the golden mean

4:53pm: wave
So yeah, I have a Wave account. What's it for? I'm not seeing a use case here.

3:08pm: psa
My new phone lets me be logged in to chat services 24/7. This means you can send me a chat instead of a text message and (a) it will show up at the same notification level, and (b) it will save me a dime (if I'm close to my text messages limit, anyway). It does not mean I have stopped doing any of those pesky things like sleeping that ever take me away from my keyboard, so don't fear if you send a chat message to what seems like it's me sitting at my computer in real time, but turns out to be me sitting across the house from my phone and paying no attention.

4:41pm: interlude
It has been gorgeous weather all this week, which is making it easier to get out of bed and onto the bike -- and once I'm riding it's something to savor, coming as it does with the feeling that it won't be this nice again until spring. Over the winter one is supposed to back off from possible over-training, spin a high cadence, and not try to work on intensity. I've mostly been good about this recently but this week has been too nice for that and I've had a series of nice brisk rides to and especially home from work, making it home in under 50 minutes each time so far. Turns out the slow from riding at night and the slow from wearing a backpack aren't cumulative; if anything the one made the other less frustrating.

This is the temperature at which the difference between my metabolism and everyone else's is most apparent. It's almost but not quite cold enough for me to start thinking about cold-weather gear. But most other serious cyclists broke out the tights, long sleeved jerseys, and full finger gloves when it got below 60. I saw one guy who was going fast enough that it'd keep me plenty warm, but who was nonetheless wearing his winter hat. Meanwhile I'm out there in shorts, coolmax jersey, sweatband (and needing it too), high-airflow helmet, fingerless gloves, and no socks.

11:22pm: exchange, just now
me: "So you're going to fire a shot across her bow?"
miss_chance, without hesistating: "No, I've already fired a shot across her bow. I'm going to put a hole in her gunwales, but that might not sink her."

1:08pm: milestones
Temps in the low 40s this morning, so I broke out the booties for the first time this season, in addition to the silk long undershirt and the lovely but increasingly tattered silk undergloves. Soon it will be time for the heavier undergloves, and maybe tights instead of shorts.

A coworker asked how long into the season I keep riding. I really don't know the answer to that question. I didn't ride yesterday or the day before because of the wet -- cold and wet is worse than snow in my opinion. I won't ride the Ciocc once they start to salt, even if it's nice out, and with morning coming later my rides are getting me in to work later than I'd like to arrive. The time change will help with that, but even so sunrise in midwinter will be as late as it is now in local time for much of January, and that has already been enough to keep me from riding a couple of times this season. Riding the (slower) Cannondale will add to this effect. And of course there is the snow. The parts of the bike path that I ride aren't plowed, and of course it's a much longer ride than I was doing to Kendall Square. Will I, or won't I? Will driving turn out to be just as bad, or will it be a nice toasty warm half an hour listening to NPR? I have no idea.

12:19am: via
I picked up some Via instant coffee from Starbucks today to see what the fuss was about. While I was there, I also got a small brewed coffee. I haven't made the Via yet, but I can already report that Starbucks' claims in their marketing are plausible: you could totally mistake their coffee for instant.

12:18pm: guest post
Contributed by a reader: what's this?

Answer in the comments.

11:35am: not so strange, really
"Fuck you, George W Bush" had already won the 2002, 2005, and 2007 Nobel Peace Prizes. That makes the 2009 prize recipient not so strange at all.

3:16pm: what's this?
this was a fun one for me. (answer, and some amusing not-answers, in the comments).

10:53am: productivity
Last night, I saw several posts in my flist about yesterday having been particularly productive, but held off on posting myself until I had a chance to see if my bike wrenching had been successful. Now I can report that it has: the Ciocc is back on the road, and after a week off the bike and two more weeks mostly not timing my rides on the Cannondale, I'm back to updating my ride times.

3:20pm: hub on wheels
First off, if you came to this post via blogsearch.google.com, I was number 6535, wearing this year's Hub On Wheels jersey and a red LAS helmet and riding the blue 1987 Cannondale with the giant bucket for a pannier.

I woke up this morning at 6:20 to cold and wet and a forecast of more of the same. I like riding in the cold and wet, though: it keeps me from overheating. It's only stopping in the cold and wet that's unpleasant. So off I went, arriving at the start of Hub On Wheels in time to line up at the front of the second wave of riders.

50 (well, really 47.5) miles is a great distance for me. Long enough to be warmed up for most of the ride, and for me not to feel like it's over before it started. Long enough that I have to keep distance in mind for pacing but not so long that that keeps me from getting a good workout along the way. Not so long as to ever turn into a slog, or require a break in the middle, or more food than I can easily eat while riding.

