The Exploits of a TurboGeek!

Hi!

Today, I am going to thank you all, belatedly, for being so kind as to remember my birthday unbelatedly   I got a ton of well wishes, phone calls, emails and comments.  Thank you so much for all of that.  You are all wonderful, and you gave me something that I didn’t realize I was missing…

You see, my birthday was bittersweet.  Sweet because of everyone’s outpouring of attention.  Bitter, because of the following realization.  I’ve been messing up here for some time.  I have been forgetting birthdays and anniversaries like mad.  I haven’t been sending letters, post cards or email.  I’ve had a huge outpouring of kindness and I don’t think I’ve come close to properly thanking you all for being so wonderful.  To be honest, I wasn’t even sure how.

Until my birthday that is.  It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of praise.  I have a ton of wonderful friends, so I’m going to send you all some praise by doing my best to mimic you; to treat you as well as you have been treating me.  (By treating you well, not me)
First, some lameness.  I’m going to tell you my excuses.  Why?  Not because I think they are acceptable, but because by putting such lameness out in the open, I can no longer think I’m hiding behind it.

Sincerely…  You know why I’ve been forgetting birthdays?  I ceded control of my calendar to my electronic brain… My Palm Pilot.  It would tell me, 5 days in advance about any important event.  I stopped using it when I could no longer take it to work.  It died, and so did my list of birthdays.

Well, we all know that is bull.  I know pretty much all of your birthdays, or at least your birth month.  What I lack is the foresight to remember what day today is, and the ability to link my mental list of birthdays to my mental list of things to do, and keep them synched up.  In short, I am a thankless evil wretch (not really).  In short, I started forgetting and being a transient I forgave myself that oversight.  That is wrong.  It isn’t forgivable to hurt people you care about via sins of commission or omission.  So, from here on out I’m going to be honest about messing up, and hold myself accountable.

By the way, it wouldn’t hurt to tell me what your birthday is again…  Just to be sure.  Especially if it is soon.  (I’m going to load them all into my phone since we know I’m weak).

You know what else?

I can’t send mail from my post office.  I can get mail there, but there is no drop.  And I don’t know how much stamps cost.  Only I have about 600 wrong cent stamps so I can put them all together or just buy new ones.  I’m so lame.  So, no more of that bull.

And I have post cards galore.  What don’t I have?  Your addresses… They were in my palm.  I can teach them to my phone though.  So if you’re willing, send that to me too

Hmmm.  I think those are my two main cop outs.

So, from now on out, I’m going to be better.  Near perfect in fact.  Why?  Because this year I am perfect. I am 32 years old.  Two to the fifth, a perfect quint I am.  So perfect that I will neither evict nor kill the spider crawling down my wall…

I am outies.

Today was fairly uneventful…  The whole week in fact.  Worked like normal, and also received my new couches and coffee table!  I have grown up furniture now!  Woohoo!  Also, I’ve ramped up my workout a bit too.  I want to make sure I’m in good shape with high stamina (and hotness) when I get to Herrang for Swing Dance camp in a few weeks.

So, I went sprinting on Monday with Chryss…  I can run about 100 meters in about 15 seconds…  I can also run about a quarter mile in about 95 seconds…  (the track isn’t marked, so we had to guess) Neither of those times are too stellar, but I now have a baseline and I can start improving from there.  I think they’re pretty good considering I’ve not trained sprinting in about 15 years…

Swim lessons continue to be a ton of fun, and I’ve improved my Butterfly, but not to the point where I can do it comfortably or for more than a lap or two without resting.  I asked Angela to race me on Tuesday (crawl), which was probably not so wise.  She had been teaching all day, and I’d just knocked out a kilometer, so neither of us was really prepared for it.  She’s also a professional, so she kicked my butt easily.  It was informative though because I got to see how she swims when she is racing, rather than teaching.

