve your effectiveness by enabling you to waste time efficiently.
Update: Somebody with username Captain Tripps came out with another nugget of wisdom.
Maybe it won't be possible, but if I have to go back to school to retrain, the last thing I'm getting is an MBA. I'm gonna look around for another career I like.
And concerning the folks who right now don't have to worry about being outsourced (until we find competent people even cheaper), somebody with username Gopal.V wrote this:
My first job paid about 250 USD per month before taxes. I stuck to it because I was a geek with no great academics to speak of, coming from an outside (read as - not from IIT or NIT) college and hadn't got the financial backing to follow up my GRE score. And in about seven months, I'd end up replacing my father in the earning capacity. It was so scary that I was grabbing at straws with my first job - I'd worked for more than 40 days at a stretch, working weekends and taking five days off to rush home every quarter.
Okay, I give up. Time to water the potatoes.
Posted by Mark at 08:36 PM | TrackBack
Atheists America's most distrusted
A study by some folks at the University of Minnesota identified atheists as America's most distrusted minority.
I've gotten mail on the subject and seen the article mentioned in various places around the blogosphere. This may be one of those studies that gets more attention outside than inside the United States.
What was the context?
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society." Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
That got me thinking about how the methodology. Did they have some students make these calls?
Hello?Mr. Craig?
Yes.
Hi, this is Jane Smith from the University of Minnesota. We're conducting a telephone survey of Americans like yourself, looking at which minorities you consider least trustworthy...
Phone marketing people. No, make that people who manage phone marketing people.
...Huh? Let me ask you a few questions and get your rankings for these minority groups.
Well, we were just sitting down to dinner...
That's okay. This will only take a few minutes. Question 1. In order of most to least, how do the following groups rate at sharing your vision of American society?
According to one of the researchers, apparently only 3% of people in the US are atheists.
Posted by Mark at 04:20 PM | TrackBack
54:14/133
Easy recovery run. It was a beautiful day, so about 6 of us went out for a jog.
Posted by Mark at 04:17 PM | TrackBack
March 30, 2006
Rain, rain, rain
This morning I got soaked on the way down to the train, riding into work, running, and riding back to catch the train. Maybe that's why I'm so tired at this point. No energy to go down in the basement and clean up my bike.
Rain is a primary drawback of commuting by bicycle. It's a no win situation as far as I can tell. The folks who suit up with rainproof gear sweat heavily inside their wetsuits. The rest of us shiver with cold only minutes into the ride. The bicycle chains are liable to rust. The grit goes everywhere. The only way to clean up completely after riding in a downpour, especially if you take the trails as I do, would be to take the bike apart and wash each component separately.
It's still marginally better than being stuck in traffic.
Posted by Mark at 08:16 PM | TrackBack
Worms
One doctor suggested Diane was waking up at night because of worms. It turns out, Nath learned today, that Diane does in fact have worms. Now we all have to take anti-worm medicine. It's nowhere near as objectionable as having worms.
In retrospect the presence of worms also explains Diane's appetite lately. She's been eating quite a bit for someone her size. Today Nath baked a chocolate cake for Emma to take to school. When she left the cake in the kitchen to cool, Diane ate a big trench out of the middle.
Posted by Mark at 07:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
51:15/148
Steady rain today. Jogged over to the track and ran 6 x 100 m repeats at top speed with almost two minutes in between. The first was in a little over 17 s, the middle four between 16 and 17, and the last in just under 16.
My aim is to improve running efficiency. Yet 100 m repeats are very short. I only ran 6 because my form was starting to go in the last one. Don't want to practice bad form.
Posted by Mark at 01:21 PM | TrackBack
March 29, 2006
Stuck, part II
As I only had one book going home on the train, Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals, I came unstuck by pressing on. In essence I gave up on the theoretical underpinnings of the Metaphysics of Quality. Chapter 8 went by in a haze.
The next chapter was going okay this evening until Tim came up for the third time to tell me he couldn't go to sleep until I printed a copy of the periodic table of the elements for his personal use. Emma didn't want to go to bed until I'd quizzed her on a few simple additions.
Nath took Diane this afternoon to the chiropractor, who gently realigned Diane's spine and relieved tension in Diane's neck. The chiropractor asked Diane if she was a little girl or a big girl. Diane said she was a little girl. The chiropractor suggested maybe the problem started when Diane got to sleep in her mom's bed during the ski holiday, and managed to monopolize Mom all day, each day that week.
When they returned home from vacation, Diane had to sleep in her own bed and time share with her brother and sister. She had to go back to school. The only time she could get Mom's undivided attention just for her was in the middle of the night.
So the chiropractor recommended what we already knew, which is to ignore Diane in the middle of the night, and to pay some attention to her, by herself, during the day. Easier said than done, of course. The alternatives are probably worse, though.
Posted by Mark at 09:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Subversion
My brother Matt set up a subversion repository on this site. It seems to work fine. If you want to add more date formats, go ahead. (You'll have to ask one of us before you can commit, I guess.)
The nice thing about subversion is that if you know cvs, getting started is like falling off a log. Furthermore as (the other) Matt explained, each commit is a revision of the whole thing. You proceed along the trunk, and have another directory hierarchy for branches, and yet another for tags. I guess that's the suggested default setup. Whatever it is, it's a clear product management default that makes you think about the project in the right way from the start.
Not that we're going to be releasing any earth shattering software from that repository, but it's nice to know that given enough monkeys and enough keyboards, we have the right technology to do so. Hey, the Internet is a big place.
Posted by Mark at 08:57 PM | TrackBack
Stuck
The stack of books in progress is growing deeper. I'm now interrupting Kafka's short stories, which interrupted Schlesinger's work on Andrew Jackson's presidency, which interrupted a collection of George Steiner's essays, to read Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig. I'm stuck at p. 122:
There's a principle in physics that if a thing can't be distinguished from anything else it doesn't exist.
Up to that point I was reading along with minor to major disagreements here and there, suspecting that Pirsig's going to get around logic by sleight of mind. Not that he's going to do it intentionally. He'll be just as amazed by the magic as the rest of us.
Yet here he seemed to be laying out axioms from which he's going to mount his attack on the empiricist position. You sort of want him to win, because you feel, too, that the empiricists have missed the point.
Then you realize that if you take the first sentence of his argument at face value, you have to agree that the universe doesn't exist. Hmm.
Posted by Mark at 12:47 PM | TrackBack
23:02/136
Short recovery run chatting with Phil.
Posted by Mark at 12:26 PM | TrackBack
Shortening lifespan
Forbes.com has an article about how CEOs really ought to manage their stress.
"We've thought for a long time that type A personalities were predisposed to cardiovascular problems, but it turns out it's those who have increased rage and negative stress who have a higher risk for heart disease," says Dr. Woodson Merrell, M. Anthony Fischer director of Integrative Medicine at the Continuum Center for Health and Healing at Beth Israel hospital in New York City.
From here on in, my aim is to leave a good looking corpse. The number 1 suggestion on how to reduce stress mentions marathon running. Another suggestion is to make money. "Having money calms many worries." They also suggest scheduling vacations. True, I have a few days left to schedule.