The Cannondale was totally the right choice of bike for this ride, even apart from the unavailability¹ of the Ciocc right now. The rain tailed off just around 8:00 but the roads were wet and having front and rear fenders was awesome. There was a stretch of narrow, twisty bike path on which I felt more comfortable with a headlight, and riding to the start in the rain I liked the extra visibility from the taillight and the giant rear reflector on the bucket. Some sandy unpaved stretches were easier with 28mm tires than they would have been with 23mm. I never needed the higher gearing of the Ciocc, and considering the number of other cyclists on even a rainy morning, and the endless passing that comes from the shared last miles between the 30 and 50 mile routes, riding a bike that's a mph or so slower was probably a feature. I also never needed the bike lock and next year I'll probably leave it at home; the end location has some fun hangout opportunities but nowhere to lock a bike up and the bikes everyone is wheeling around are the main topic of conversation (and best way to recognize fellow riders) anyway.

In addition to my usual summer riding kit, I wore my very thinnest glove liners and a lightweight long-sleeve poly undershirt for the ride to the start and the first 5 or so miles of the ride. On a dry day I would not have brought those or the extra tights, pullover, thicker glove liners, wool socks², and cashmere hat, but as it was I felt prepared for any turn of weather on an unpredictable day. Having the Tevas was kind of nice since I had someplace to put them, but would not have been worth adding a bag for if I were doing this ride without one. Having two bags (the bucket and a rack-top bag) was great as I had someplace to put the wet undershirt without worrying about getting the other things I was carrying wet.

Around mile 9 a couple of riders came past me at a really great pace, just a touch faster than I'd otherwise have gone but smooth and consistent. It was still too wet for drafting, but I rode with them anyway until the first rest stop, where we got separated. I never did see them again. Next year, I'll pay more attention to when rest stops are coming up and try to coordinate with whoever I'm with at the time as to whether and for how long we will stop. Later in the ride I did most of the pace setting for a group including a guy on a very distinctive pink fixie with a blue front wheel. I don't feel like losing the other pace setters was a problem -- they pretty much got me going at an effort level I knew was going to work for me and then I just left it there. But I was sad not to have their company.

On a ride as short as this I'm not really worried about managing calories, and it was cool enough that I didn't need to worry about running out of water either. But 50 miles even in cool weather is enough to think about potassium management. 2.5 bananas (acquired at the first and second rest stops) was just enough. Not having eaten at the start, I was also pretty happy to see Fig Newtons at the second stop. As the ride goes on the rest stops get closer together, which is smart as the people who need them most are the ones who start out too fast, but that wasn't me and I skipped the last two stops as I still had plenty of food in my pockets when I got to them. Had it been warmer I'd definitely have had to throw some kind of sports drink into my potassium management plan as bananas aren't enough to replenish potassium as quickly as I can sweat it out when I really get going.

Shortly after the 30 and 50 mile courses split, where the ride enters the Arboretum grounds, I found myself riding without anyone in sight ahead of me. I came to a Y intersection with a "straight ahead" arrow on the left hand side and decided that the course went left rather than into the 3-car parking lot at the crotch of the Y -- it seemed to me that if that (and whatever walking path was behind it) had been the course they'd have put up no-parking signs or something. A bit over half a mile later I and the dozen or so riders who had followed me realized we were off course and, armed with the official map and the GPS in my iPhone³, I led us all back, adding about 8/10 of a mile to the ride. Thinking back on it, it occurs to me that perhaps we beat the courseworker to that intersection; there were certainly plenty of courseworkers out later in the ride. Still, it was my fault for not being more familiar with the route.

Oh, I finished at 10:55. I didn't keep track of when the second wave started, and I was more concerned about safety at intersections than about my average speed, but I'm still pretty pleased with that.

---

1. Oh, I never blogged about that, did I. Well, I guess it never happened then. Two weeks later I am entirely healed, even if the bike isn't.

2. I don't generally wear socks while riding and especially avoid them on wet days -- nothing grosser than squishy feet, and I've never met a bootie that would keep my feet dry for 50 wet miles. But if it were 40 degrees and thunderstorming at the finish I'd have wanted them there, and most of the rest of that clothing too.

3. The iPhone's capacitive touchscreen totally works through two ziploc bags.

10:32pm: one of those annoying memes
found this list of 50 interesting Wikipedia articles over on bipolypagangeek. I've had more than one of those articles pointed out to me by various of my LJ readers... which of course begs the meme: how many of those articles had you already read (or, perhaps, known all of the contents of) before following my link? It looks like one of the articles has been merged into a less interesting one in the meantime; maybe the original author meant this for number 9.

2:36pm: an interesting graphic
From Lawrence Livermore National Labs, an interesting graphic showing the flow of energy in the US (units are, I believe, 10^15 BTUs).

It implies some unsurprising things, like we should stop driving SUVs and turn off the lights when we leave the room. But it also implies some more interesting things:

• US natural gas usage exceeds demand domestic supply; switching from oil to gas might improve efficiency some but isn't going to change our petroleum imports much.
  
• Electricity generation and distribution is nearly as inefficient as a passenger car and mostly coal-fired to boot. Plug-in hybrids don't help the big picture unless they're also part of some kind of distribution efficiency improvement.
  
• Freight is pretty efficient comparatively speaking. Dicking around with how we power semis is not going to help much.
  
• Doubling solar every 18 months (the current growth rate and not coincidentally equal to the doubling time in Moore's Law) won't even be noticeable for over a decade. It will take WWII-level increases in production for this to make a difference.
  