When she teaches, she tends to isolate out what she needs me to learn, so I don’t always see her true form.  When she races, it is impressive.  She’s smooth, and I can actually see how her stroke rolls down from her fingertips all the way to her toes.  Mine kind of jumbles and bumps about my body in a haphazard fashion.  Now that I have a visual, I can focus on mimicry, so hopefully my form will improve…

I tried to race her again today, but that was comical.  I had just finished doing 500 meters (in 9 minutes, I rock!), so I was a bit beat.   As soon as I pushed off the wall, my left calf began to cramp.  Being a true masochist, I pushed on…  We were only racing 25 meters anyway.  By the second kick my left leg was nolonger usable, but did I stop?  Of course not, I just let it hang limp while my right leg kicked fervently, and my arms tried to do a double time.  I made it about 20 meters when it became apparent to me how people drown from cramps.

The cramp had become severe enough that my leg was actually bending of its own accord, interfering with my right kick, and seriously slowing me down.  I made it to the wall, barely keeping my head above water and tried to rub it out.  It barely subsided, only to trigger as soon as I put weight on my left foot getting out of the pool.  I’ve been limping all night.

That is my week in a nutshell so far   How about yours?

Hey,

So, we’re back from our trip.  Who, what?  Well, Chryss and I went on a short trip to hang out together, and basically take a vacation because I know I was stressed nearly to the max, and we wanted to spend some quality time together…  We went to Baden Baden, which is a small resort town in Germany, which is known primarily for the local thermal spring baths.  Way back in Roman times, there were “therapeutic” baths here.

I put “Therapeutic” in “” because I think that is a dubious claim.  So, lets get to the meat of the story.  Pretend I told you that a good way to relax, was to go hang out in small room with a bunch of strangers.  You will go out of your way to ignore the strangers, as obviously as you possibly can.  You will make as little noise as possible.  Should you find a small hose, you must not accidentally spray the strangers with it.  The strangers should be ignoring you as well, but if you are good at ignoring, you will never be certain.  Also, you’re going to be naked.  Yes, Co Ed naked…
Which really is the icing on the cake.  I don’t like “relaxing”.  If you say:  “Sit here and do nothing.” I’m not happy.  I like to do stuff.  I like to engage my mind body and soul.  Forced nothing is akin to torture for me.  It is for most people, it is what they make you do in prison when you’re extra bad.  So, sitting naked, in an uncomfortably hot room, with people you don’t know, who you hope are ignoring you at least as earnestly as you are ignoring them, isn’t fun.  After sitting in the hot room, you then jump in a cold pool, or have a bucket of ice water dumped on you, to get rid of “toxins”.

Which brings me to my next point.  Why does everyone think I’m so laden with toxins?  I don’t eat toxic stuff.  I don’t immerse myself in toxic areas?  How can I possibly have toxins in me?  If we are to believe that I’m full of despicable chemicals, how is sitting in a lukewarm pool with 1600 naked weirdos oozing toxins supposed to clean me up?  I mean, seriously, if I went into a generic lake, that is “fresh” water, my toxins would come out and then be diluted.  But, the water at the pool just sits there gathering toxins from other people, the pool water is probably the most toxic substance I’ve come across in recent history… And now I’m soaking in it!

All kidding aside, the public baths were kind of fun.  Even the naked part.  Well, the naked part I could probably skip because while not specifically fun, it wasn’t unfun.  It would have been a blast were I clothed because then I wouldn’t have been all irritated about being naked.  I’m pretty sure the only point of the naked area is trying to get all your hot friends to go with you, so you can casually see them naked.

I also got a massage, which wasn’t really all I hoped it would be.  The way people rave about massages, I expected that I’d find myself suddenly free of all earthly woes, at least temporarily.  Not so.  Instead, I was generally uncomfortable with a stranger making small talk while touching me.  I was also quite annoyed because I was supposed to have backup with me, but my backup had abandoned me so I was there all alone   Poor me.

I have been working out quite a bit, so I recognize that my lifestyle has drifted from “couch potato” back into “athlete”, and in general, part of good training is good flexibility and so a good massage follows logically from that.  However, I don’t think I’ll ever truly understand the perspective of folks who crave massages, or swear by them.  At best I think they’ll rank on a par with a haircut in terms of advancing my personal sense of wellness.

So the point of the story?  I apparently don’t relax very well.  I am fairly relaxed to begin with, and I have my normal escapes.  Reading, exercise, video games and so forth.   Forced inactivity…  Not for me.  Maybe if it gets me a chance to see some hot chicks naked…  Well, maybe not even then.