Posted by Mark at 10:03 AM | TrackBack
March 28, 2006
Tail wagging dog
Ludo pointed me a few days ago to Dan Bricklin's article, When The Long Tail Wags The Dog. Dan looks at how the overall value of general purpose tools such as the spreadsheet or the telephone can outstrip that of special purpose tools, in particular when there exist highly personal, "must have" applications the general purpose tools can enable. The general purpose tool, "is of high value for a wider range," than its special purpose counterpart.
In agreeing with the general thesis, I'd underline that the general purpose tool has to be more like a telephone than a Swiss army knife. Dan alludes to this when he writes, "A general purpose tool that most people can't use easily or understand how to apply in new situations will be less popular." I know a number of writers who refuse to learn vi, and it's probably because gedit or whatever it is they use is more like a telephone than a Swiss army knife.
Posted by Mark at 08:41 PM | TrackBack
Going nearsighted
Emma had a checkup yesterday. Although her eyes were fine last September, her vision has significantly deteriorated since then. She'll almost certainly have to wear glasses. Her doctor said to Nath that sort of change usually means nearsightedness.
The earliest appointment Nath could get with the eye doctor is in the second half of April. In the meantime she's asked Emma's teacher to move Emma to the front of the class. Emma's teacher didn't want to at first. She said, "But Emma's so tall!" Nath insisted though.
She told me Emma was very nervous when the doctor gave her the eye test. At home Emma was having lots of trouble reading and even making out letters any distance away. We suspected the problem last month.
Posted by Mark at 12:51 PM | TrackBack
48:19/163
Tempo run with a long trailing cool down. Worked hard in the middle (177-183 bpm from the hill below St. Ismier over to Montbonnot). Legs felt better than yesterday.
Posted by Mark at 12:46 PM | TrackBack
March 27, 2006
Ugly ducklings officially okay
Jared Spool wrote about how what he sees as ugly sites can still attract users.
At some point, (and I don’t quite know where that point is at this time,) fashion, visual appeal, and aesthetic comfort becomes a priority to the audience. At that point, you better be ready or else you’ll look dated and amateurish. But get there too early and you’re wasting valuable resources on something users don’t care about.
Hmm. Function over form. Isn't he just pandering to those of us aesthetically challenged folks who only wonder whether Mac OS X would be worth it when trying to edit home videos?
Interestingly I notice that an iPod comparable to the MP3 player I bought is currently only $10 more expensive at Amazon.com. I'd pay $10 more for the same computer if it made video editing easy (as long as it's still UNIX-like underneath).
Posted by Mark at 07:52 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Particularly bad night
Diane has been waking up at night. This has gone on for a couple of weeks.
We tried not listening to her cry and complain at night, but she goes on and gets louder. We wanted the other ones to continue sleeping from 2 am to 4:30 am while she was carrying on.
Nathalie didn't fall asleep until 6 am. I probably fell asleep a bit after 5 am. We're not sure when Diane finally fell asleep, but she cried through school today and was very tired.
Nath's taking her to see the chiropractor Wednesday. Someone at school recommended that. She's also trying to get an appointment with the regular doctor. We wonder if Diane hasn't developed the same trouble as Emma.
Posted by Mark at 04:24 PM | TrackBack
31:10/138
Gentle 4 mi recovery jog. Legs sore. There's a refreshing cool breeze blowing.
Posted by Mark at 12:52 PM | TrackBack
March 26, 2006
Small potatoes
As mentioned in this morning's entry about the race, we have nice weather today.
Nath had some potatoes that had started to grow down in the basement, so Emma had me plant them with her. We hope to harvest more than we planted this time.
Two things are missing from Nath's photos today. She didn't get a frontal shot of my old LLBean aviator sunglasses, which Emma laughed at loudly and thoroughly, saying I'm unrecoverably behind the times. Nor did she get a shot of Tim taking a spin around the soccer field on Eddy's miniature motorcycle.
I have decided not to post the pictures of Diane running around in her underwear, sticking her tongue out at the camera.
Posted by Mark at 05:44 PM | TrackBack
36:57/183
This was the Cross de Montbonnot that I mentioned last week. It turned out to be 9.2 km. We ran along tractor ruts and through mud for part of it, which is I guess necessary if you're going to call it a cross (as in cross-country).
The weather's beautiful today, almost too warm. My legs felt sore and stiff as I jogged to warm up. Almost hurt something in my right hamstring doing strides to loosen muscles.
At the start of the run, we all just gathered together in a big mob behind what seemed to me an arbitrary point on the community soccer field. But I'd seen where I needed to go, and except for the tractor ruts, it was places I've run often before. Basically we ran down to the Isère and along the path there, then zigzagged back up to the soccer field, near where Stu and I sometimes run hill reps, which is behind the town hall.
On this sort of short race, I knew I had to run hard. Only after the tractor ruts did I feel that sort of burn in my gut that you get when you're building up too much lactate. My mind wandered a bit. Near the end I was concentrating, however. One of the women standing at a turn guiding us, said in my direction, "Where are all the women?" I thought, None of them are oafish enough to come out here and run like silly brutes. Yet I didn't have the breath to say that to her.
I caught the guy just in front of me on the last hill. Either he didn't do enough hill repeats in practice, or the long runs are paying off for me. There were only 300-400 m left, so I just put the hammer down. They had a clock out near the finish, too. I got to sprint as the seconds were ticking off towards 37:00. I thought, Shucks, I'm slow, and gave it what I had left.
Need to work on pacing and concentration, and I need to get faster. This was 4:01/km, way too slow. Muddy tractor ruts notwithstanding, I'm far off the goal pace.
Posted by Mark at 10:36 AM | TrackBack
March 25, 2006
Hmm
Out of idle paranoia and curiosity today, I wandered over to Patty Wilson's site CareerCompany.com. I'm not actively looking for a different job, just wondering as a shareholder whether I'd throw myself out on the street if it were my decision. My shareholding is more than partly tied up with continuing there at my job, so if I were to throw myself out, I'd be diminishing my shareholder position, too. Thus I'm not totally objective. (Philip K. Dick described the mindset well in A Scanner Darkly.)
Anyway, Patty lets you take a FREE! 7 Step Career Scorecard test, which I failed dismally. As you start taking the test, you get worried about two things. First you're basically hopeless at selling your labor, woefully far behind where you need to be. Help with this is what Patty's selling, however, so that'll be all right as long as you can pay. Second, you get worried that you won't be able to overcome the cynicism you developed on the job, that in whatever interviews you do it will shine through to the interviewer that you want to do the job not because your deepest values naturally align with the content of the company mission statement, but because you need the money. If you're lucky -- as I have been for my current job -- you get to pick work that you find inherently interesting, which helps to keep your mind off the grovelling obsequiousness.
If the economic powers that be no longer can profit from my current work, then I hope what comes next won't be any worse.
Patty's site linked me off to a Myers Briggs test, too. (That was her other FREE! test.) The first time I took one of these, I came up INFJ (introverted-intuitive-feeling-judging), with extreme I and N.