• Doubling wind could make a difference sooner than that, and even fractional differences in nuclear output would make a big difference.
  
• Geothermal makes a bigger difference than you'd think.
  

11:16am: another less creepy what's this
What's this?

Answer is in the comments.

1:11pm: what's...
this?

Answer (and a meta-answer) in the comments.

11:10am: putting the World in Worldcon
Much more than in Toronto and almost as much as in Glasgow, this Worldcon seemed like the international event it ought to be every year. I worked treasury where we had planned operations in CAD and USD and unplanned operations in JPY and CZK. I was expecting panels in English and French but was not expecting that the most interesting panel I'd make it to during the con would be in Japanese. The person I probably spent the most time hanging out with at con was from Belgium.

5 of the 8 Worldcons 2003-2010 will have been outside the US. This is a good trend. I'm glad to see that Japan is bidding again, and wondering who will be next.

1:01pm: workout
Having a speedometer on the bike helps me get a better workout by letting me compare how fast I come past various landmarks -- this is better than seeing what *time* I get to those landmarks because it lets me ignore the effect of traffic lights. One of my landmarks is the minuteman statue in Lexington, which I like to pass going at least 20 mph. This morning I passed it at 23 mph, and at the same time also passed another cyclist who was doing about 20. He chased me down and drafted me to the end of the bikepath at which point I convinced him to follow me up Springs Road and do some intervals. Wow, having someone else along on those made me work a lot harder. He did well, too, especially on the longer ones, and came past the high point of Springs Road half a bike length ahead of me. We rested a bit more between the intervals than I usually do so I don't know if it was any faster than usual but it sure left me more sore.

9:50pm: anyone have quickbooks 2009?
Subject says it all... I have a Quickbooks 2009 "Portable" file that I'd like to convert to a Quickbooks 2006 "Portable" file (or perhaps some *actually portable* file format). This should take about 5 minutes, and I don't feel like spending two hundred bucks to do it. Anyone here have Quickbooks 2009 installed?

1:30pm: data
It won't surprise anyone that I time (most of) my rides to work, nor that I keep them in a Google Spreadsheet. And I've posted here about times and goals. Now that I've been doing this for a month or so I have enough data to show a trend, and a couple of close approaches to the goal I've set. So I thought I'd share ( this ... )

10:59pm: finding my place in the pantheon
Back in high school when I rode with the Montrose Cycle Club, we had some archetypes on the ride. Steve was the leader of the group. Chris was the best climber and often wore a polka-dot jersey. John was the sprinter, and looked it too. And there was one guy whose name I don't recall and may never have known, because in my mind he was only ever called "The guy who sweats".

Now that I'm riding for the workout on a regular basis, I've become that guy. I notice it some when I'm the one on the bikepath without a windbreaker when everyone else is wearing one. It was a little harder to ignore when I forgot my sweatband one morning. But my ride home this evening really drove it home. When I left work at 7pm it was 54 degrees and raining lightly. I was wearing shorts, a summer jersey, summer gloves, and the thinnest short socks I own, which meant I was a little chilly for the first quarter-mile but quite comfy by the time I was out of the office park. By the time I got to the Burlington town line I was sweaty. Someone had left some sprinklers on in the rain and it was when I considered riding through them to cool off that I realized just how absurd this is.

11:01am: homage
I wonder if the folks at Apple were thinking of this when they named the latest model of iPhone.

9:22pm: 49 minutes
I've set myself some goals related to my bike ride to work. One of those was to do the ride in a net average speed (including stops) of 20 mph. Ten years ago when I was making a similar ride to Chelmsford my record time for the summer worked out to just about exactly 20 mph; I'm older now, but the ride's only three-quarters as long so it makes a good goal.

A lot of making good time is handling the hills. The most important thing is to build up speed quickly at the top of the hill instead of taking the opportunity to rest; that makes a huge difference to your average speed and you can rest once you're actually up to speed on the downslope. But the real key on this ride is that none of the hills are very high, so it's possible to sprint over them. I've been sprinting over bigger and bigger hills, and today I sprinted over Clarendon Hill, which at 55 feet elevation gain is the highest hill on my ride home.

Today's time works out to 19.7 mph. One more minute off my time and I'll be there.

9:22pm: pretty
Just thought I'd share a pretty bit of Bedford I get to see twice a day, once in each direction.

7:36pm: faster faster
It's amazing what adding 100 miles to my weekly average cycling distance is doing for my metabolism.

11:46pm: my new job is awesome
I've been having a great time these last couple of days -- good work, good company, good food. I checked in code on my first day, which is a great indicator of agility (I mean on the company's part, though I like to push to see if it's possible because if it is it'll impress my new employer too). And the commute has been Just Fine, because I've mostly been doing it by bike. 16.1 miles, via Springs Rd in Bedford. Springs Road isn't smooth, or flat, or wide, or straight, and for the first mile or so of it there's a fair amount of traffic. But it's a pre-revolutionary road and it's absolutely gorgeous. I haven't bothered to check any of the other possible routes because this one is just so much fun to ride.