Hey,

I have a confession.  I like spiders.  I think they’re super cool.  If I had to come back as a bug of some sort, it would be as a spider (I said “bug” not “insect”).  I treat spiders with respect.  When I find a spider in my abode, I take him or her outside, normally.

So, the other day, I found this giant spider, and I picked him up and chucked him outside.  I was a bit annoyed when about 2 days later, I saw the same big spider wandering around the same area I had just evicted him from.  So, I threw him further away this time.

The next day, I found him again, hiding near where I had captured him.  I looked at him, and instead of my normal “Okay, I’m going to try to capture you, not more than 3 times.  If you evade capture 3 times, I’ll kill you.  Lets just go outside.” speech, I just looked at him and said “GET OUT!”

I felt kind of bad about that, since it was kind of rude.

Then, I was reading some stuff online, and I learned that indoor (house) spiders, can’t really live outside.  There are several species of spiders who have specifically adapted over the past ten thousand years to live in our typically dry, warm homes.  I felt doubly or trebly bad for having thrown out a spider who clearly lived here longer than me, twice, then yelling at him.  But, he hasn’t been back.

Last night, as I was negotiating with the Waschtrockner, I found a spider.  I picked him up in my standard spider catching mug, which I found by the waschtrockner, and continued monkeying with the my now much hated appliance.  Then, I was walking upstairs to throw out my spider, and I found another very similar looking spider on the wall.  So, I knocked him into my mug o’ spiders, and then heard the Waschtrockner (WT) stop wachtrockning, and became annoyed.

Spiders don’t get along very well, but I figured these guys could make do until I dealt with WT.  I was wrong, a second later I looked in, and one spider was on top of the other in a leggy embrace.  “Maybe they’re mating…” I thought.  It didn’t look like mating though.

Did you know that the “Fight or Flight” instinct in small mammals can be measured with a ruler?  Specifically if you are a mouse, and you are threatened, you have a preset “distance setting”.  If you are closer to the threat than your minimal distance, you fight, if you are further, you try to run away.  I don’t know if spiders have that same type of rule, but these two engaged really quickly.  As I walked to chuck them both outside, I saw yet another spider.  While capturing him, I wondered to myself…

“I wonder whatever happened to that big spider…”  So I looked for him, to no avail.  I checked on my mug o’ spiders, and…  There were only 2 spiders.  What?  Where did the other one go?  The one that killed the other was still in the process of killing they one that was dying, but no new spider…  How did he get out, and how did he know to wait until I wasn’t looking to escape?  I watched him for a minute or so to see if he’d attack the other two, or what, and he just sat there.  I couldn’t find him anywhere.

After a brief search, and another configuration of my not so trusty WT, I decided to go to bed.  Lo and behold, my escaped spider had made it all the way upstair and was hiding near my second flight of stairs.  The stairs to my bedroom.  I chased him for a bit, captured him and threw him back in the mug with the other spiders.  When I turned around to find something better than the little card I had covered the mug with, he escaped again!

So, I captured him yet again, and then put a giant book on the mug to seal them all in.  Which leads to my quandary…

They’re house spiders.  They can’t be expected to survive outside.  I take them outside in an effort to be humane, since I can’t have them living with me.  I don’t want to kill them outright, but trapping them all in a mug doesn’t seem nice since they’ll just eat one another.  I might be able to build a giant spiderarium, but lets be honest.  If one spider can get out of my mug, I don’t want to envision hundreds of escape spiders in a tank in my apartment.

What’s a geek to do?  For now I’m trying not to think about the trapped spiders because if I open up the mug, and the wily one jumps at me, I might just lose it and kill him.  I can’t blame him for that type of behavior, but I still can’t welcome it. Any advice?

Hey,

I was trying to think of something interesting to write, and then I got a question from a friend, about a question on my good friend Mike’s blog.  Here is a link to his question about why you turn your wheels away from the curb, when parked uphill….  You may have to scroll down…

To briefly recap, Mike wants to know why, when parked uphill, you turn your wheels away from the curb…  The turning of the wheels, we all agree, is so that if the car rolls, the wheels hit the curb, stopping the motion.  The next question is, which is a better way to stop the motion of the car; front wheel or rear wheel arrest?