This time about half the statements seemed almost impossible to answer with Yes or No. It was rough. I think I lied on a few of them, because I was in disagreement with myself. (More and more, I am in violent internal disagreement with myself.) I came up a fairly extreme introvert, but the rest was different. I'm still intuitive, but it's weakening. I'm still oblivious to the outside world. Only with great difficulty can I see beyond my own interpretations. But I don't trust my interpretations or feel I can rely on them either. They're mostly illogical garbage and inner gibberish. One of the strange superpositions that now happens from time to time is seeing us as primates in human-like situations. This sometimes occurs when I find myself in a group and my mind wanders off topic. We're all in Ein Bericht für eine Akademie.
Next time I hear someone use the words alignment or leverage metaphorically, perhaps I should start acting out the part, but in the other direction, grooming the person next to me. It would no doubt fall flat. Nobody earnestly using the words alignment or leverage metaphorically will have read Kafka.
The ex-feeling-judging me came out thinking-perceiving. Thinking came out moderately strong, stronger than intuition. Perceiving only weakly edged out judging, as though I couldn't make up my mind. Maybe Jung, like Freud, was simply good at elaborating verisimilar theories. (INTP: 78%, 25%, 50%, 22%)
Myers's book Gifts Differing would, according to today's outcome, let me go back to school this time to do research. There's still a residue of INFJ in me, which is the idealist. Idealism and pessimism make a bad combination. You'd think they'd weed themselves out by suicide, because the universe is unending failure and impending doom. Didn't Martin Luther's nasty patches touched off when his doubts got the upper hand on his faith?
Posted by Mark at 03:58 PM | TrackBack
Early spring photos
This is the first day we've had truly warm weekend weather.
We even have a few violet flowers among the grass (and weeds).
At first the children wanted to fly kites, but there's not much breeze. Instead they've started to put the lawn chairs out in the front yard, and to take their summer shoes out of the cupboard.
Posted by Mark at 03:33 PM | TrackBack
March 24, 2006
Short haircuts
Emma and Diane went in Thursday, but Nathalie didn't have time to take pictures until today.
Posted by Mark at 08:30 PM | TrackBack
33:42/149
Short run today with a few raindrops. Tired, and had lunch planned with Stu, Luke, and Rob, since Luke is in town and I owed him one. I'm exhausted anyway, so it's no doubt better to take it easy.
Posted by Mark at 08:24 PM | TrackBack
March 23, 2006
Fat man walking
Perhaps you already saw this elsewhere. A guy named Steve got fed up with being fat and out of shape. So he decided to walk across the US.
It looks like Steve got a big welcome in Indiana.
In any case, he started from this:
3/26 - 1 mile - almost killed me. The back and leg pain was unbelievable.
Later, in Illinois and Indiana, he was averaging 15 miles per day. Hats off.
Posted by Mark at 09:46 PM | TrackBack
Cops & Robbers
If we had Canal+, we'd get 6 TV channels. And this evening we'd have 3 out of 6 prime time TV programs being cops & robbers shows.
No wonder Tim wants to work for the police. Sarkozy's got the right job if he wants the TV watchers to follow him.
Posted by Mark at 09:37 PM | TrackBack
Too complicated
Tim was asking me this evening how to copy some text from a Wikipedia article on Star Wars to another file. Even that I could see was not sinking in instantly.
Then later I came up here and had network problems. I could get an IP address from the router, and the router was getting two name server IP addresses from the DHCP server it gets the address from. But lookups weren't working. I finally found a printed message from my ISP in which two other, different DNS IP addresses were mentioned. After adding those to /etc/resolv.conf I could browse the web. No sweat.
Then it dawned on me that all of this is too complicated, that I'm warped by my job into thinking that fixing the DNS server IP addresses in /etc/resolv.conf by hand is a normal sort of thing to have to do on the client side. We need to figure out how to make this stuff simpler not just to develop to, but for normal people to debug.
Posted by Mark at 09:29 PM | TrackBack
52:18/157
Tired and listless. Very busy at work. Up to St. Ismier, across to Montbonnot, down the back way. The important workouts this week are the speedwork on Tuesday and the race Sunday morning.
Posted by Mark at 01:56 PM | TrackBack
March 22, 2006
Why We Can't Wait, part II
BBC News has an article today entitled, One in three French 'are racist'. Only a few days ago I wrote, "The words racist, and even more so segregationist have an atavistic connotation." Apparently I'm living in country where 1/3 of the people think the term racist is right up to date. Hmm.
Posted by Mark at 08:49 PM | TrackBack
Too rich for my blood
Performance Bike sent me mail with Subject: Buy 2 Tires and Save up to $70. Cycling is for the independently wealthy.
Posted by Mark at 08:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Director's chair (& desk)
Immediately as I walked in the door this evening, Tim took me to his room to show me how he'd rearranged his desk.
On the front is a colorful sign:
The desk is turned so a visitor to Tim's office can sit on a stool in front, while he reclines in the other chair behind the desk, looking out over the top of the old laptop at his guest.
The yellow thing above the word scientifique is a corpse under an emergency blanket.
Posted by Mark at 07:55 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Green
Now that spring has arrived, I noticed with dismay that the not only are the days getting longer, but so also is the grass. Grass has started growing again in my yard, though some leaves from the fall are still lying there. The yellow forsythia buds are almost ready to bloom.
Warmer weather makes life easier. Today I had no leftovers, so walked with Matt over to the sandwich stand to get something to eat. Went out in my t-shirt, which was just right.
Then by the time I had to get on the bike to catch the train, spring rain was pouring down. My bike shoes are still soaked inside. My chain has probably rusted.
Posted by Mark at 07:48 PM | TrackBack
37:49/159
Overheated, being too heavily dressed to run 8 km. Now the sky has clouded over. Legs were tired.
Posted by Mark at 04:49 PM | TrackBack
March 21, 2006
Life expectancy
Seeing the Digg, I tried the life expectancy calculator.
Depending on whether I consider my parents alive or dead after reaching age 80, I get a life expectancy between 75 and 81 years. My personality type is a big strike against me.
Since retirement will start at about age 70 by the time I reach that age, I shouldn't be a big drag on the system. The lean period will come between the time I become unemployable, age 50?, and the age at which I can retire. By eating only what I can get out of the dumpster at the back of Walmart, I could at once reduce my life expectancy the rest of the way, save post-peak-oil gas by grocery "shopping" at my place of employment, and save money. It'll beat growing potatoes in my back yard. And it'll keep the children from having to pay for my retirement.
Nathalie's going to live to 102. She's thinking about everything she'll be able to do without me for the last 30 years of her life.
Posted by Mark at 10:09 PM | TrackBack
Share the DRM
In France the legislature is voting on digital rights management related issues. BBC News online has an article covering the legal measure to push open, cross-platform formats for downloadable music. It also says:
The draft copyright law also introduces fines of between 38 and 150 euros (£26-£104) for people pirating music or movies at home.
Fabio and Jean-Luc told me the measures concerning "pirating," measures the article ignores, should prevent people from ripping their own CDs, or backing up downloaded music. The guys told me that Vivendi Universal rushed this stuff in the back door in an effort to prop up their flagging music business. Maybe it's just a rumor.
Posted by Mark at 09:31 PM | TrackBack
Webcam on Ubuntu, part VI
On a tip from Christian Juner, I installed Ekiga on Breezy. It seems to work on Dapper Drake. It also seems to work, almost, on Breezy.
For a reason I've not yet managed to discover, my registration is coming back "Forbidden." Yet I can login at ekiga.net. The log, Tools > General History, is concise. The folks on the mailing list who seem to have had the same symptoms all got around it. One person said a change of passwords worked.
I've not yet tried to learn which ports I might be supposed to open. Tried to interest Luke in trying this out at work since he was on Windows. He saw the intructions for using SIP with whatever Microsoft's comparable software is called and gave up before trying.
Posted by Mark at 09:17 PM | TrackBack
1:10:18/162
The heart rate monitor was flaky at the start of the workout. This was a warmup over to the track, 6 x 1 km in 3:37 to 3:43, and a cool down jogging back.
For each kilometer, I took a total of 6 minutes including recovery jogging. Am not in shape to run 10 km in 37:30 (3:45/km) yet, but this effort seemed slightly easier than Monday last week. The difference is no doubt 100% psychological.
Posted by Mark at 03:32 PM | TrackBack
Everything slips
Yet another big software project schedule has slipped. Ubuntu Dapper Drake is slipping to June 1.
The good thing is that it's already fairly solid, if not so stable. For my use it already seems to work.
Curiously the documentation freeze is coming before the user interface freeze. Can Ubuntu docsters count on the specs so completely they're ready to finish the doc before the developers quit tweaking? I need to get my head around that one.
Posted by Mark at 06:21 AM | TrackBack
March 20, 2006
Paul Graham on competence
Perhaps I already quoted this from Paul Graham's essay on Great Hackers, but it's worth quoting again.
I've found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent.
What am I great at, then, if I'm mystified at how incompetent I seem?
Posted by Mark at 09:34 PM | TrackBack
Why We Can't Wait
Martin Luther King wrote Why We Can't Wait soon after and indeed even in the midst of the direct action in Birmingham that eventually began to eliminate segregation there and the famous march in Washington in late summer of 1963. Someone had left this paperback on the shelf at work, so I read it. I wanted to know whether Dr. King's speaking voice carried across into his writing.
To some extent it does. Trouble is you find yourself reading this book in your own voice. Despite King's powerful arguments, his commanding rhetoric, his stately phrasing, the text does not have the same force when your inner voice delivers it. It would be better coming from him.
To someone of my generation it is remarkable to see how far the US has come from the early 1960s. The words racist, and even more so segregationist have an atavistic connotation. At the same time some of King's later ideas, like his Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, have not yet come true. Instead we've had affirmative action, for example.
What they have to say over at Wikipedia is voluminous. It even includes a conspiracy theory. In a wrongful death civil trial, 'The jury of six whites and six blacks found Jowers [the defendant] guilty and that "governmental agencies were parties" to the assassination plot.' (Source) He certainly would've made powerful enemies in the last few years of his life. Listen to the end of his April 4, 1967 speech calling for an end to the war in Vietnam.
Posted by Mark at 08:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
30:02/146
Jogged up to Montbonnot and back down with Phil and Luke. Nice day. We were all overdressed.
Posted by Mark at 04:24 PM | TrackBack
March 19, 2006
The Cyclist's Training Bible
Matt lent me Joe Friel's Cyclist's Training Bible after I'd asked about maximum heart rate again. My guess about the run in Paris is so many runners had heart rate monitors that my average reading of 183 is just a fluke. At the outset I was joking with a man and woman next to me about being a little excited, since my heart rate was reading 223. But the man and woman next to me had 221 and 229 respectively.
Friel's book looks just right for someone taking cycling seriously, and wanting to get more out of training. Friel bases training efforts on power and lactate thresholds (LT), so power and especially LT are the two measurements Friel suggests to the cyclist gauging training intensity.
The measurements are probably easier to make on the bicycle than on foot. You can get a power meter like the one Matt and Colette share, although they're probably expensive. You can also get an indoor trainer on which you can adjust the resistance during the test rides. Friel's test for LT has you start at 100 watts, increasing 20 watts per minute until you have to give up after 15 seconds. You should do this with companion (or lab technician) who notes your subjective effort level on a scale of 1-20 (20 hardest), and watches when you reach your ventilatory threshold (labored breathing). Your LT is where you said effort was between 15-17 and you'd reached your ventilatory threshold.
On foot I don't have a good way of stepping up the power in measured increments. I'd have to guess at LT, probably my avg. heart rate for a 10 km workout or a 15 km race. If I can count Pontcharra last year for the latter, my LT heart rate is then 177 or thereabouts. That gives me the following zones:
- 1 Recovery 116-145
- 2 Aerobic 146-158
- 3 Tempo 159-165
- 4 Subtheshold 166-176
- 5a Superthreshold 177-180
- 5b Aerobic Capacity 181-186
- 5c Anaerobic Capacity 187-193
I may not be taking it easy enough in recovery, and perhaps too hard for my body to recover quickly much of the time. That could be why I'm so exhausted after intense speedwork like last week. I'm not up to match hours with the cycling pros at any rate. Friel says they should train 800-1200 hours/year, the heaviest trainers are therefore training more than 3 hours/day on average. No wonder he recommends you get plenty of sleep.
Although I'm hardly a cyclist, I found the book entertaining. Recommended if you want to take your cycling seriously.
Posted by Mark at 08:09 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Poses
Emma has been trying some more portrait photography.
She doesn't want to be left out herself, however.
Posted by Mark at 02:23 PM | TrackBack
Bumble bee bodies
Nath has been painting bumble bee bodies for Diane's class. I'm not sure what they're going to do exactly. Our table has been full of demi tasses with yellow styrofoam eggs for the past week.
She's doing a total of 90 bumble bee bodies.
Posted by Mark at 02:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Collet d'Allevard again
Nath said earlier she wanted to take Tim and Emma skiing if the weather was nice. But Nath wasn't feeling up to it this morning.
My legs are sore, but Tim wasn't ready to do anything very tough, so it worked out fine. Emma didn't want to come along this morning.
You can almost make out Mont Blanc in the very upper left corner of this photo.
Posted by Mark at 02:10 PM | TrackBack
March 18, 2006
Cross de Montbonnot
There was a two-hour run in Grenoble that I missed this morning. The children didn't have school, and Nath was working.
Next Sunday is the Cross de Montbonnot in the town where I work. There's a 9 km race. Haven't run a race that short in a long time. I'm going to check with Nath and see if she minds. Maybe I could convince Tim or Emma to do the 1 km race.
Posted by Mark at 05:59 PM | TrackBack
1:38:02/148
My legs hurt from the speedwork yesterday. They felt tighter than normal. In fact they hurt before I went out, even when I was lying down. When I got out, it took half an hour of jogging to get everything in order. My brochial tubes feel like someone cleaned them with a wire brush.
According to Greg McMillan's calculator and my half marathon time from Paris earlier this month, I ran a bit harder than necessary for those sprint workouts. I could run those 250 m repeats as slowly as 53 seconds and still get the benefits of a sprint workout. That's 29% slower than my fastest lap Friday.