First, lets remember that if you have parallel parked legally, you are not more than 18 inches from the curb, and very likely less than a foot from the curb.  If you front wheels are pointed towards the curb, when your vehicle begins rolling, your front wheels will travel quickly away from the curb.  Your rear wheels are pointed straight back, and they will roll first backwards, and slowly turn towards the curb.  Finally making contact.  In this case, your car may roll 5 to 10 feet.
If you have your front wheels pointed away from the curb, your car will quickly encounter the curb in the front, after rolling not more than 2 feet or so.  Again, this assumes you have parked otherwise legally.

Now, in the first case, your car rolls further, and builds up more momentum.  You must acknowledge that the rear of the car is typically lighter than the front, as the front has the engine in it (rear engine cars, more likely “mid engine” cars, typically strive towards 50-50 front to back weight distribution).  So, a lighter rear-end, and more momentum means your car is much more likely to jump the curb in this case, rolling onto the sidewalk, and further into traffic with the front end.  All dangerous.

When parked legally, your car doesn’t roll as far before hitting the curb, and it is the heavy front end that does the hitting, which should be less likely to hop on the curb, so that makes it much more likely to arrest the motion of the car.

But there is more to this story… How many of you have ever had a car roll away after you had gotten out of it?  If you left it in neutral, it probably rolled while you were still in it, and then you noticed your error, applied the brakes and engaged the emergency brake and placed the car in gear.  In reality, the only cars that are apt to roll away after you depart are those manual transmissions.

If you’re driving a manual (standard) transmission, when the vehicle is off, the car is in neutral.  You can place the vehicle in gear, but it is actually possible to move the vehicle in this state.  The rolling of the wheels will turn the engine (which is what enables you to push start are manual transmission vehicle).  So, if you’re on a steep enough hill, and the vehicle is simply in gear to keep it from rolling, it might take a small nudge; perhaps from a sloppy parallel parker in front of you, or a micro quake, to overcome the inertia of your engine, and allow the vehicle to roll.  That, or the additional failure of the emergency brake, which is generally a cable used to keep tension on the rear brakes of the car.

If you’re driving a modern automatic, it is much harder to overcome the inertia of the automatic transmission.  In general an automatic transmission vehicle won’t roll away, so the rule about how to turn your wheels is generally ignored by both drivers and law enforcement.  However, it is possible for an automatic to roll away, just not likely.

What you also may notice is that if you simply let the transmission provide the brake for you, in an automatic vehicle, you have a very difficult time getting the vehicle into another gear when you attempt to leave.  This is because you have placed tension on the transmission, and you must overcome that in order to shift to a driving gear (most automatics won’t let you leave the car in a driving gear, since you can’t get the key out, and it will try to roll away).  Hence, you should apply your emergency brake before releasing the brake pedal, to avoid putting stress on the transmission/gear selector…

Finally, you may be thinking that you may as well ignore the wheel turning rules because you have an automatic.  Don’t.  I didn’t say anything about what might happen if a car hits you reasonably hard, say in a standard accident.  All of the above statements remain true.  Hence, your car is more likely to remain in place if properly parked, and less likely to careen out of control, striking pedestrians and other vehicles.  The roll away threat isn’t that great, but accidents can always happen.  Turning your wheels correctly makes sure to take advantage of gravity of rollling if you are struck going uphill, and to make sure that the heaviest part of your car hits the curb if going downhill (in which case the car that hit you was coming down at you, further adding to the downward force to keep you from hopping the curb).

For what it’s worth, the wheel turn rule is most popularly acknowledged and enforced in California, particularly Northern CA, which has areas (San Fran) reknown for the steep streets.  The wheel turn rule is actually a law in many states, and if you violate the law and cause or compound an accident, it doesn’t do good things for your insurance.  More importantly, you don’t want to find out you killed or hurt someone by not properly parking your car.  So, give a hoot, and turn the wheel you big galoot.

And that is my daily geek out!  Thanks Mike!