It could be that I'm training too stupidly, that I could do better when racing if I'd focus less on quantity and more on quality, perhaps reducing not only the speed at which I train on easy days, but also the total training volume. I'm nagged with feelings of not doing nearly enough. Yet I don't have world-class natural ability or will power, nor am I going to get it through training. Need to find a way to do more with less.
Posted by Mark at 04:57 PM | TrackBack
March 17, 2006
Potential danger in low-carb extremism
As someone who once lost quite a bit of weight with a low-carb diet, I read with interest a BBC News article suggesting that a low-carb diet may cause trouble. According to the article, doctors concluded the Atkins diet was a key factor in one woman's, "ketoacidosis - a serious condition that occurs when dangerous levels of acidic substances called ketones build up in the blood."
They mentioned she'd been eating a very strict diet. "For a month before she fell ill, the woman had lived on meat, cheese and salads, said the doctors."
There's a definite temptation if you're overweight to try dieting. As you get older it's harder to lose by exercise alone. If you're used to overeating, adjusting how you feel about eating is probably even harder. And there are a few of us (not me) who just burn more efficiently or have a slow metabolism.
For those who can exercise heavily, what seems to be working for me is a high-carb, high-activity regimen. If I could adjust how I feel about fullness, and keep away from dark chocolate, I could surely drop a bit more weight and run faster. It's probably something to do gradually, however.
In fact how you eat is no doubt always something you should change only gradually, unless you have some sort of particular problem that must be addressed immediately.
Posted by Mark at 08:04 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
59:22/157
Speedwork today at the track in Meylan. 7 x 250 m. Splits in seconds were 45, 43, 42, 43, 44, 44, 41. The first time I rested 1:15, meaning a total of 2 minutes for the run and rest. Thereafter, I rested until 3 minutes had elapsed since the start of the repeat.
This pace is fast for me. There's still a metallic taste in the back of my mouth.
Posted by Mark at 02:08 PM | TrackBack
Remodeling
My mom and stepfather are remodeling the basement of their new home. (My boss is off making home improvements as well, but I don't have pictures of his place.)
When they finish, they'll have about as much indoor space per person as we share among the five of us. Times have changed and so have expectations. I recall stories of people sleeping together in the same bed, not just the same room, and not only people who are married or otherwise doing so out of choice, only a couple of generations ago.
Posted by Mark at 07:39 AM | TrackBack
March 16, 2006
apt-get dist-upgrade?
On the laptop where I write this entry, I used apt-get dist-upgrade (or did I do that in Synaptic?) to move from Ubuntu 6.04 Flight CD 4 to Flight CD 5. This system would be awful to use in real production. The problem is not the stability or the bugs. It works fine and I haven't run into any bugs. The problem is the volume of updates. Over 100 megabytes this morning. Another 100 megabytes this evening if I had the energy to get the updates.
But should I do apt-get dist-upgrade on the PC where we have all our stuff? I know some of the apps have been dropped, and some have changed.
Matt did the same sort of thing with yum the other day and found he had to redo his network configuration afterward. That's all he found immediately, but I didn't ask him what he found next.
Sometimes we think of Solaris as being a bit stodgy, but at least you can upgrade most of the time without fear that your whole configuration will be hosed.
Posted by Mark at 09:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Building playlists
A while ago I ripped my CD collection (except for a couple of recalcitrant CDs that wouldn't rip properly for one reason or another). Maybe when the children have grown I'll be able to sit in the living room and listen to a CD, but for now I need them on the MP3 player.
Listening while jogging along the road is not so good, but listening while sitting in a running car is worse. That's probably why so many adults listen to talk radio. Classical music in my car is like drinking from a mud puddle.
But sometimes I'd like to listen while I'm at the computer. In that case, I'd like to have album playlists. And I don't want to do that by hand for all the CDs I ripped. Do I write my own m3u file builder? Can I find a good one online?
Posted by Mark at 09:33 PM | TrackBack
27:34/167
6.5 km (about 4 mi). My heart rate seems high for that speed and distance. Still feel sluggish.
Posted by Mark at 02:02 PM | TrackBack
March 15, 2006
When to rest
Matt Swift came to my office after a hard ride up to Revel (and then further uphill). His face looked a bit red. He must have given himself quite a workout. He'd been riding with the contraption he puts on his wheel to calculate wattage, and had been determined to maintain a certain output.
We got to talking. There's not anybody around work who wants to run with me or ride with Matt. He won't run, since he figures it hurts his cycling. Maybe I ought to ride with him. It's usually a knock-down, drag-out training session.
He's still working to convince me to do the Marmotte. Says that unlike a marathon, I'll be fine for training only a day or so after the race. I don't however think it would be sane to do that ride without some training to learn to pace myself up hills. 5000 m of climbing over 174 km.
My question is how can I do that training and still recover from running 6 days out of 7? And where would I find the time?
Posted by Mark at 09:25 PM | TrackBack
Exhaustion
This morning at 5:45 am Diane started waking us. That's not so early, but I was already tired. Later she whined more. I finally went into her bed to calm her down.
She fell asleep again, but I could see why she was having trouble staying there. The light now streams in through her blinds quite early, and passing cars and trucks make lots of noise. I almost fell asleep at dinner.
Posted by Mark at 09:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
1:03:00/159
Lacked energy today, so I stopped after only 63 minutes. It was bright again, and warmer than yesterday. Had to tuck my hat into my waistband.
Posted by Mark at 02:17 PM | TrackBack
March 14, 2006
15 cents/(GB*month), plus 20 cents/GB uploads
I noticed on TechCrunch an entry about Amazon's Simple Storage Service. It looks like they've put a price on easily extensible online storage.
What they don't seem to have priced yet is web storage that is guaranteed not to disappear without notice. Way down in the disclaimers section of their agreement you find that they're not going to be liable for any disasters.
Posted by Mark at 09:38 PM | TrackBack
Photographer
Emma's been taking lots of photos with her digital camera from uncle Matt.
She takes some pictures of people, more than her brother. At one point she decided she wanted to take pictures of the television. We must have 40 or 50 from an episode of Dora the Explorer.
Posted by Mark at 09:22 PM | TrackBack
Tim discovers information reuse
Tim's preparing a presentation on sharks for his class. He's been using Google to find images. The Google results for requin seem to be safe for children.
He was having more trouble finding information. I pointed him to the French Wikipedia home page.
A few minutes later Tim said he'd finished his report, sending me the whole thing as email so I could print it on the computer upstairs. (I haven't shared the printer over the network because I don't want Tim and Emma to be the ones deciding how fast we go through paper and toner. The printer is mainly for Nath.)
As I gave him the page, I explained why we cite our sources, saying who did the work not just so other people know it's not ours, but also so that we ourselves know it's not our work and that we didn't make it up ourselves. I was more or less talking to myself. Tim had found some paragraphs that he could much more easily copy and paste than write himself. It was like the reaction I'd have if I suddenly found a cheap lawn mower that would do the job quickly while I sat down and read a book.
Wikipedia by the way is copylefted, meaning that if you reuse the work, you also have to share your content with the next user. Tim was interested in three sections on from the article on sharks: reproduction, danger to people, and vision.
Gmail curiously turned up a news feed hit next to Tim's mail about sharks, Is Your Manager Earning His Keep? over at Business Week online. The manager in question is your mutual fund manager.
Posted by Mark at 08:52 PM | TrackBack
Electric trains
Andy sent me a link to an article on Yahoo! that says the SNCF is going to be putting electric lines between Gières and Brignoud.
That means they can stop running with diesel engines through that section of track. If they can also run the trains at 160 kph (about 100 mph), the trip will potentially take slightly less time.
What I'd like is more time sitting on the train reading however and less time riding the bike. I can read while walking, but have not yet tried to read while riding.
Posted by Mark at 08:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
29:01/156
Easy day, bright and cold. I ran around the 3 km loop, then ran around the 4 km loop, skipping the run back to the parking lot and out again in the middle.
Posted by Mark at 01:39 PM | TrackBack
March 13, 2006
Going quiet
Should've found this one when I was making resolutions for the New Year. It's from the How To Wiki, a procedure for doing nothing.
Posted by Mark at 02:34 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
1:04:59/152
Today the air is still cool for the season. I wore my hat and gloves. Yet the sun was out. Very bright.
Now that the Paris half marathon is behind me, I'm starting speedwork. Last Friday was the first speedwork outing. My hope is to run two per week, one being longer repeats, the other being shorter sprints, perhaps intervals.
Today I ran 5 x 1 km repeats at just under race pace, which is 3:45/km. My first was in 3:40. My last was in 3:39. All the repeats were between 3:39 and 3:43. I'm still a long way away from being able to keep that pace up for 10 continuous kilometers.
A nice feature of the track over at the junior high school is how it's not near a road. It's quiet. You can focus on the work. Another feature is that it's about 15-20 minutes from work, enough time to warm up and cool down properly.
My heart seems to be in better shape than my legs. Each time I'd finish and jog, it'd take less than a 250-meter lap for my heart to be back at a pulse of 130-135. My legs on the other hand were starting to get tired near the end. They felt sore starting out.
Posted by Mark at 02:20 PM | TrackBack
March 12, 2006
Extreme cuisine
For people who wanted to go bungee jumping but then realized they had their parents-in-law coming over for dinner, there's always cooking with liquid nitrogen. Somebody with username nathanm suggests:
LN2 is a great presentation for making ice cream if done as a demo, or done tableside - lots of drama, sort of like doing something flambe at the table just cold instead of hot.
Another recipe that keeps coming up on that thread is frozen vodka, the idea being that you can use alcoholic ice cubes instead of water.
Posted by Mark at 08:42 PM | TrackBack
Wiggle worms
We did get them out of the house this afternoon, but the wind was blowing too hard to stay outside.
They played together for most of the afternoon. It ended in a pillow fight, and rolling around on the floor, looking silly for the camera.
Posted by Mark at 08:32 PM | TrackBack
Device recognition better now
Tim wanted me to put Windows 98 back on the Vaio instead of Ubuntu. He wants to use old games that I cannot get to run on Ubuntu with Wine, the Windows emulator.
First of all, the Vaio recovery CDs that reinstall Windows 98 do not include a utility to change the partition table. Good thing I had an old Gentoo CD lying around for fdisk.
Next, there are bad blocks on the disk. Windows 98 is going to run into them some day and break. Will try the disk management tools, but don't know if they'll work.
Finally, using the wireless card with Windows 98 is a pain. The setup and driver didn't fit on a floppy, so I had to burn a CD. It took me a while just to find the driver. Seems to work now. A disappointing bit is that this computer has one PCMCIA slot, so it's either the CD drive or the network, but not both.
Posted by Mark at 10:16 AM | TrackBack
Quid pro quo
Did you notice that knowing the meaning of quid pro quo in English could potentially lead you to a quid pro quo (in French) with a French speaker using the same Latin phrase?
Posted by Mark at 09:16 AM | TrackBack
Shaun of the Dead
Nathalie brought home a silly video last night, Shaun of the Dead. We watched it in French, though it probably would've been better in the original version.
Shaun of the Dead mixes standard horror movie formulae with an unbroken string of understated gags. The characters are quite well done. Check out the DVD.
Posted by Mark at 09:00 AM | TrackBack
March 11, 2006
1:42:56/157
Legs were tired from the outset. At the bottom of the hill in front of our house, it felt like I'd run out of gas. Had to get out and push.
Out of curiosity I listened to SBaGen-created, out-of-tune sine waves the whole way. Seems to have made no noticeable difference, except that I felt like closing my eyes sometimes.
Posted by Mark at 11:03 AM | TrackBack
March 10, 2006
Brain waves
I'll try lots of things once. So the Digg to SBaGen was enough for me to download the software and try it.
The aim is to bring your brain into sync with certain frequencies using the beats generated by slightly to significantly out of tune sine waves, one in the left ear, one in the right. So far all I've done is make a couple of MP3s, which I'll try out on the player.
The SBaGen developer has a link to somebody who considers this stuff the absolute cat's pyjamas, and for a fee will sell you CDs on your own hypnotic suggestions in your own voice.
I'll stop if I get sudden cravings for microbiotic rice and mashed yeast.
Posted by Mark at 10:30 PM | TrackBack
LSE a takeover target
BBC News has an article about the London Stock Exchange rejecting a takeover bid by the NASDAQ. According to the article, the LSE seems to be bidding up it's price. Apparently both exchanges benefitted, but the NASDAQ is up even more than the LSE.
The market caps are such that LSE is worth about 2 billion GBP, the NASDAQ worth about 3.5 billion USD. Over the last year, LSE has not quite doubled, but NDAQ has gone up fourfold.
Can you buy an index of exchanges? Could you corner the markets market?
Posted by Mark at 08:35 PM | TrackBack
50:21/162
Ran over to a nearby track 20 minutes away. It's red asphalt. I think it measures 250 meters. Ran 6 hard repeats with a lap in between each. Then jogged back into the rain, finishing under a storm of tiny hailstones.
Noakes's book, Lore of Running, has me thinking now is the time to add speedwork for more efficient running this season. Potentially I could reduce my second long run of the week, and replace some of the quality with speedwork.
Posted by Mark at 01:17 PM | TrackBack
March 09, 2006
Out riding
Nath accompanied a group of children, including ours, to ride the donkeys and eat a snack at La Fontaine aux anes Wednesday. Emma enjoyed it a lot.
Posted by Mark at 10:15 PM | TrackBack
Please don't feed the lemmings
Slashdot pointed to a Times Online article about financial missteps and mistakes Google executives made when presenting to analysts.
“The time has come for Google to step into line,” one analyst said. “It is in the interest of all shareholders, including the company’s employees and officers, that the share price achieves some stability.”
Gee, I wonder why no one was complaining about the upside instability? Now these folks want someone else to protect them from having suggested you purchase a bunch of shares in a website with a P/E of 100.
Posted by Mark at 09:50 PM | TrackBack
On the glut of dark fiber
Digg had a link to a Telephony Online article covering the Chief Architect from BellSouth saying TV over the Internet is going to call for, “massive amounts of cheaper bandwidth.”
Apparently each residental broadband customer today costs the service provider an average of $1 per month. That's pretty close to what you're paying, right?
High definition TV could eat up over 500x as much bandwidth. I remember Ed Zander on stage in 1999 saying network use was doubling each 4-6 months. 2^9 = 512. We should be there in 3-5 years I guess.
Regular definition TV over IP is already on offer here in France, but you need to be close to the phone box where they switch your traffic onto the main network. We're too far away.
Posted by Mark at 03:39 PM | TrackBack
17:48/172
Quick run before lunch to stretch the legs. It suddenly got warm today.
Posted by Mark at 03:00 PM | TrackBack
Toward the End of Time
This paperback version of John Updike's book, Toward the End of Time, was sitting on the shelf at work. My original intent was to read it while Nathalie was skiing with the children. Instead I became bogged down online. The World Wide Web is my substitute for television.
Updike writes this one in the first person of the protagonist, a mostly retired financial advisor suspiciously well versed in the names of his local New England flora. Maybe you acquire that vocabularly when you retire. Maybe Updike's vocabularly is so much larger than mine he cannot remember what it was like to document the world through a meager 10,000 words or so.
Yet I found buried in this book one case I'm virtually sure was a typo, protons when he meant photons. That threw me off the scent. I cannot figure it out. How could a financial advisor be so in tune with plant names, yet not know the difference between protons and photons? Is this some deep statement about finance? Is Updike just thumbing his nose at us? If it was a mistake, what about the rest of the story?
I'm nitpicking. In the end I had a hard time getting hooked with this one. It's obvious John Updike can write circles around me, even in areas where his subject matter expertise is thin. I still didn't like his book.
Posted by Mark at 06:53 AM | TrackBack
March 08, 2006
Open book
After rereading Castaneda's last book recently, I found a Digg for Lucid Dreaming caught my eye. Lucid dreaming is having a dream in which you know you are dreaming, from which point you can potentially direct the dream and imagine you do amazing stuff.
Anyway, the interesting thing is the Wikibook behind that link. It's more than the usual article. People have created most of a book there.
Remember, you can edit any page to add information — simply click on the “edit” tab at the top of the page. Your changes will be visible immediately, but don’t worry if you make a mistake, since other users of the wikibook can fix things for you if you do something wrong.
That sounds like an interesting approach to documentation. Guess I'll go dream about that now.
Posted by Mark at 09:59 PM | TrackBack
International Women's Day
I heard it was International Women's Day. Nathalie laughed wryly and said this was the worst day in a while. Diane was giving her grief this morning. With the rain and snow, they all stayed inside this afternoon and drove each other up the wall.
BBC News online had an article for International Women's Day about the gender gap in Europe:
Statistics released by the EU to mark International Women's Day show European women do better in school than men, but get lower pay and fewer top jobs.
That trend seems to be stable over the years. My only contributions today were making dinner, doing the dishes, and getting up to calm Diane down after nightmares. The rest of the time I was at work, increasing my lead.
Posted by Mark at 07:41 PM | TrackBack
1:20:04/163
Ran up through St. Ismier, then Montbonnot, then decided to add a loop up to Corenc. I came back down through Montbonnot. Initially I was thinking of extending the run to 90 minutes, but was getting cold in the rain.
Posted by Mark at 02:05 PM | TrackBack
March 07, 2006
FreedomWorks and CGEG sites
Dad sent a link to FreedomWorks.org, a site devoted to events and issues on the political scene in the US, with a focus on fiscal conservatism. You can get RSS feeds for news articles, and read lots of articles there.
The site appears to be provided by an organization called the Center for Global Economic Growth.
The principle mission of the Center for Global Economic Growth (CGEG) is to work with public policy organizations which advocate free markets and limited government, and to assist them in developing citizen action groups to promote policies that will foster economic growth and opportunity.
One of the CGEG articles, Hope for Europe?, sees "old Europe" countries eventually moving in the direction suggested by economists such as Hayek and Friedman, whether the upcoming generation has the political capital to do it or not.
Looking at the European political landscape, my own guess is that neither Miss Merkel nor Mr. Sarkozy will have the conditions, luck and spine to do what Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan did. But what they may be able to do is buy a little more time for Europe until the people understand there is no constructive choice other than following the Anglo-Saxon model of lower taxes, spending and regulation.
Author Richard W. Rahn is probably right that people in Germany and France will eventually vote for supply siders. The European Union might also manage to establish more capital friendly policies without direct intervention by voters.
UPDATE: A factoid: "Milton Friedman's best known work is on the Quantity Theory of Money." (Source) Always wondered where Will Self got the idea for the title of his collection of short stories.
Posted by Mark at 09:45 PM | TrackBack
All dressed up
The children in Barraux had a sort of late Mardi Gras celebration today with costumes and cake.
Posted by Mark at 09:34 PM | TrackBack
Complexity hurting sales
Andy sent a link to an article from Reuters on Yahoo! that states Complexity causes 50% of product returns.
The average consumer in the United States will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working, before giving up, the study found.Product developers, brought in to witness the struggles of average consumers, were astounded by the havoc they created.
The problem with those of us making products is that we get used to complexity that we found incomprehensible initially. When we are making something ourselves and can take the time to get to know it, we work around many of its strange idiosyncracies. Then we end up legitimately surprised when no one new to it can make heads or tails out of our creations.
Powerful, yet simple and unsurprising, is hard to do.
Posted by Mark at 09:23 PM | TrackBack
37:59/163
8 km tempo run. Cool and windy. Started out with Joanne and Nigel.
Posted by Mark at 03:38 PM | TrackBack
March 06, 2006
Snow in the mountains
Nath copied the photos from her camera to disk this evening. She had taken fewer photos in a week than I took in 36 hours on my trip to Paris this weekend. They had snow almost all week long. No pineapples growing up there above Beaufort.
Posted by Mark at 09:03 PM | TrackBack
Sillyness with webcam
Tim discovered the webcam this evening. He spent a long time, perhaps as long as 20 minutes, just making faces.
Then he found out that I could take snapshots of his antics, and started to look for crazy things to do on camera. He had the Darth Vador mask out before this. He tried to get Diane to strike odd poses, but she moved around too much.
The trouble children have with the webcam is that they move around too much. A webcam does not take 24 exposures per minute. It seems to average less than 10. The picture starts looking blurred or just weird if you move much.
Posted by Mark at 08:54 PM | TrackBack
30:18/152
Recovery 6 1/4 km run with Phil. Lots of cold wind out there today. Plenty of mud, too.
Posted by Mark at 01:36 PM | TrackBack
March 05, 2006
Whirlwind tour
Michael and Jeanne's house and garden are quite pleasant, especially considering they're 5 km from La Defense. The boys wanted me to stay longer. All told I was in Paris a bit over 24 hours.
Luke and Annie had me over for less than 15 minutes, 10 of which I spent in their shower. Annie put me on an RER back to the Gare de Lyon.
Posted by Mark at 10:26 PM | TrackBack
1:33:02/183
Paris half-marathon today. The temperature when we hopped in the car to drive across Paris at 8 am was -5 C (23 F). I ended up overdressing with neck warmer, hat, gloves, undershirt, plus my winter jogging clothes.
The temperature rose even as 10 am rolled around. I finished carrying my gloves, sleeves rolled back, hat and neck warmer stuffed down the front of my tights. Was overheating whether the sun was out.
Was glad to have all that clothing when I stopped. Immediately got cold and shivered until we finally got into Luke's car about 2 hours later.
My average hear rate, 183, is outrageously high if my max. is still about 194-195. I'm more out of shape than I thought, and my roughly half marathon circuit I run on Saturday mornings must be significantly shorter than 21.1 km. Perhaps it's only 20.
Posted by Mark at 10:09 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 04, 2006
160 kph is half speed
North of Macon a man came on the TGV intercom to announce that due to heavy snowfall we'd be travelling at the reduced speed of 160 kph (~100 mph) towards Paris, and so would arrive 45 minutes late.
I continue to look forward to the run tomorrow.
Posted by Mark at 12:04 PM | TrackBack
What I cannot find online
I've been looking for evidence it'd be possible to take a shower after the semi-marathon Sunday, but cannot find anything. Nor is it clear there'd be an alternative, like showers at the Gare de Lyon for example.
Maybe I'll just have to stink all the way home tomorrow evening. Of course if the weather turns out to be as cool as predicted, we might not sweat that much after all.
Posted by Mark at 07:03 AM | TrackBack
March 03, 2006
Just one more star
Timothee got his second star today, passing the skiing test. He was so impressed with himself he stopped watching TV for about 8 seconds to come tell me about it on the phone.
Emma apparently did not get her first star. Nathalie said only 5 of the 12 in Emma's group got their stars.
They've been having rough weather up in the mountains. Nathalie said there are about 70 cm (more than 2 ft) of snow on the car since last Saturday afternoon. She's worried about coming back down the hill. They hope the road will be cleared off for the Saturday traffic.
Diane has not gone back to day care. She kept feigning aches, pains, and mental anguish at the thought of not being able to get 1-on-1 babysitting from one of the adults.
Posted by Mark at 10:33 PM | TrackBack
Podcast for the road
Luke pointed me to the 12 free podcasts out there from Ricky Gervais and his two henchmen, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. It's The Ricky Gervais Show. You have to root around for all 12, but they weren't too hard to find.
The folks originally hosting the show claimed this podcast was quite a success:
Ricky Gervais and his team were this week awarded the Guinness World Record for the most downloaded podcast, gaining an average of 261,670 downloads per episode of The Ricky Gervais Show. during its first month.
It's probably Karl. The whole show roughly boils down to Ricky and Steve slagging Karl off. It's as polished as a pile of rubble, and as grown up as Dr. Seuss, but had me laughing so hard I almost rear-ended somebody at a roundabout.
Posted by Mark at 10:32 PM | TrackBack
Packed up
I've packed up to get ready to go up to Paris. Metcheck.com's weather for Paris now says we'll have -5 C on Sunday morning with mild winds.
Maybe there'll still be snow on the ground. Apparently the snow and rain tonight is supposed to be "Torrential". Not exactly fired up for this run.
Posted by Mark at 10:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Heavy rain coming, part II
According to Luke, the weather in Paris leaves something to be desired.
Dunno what it's like in the Gresivaudan valley this AM, but Paris is like smthg from the point of no return 4 or 5 hours into a Cecille B DeMille epic, just after God decides that he's had enough of the iniquities anmd transgressions of his people. It is raining fire, brimstone, locusts, frogs and swords of ice. Sodomites and adulterers are sponteneously combusting and although it is very, very dark, I discerned one woman turning into a pillar of salt.Metcheck just has little falling swastikas coming out of angry looking clouds.
If it's like this on Sunday, it'll be ugly.
As mentioned the other day, we're running Sunday morning.
Posted by Mark at 11:32 AM | TrackBack
March 02, 2006
The gentle nature of bureaucracies
While I ate dinner last night I watched the beginning of a television program about Nikita Khrushchev coming into the 20th Communist Party congress and speaking out against Stalin.
According to the Wikipedia article on Khrushchev, this guy's rival candidate for the top spot in the USSR ended up getting executed a few short months after Khrushchev won. Khrushchev's children were on this documentary explaining how scared Dad was about making his big Stalin speech.
Funny how this guy worked, and how he ascended to the head of what billed itself as a people's republic, a state for the working man.
Posted by Mark at 06:59 PM | TrackBack
31:29/142
Easy jog with Phil.
Posted by Mark at 01:15 PM | TrackBack
VNC latency: bandwidth, VPN, hops?, part II
Tonight, armed with sufficient patience, I did manage to get through with just ssh and X11Forwarding.
It takes so long for the applications to appear, I was giving up and shutting down the VPN connection before seeing them. So I waited.
First I opened a terminal. Eventually the terminal appeared.
Then, in the terminal window, I opened the SGML editor. Eventually that appeared, too. Had time to get ready for bed while waiting. It's that slow.
Then I tried some editing.
Nope, it just won't work for me.
Posted by Mark at 12:02 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 01, 2006
News from the mountains
Nath says that for the last two days Diane hasn't wanted to go with the other children to kindergarten. Too bad she paid in advance. Maybe she'll be able to convince Diane to go if the weather's nicer tomorrow.
Today they had lots of new snow, which prevented Colette from enjoying the skiing this morning. Nath says Diane loves rolling around in the snow and making snowmen, however.
Emma and Tim are doing well. Tim's ski instructor taking them on the red slopes, and Tim's able to go longer and faster on the red slopes than Nath after his lessons.
Emma's ski instructor says she's still snowplowing sometimes, but Nath says that disappears in the afternoon, when Emma can go with the family. And Emma's made some girlfriends with her class, and so is relatively happy to go.
Posted by Mark at 07:16 PM | TrackBack
48:36/157
Up to St. Ismier and back around. Some snowflakes in the air.
Posted by Mark at 02:24 PM | TrackBack
Working from home
As you can tell from my last post, I'm trying real working from home, not just meetings and email.
VNC over my line just doesn't cut it. I fixed some man pages and things in a doc, very specific changes. It's agony compared to the regular LAN. So I'm going in to work.
If I could avoid the X traffic and instead work with copies of the files, it could be done. I could work from here. But I'd need a local version of our SGML editor, or I'd need other people in the team to somehow not screw up the lines. Arbortext's application reformats the lines for it's own purposes, the main one I see being vendor lock-in, so that although it's SGML, you cannot really use a regular text editor such as Emacs + PSGML in practice.
Posted by Mark at 11:16 AM | TrackBack
VNC latency: bandwidth, VPN, hops?
I'm at home over the VPN to access a remote desktop with VNC. Anything more advanced than an xterm just crawls. My DSL throughput is about 512 Kb/s, a little bit dampened, but not much, by the VPN.
Traceroute shows 6 hops between my system here and the system I'm connecting to down at work. What causes the latency that makes using the mouse a study in frustration?
Posted by Mark at 09:30 AM | TrackBack
Winter's not over yet
Here's a shot of the yard next door.
That should disappear this afternoon, however.