Fastball

Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner.

-- August Wilson (1945-2005), American playwright, Pulitzer Prize winner, "Fences", Act I, scene 1, character Troy Maxson, a former Negro League slugger

DF

Pre For Me

Palm Pre+ (Verizon) for me today. I've been carrying a Palm Centro as my combination cell phone/calendar/contacts/clock/music system/data caddy for the past year and a half or so. From the little I've played with it so far, the Pre does *not* feel like a Palm. It does feel like a slick high-tech device.

I've spent over 7 years learning all the Palm OS applications that are useful for the types of things I like to do. I hope it's quicker (and cheaper) to find and learn to use the best Pre software.

2009 Mileage

For the year 2009, driving my 1999 Saturn which now has >217,000 miles, with past years' stats for comparison:

                  2009      2008      2007      2006    2009 delta  % delta
Total miles     : 27,307    24,346    25,847    25,111    +2957     +12.1%
Total cost      : $1,809.71 $2,188.79 $2,231.76 $1,942.72 -$379.08  -17.3%
Total gallons   : 793.73    686.27    812.14    776.47    +107.46   +15.6%
Avg gallons/day : 2.174     1.875     2.225     2.127     +0.299    +15.9%
Avg days/fillup : 4.9       5.3       4.7       4.9       -0.4      - 7.5%
Avg miles/day   : 74.81     66.52     70.81     68.80     +8.29     +12.4%
Avg cost/day    : $4.90     $5.92     $6.00     $5.27     -$1.02    -17.3%
Avg cost/gal    : $2.28     $3.14     $2.75     $2.50     -$0.86    -27.3%
Avg miles/gal   : 34.95     35.48     32.24     32.77     -0.53     - 1.5%

The stats are starting to look a little cramped. I'll hafta work on that.

MPG dropped by a fraction, but not by much; I can still claim my car gets 35mpg. The drop in cost for a gallon of gas surprises me -- cheapest year so far, despite the high miles. I ran up the most miles for a year, but not the most gallons of gas. Now I need to cut mileage to <25,000 again.

Suffer A Little

If you want your children to have a peaceful life, let them suffer a little hunger and a little coldness.

-- Chinese Proverb

MC

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Alphabet Shop

appleman@ncsa.uiuc.edu

After 19 weeks, I now have a new gig. That's the longest break (by 3 weeks) that I've taken from full-time employment in 30 years.

I work for the Cyber Security Directorate of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, in the Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technology at the University of Illinois.

Or, as I tell my kids, I work for the CSD of the NCSA, in the IACAT at the UI, aka the Alphabet Shop.

http://security.ncsa.uiuc.edu/

Thanksgiving Dinner

Be glad you're not a turkey.

Vertebrats!

Vertebrats tonight at Cowboy Monkey -- see ya there!

Sameness

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.

-- Petrarch

Still Got Food

If you lose your job tomorrow, you've still got food.

-- Lloyd Romriell, of Annis, Idaho, who has begun raising chickens, New York Times, 4 August 2009

1000-Day Dream

Coming to Cowboy Monkey & The Highdive, October 2nd & 3rd, 2009

Don't Think About It
How Come
Any Day Now
Johnny Avante
Hang On To Your Man
Psychedelia
Big Yellow Bus
Left In The Dark
Diamonds In The Rough
Jackie's Gone
Teen Seen
Robbery
Put Your Toys Away
Some Like It Hot
Turn On Your Face
Try Again
Every Once In Awhile
Up Till Then
Mystery of Love
Oklahoma
Honey Bee
This Before

Wait, What?

Wait, was Michael Jackson black?

-- 10-year old Alyssa, looking at the cover to Michael Jackson's 1982 LP "Thriller"

Retirement

Retirement is wonderful. It's doing nothing without worrying about getting caught at it.

-- Gene Perret, Emmy award-winning comedy writer, author

AppleTrotts

Saturday evening through early Sunday morning, the AppleTrotts team raised $308.51 selling chili dogs, chips, and drinks at Piatt County Relay For Life, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. That's 5 members of the Appleman family plus 5 members of the Trott family. Not too bad for a first effort, earned almost entirely on-site the night of the event.

Furlough

All of my Thursdays are Fridays.

Birthday Redux

Coincidentally, all of the kids in my family (my siblings and I) were born on Wednesdays ... sort of. John was born Wednesday 14 May 1952, Jim on Wednesday 26 August 1953, David on Wednesday 1 January 1958, and I was born on Wednesday 6 May 1959 ... sort of.

From the Illinois Dept. of Public Health web site's FAQ on vital records --

Note: Prior to July 1, 1959, births and deaths were to be recorded on standard time, even though the community in which the birth or death took place was observing daylight savings time. On July 1, 1959, a new law became effective legalizing daylight savings time as being state standard time between the last Sunday in April at 2 a.m. and the last Sunday in October at 2 a.m. Since July 1, 1959, all births and deaths are recorded using the current time.

So prior to 1 July 1959, roughly 4% (1/24th) of births during DST in Illinois were recorded in standard time the day before. Everyone born between midnight and 1am DST had their birth time recorded as between 11pm and midnight the night before, in standard time. This places me among the last to experience this effect, as I was born at 12:23am on Wednesday 6 May 1959 (by the clock on the wall), which was officially recorded as 11:23pm on Tuesday 5 May.

How Old Would You Be?

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?

-- Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige (7 July 1906? - 8 June 1982), American Negro Leagues and Major League baseball pitcher

Here, Have Some Flu

For the first couple of days this week, the national & local TV news reports did their best to beat the drum of panic regarding "swine flu".

Yesterday, that changed. They started discussing simple, rather than draconian, measures to avoid contracting flu. On both the national news (NBC) and the local news (NBC affiliate) the reporters ate pork on-air, and explained that pork is not a vector for transmission of what they now call "H1N1 influenza". Gotta protect those pork producers. They pointed out that only a fraction of people get the flu, and only a tiny fraction among those get a serious case, with a fraction of those dying.

And they (finally) pointed out that, in an average year, 36,000 Americans die of the flu, with 13,000 fatalities so far in 2009 (>100 per day) from "seasonal flu". That's something on the order of a 12% infection rate and a 0.1% kill rate (among the infected) for seasonal flu.

The big unanswered question for H1N1 is, what's the kill rate? Apparently it's higher ... but they're unsure how high, because so many cases are so mild that they go unreported. We're also entering into summer, which allegedly helps reduce the severity of a flu outbreak. If it kills only a few thousand Americans, its impact may be lost in the noise of average flu fatalities. But because they/we are paying attention to it, it'll come off as a really big deal. Imagine the headlines if we have a month of H1N1 flu with an average of >100 fatalities per day!

I'm not convinced.

Dawes SST-AL Pictorial Review

Click any image to view it full size.

On Friday the thirteenth of February I received my tax refund. At 11am that morning I placed my order for the Dawes SST-AL (52cm) from bikdesdirect for $359.99 USD delivered. I was looking for a way to rekindle my interest in cycling, which had fallen off some in the past couple of years. I figured riding fixed could do the trick. Since it had been 10 years since I last bought a bicycle (my road bike), I was pretty excited about getting another bike. At 11:40 I received a UPS tracking number. Bonus points for the quick shipping!

My budget for the bike ran about $500, so right after ordering the Dawes I went to ebay and picked up a Cateye Strada wireless cycle computer, and a cheap pair of Wellgo 823 clipless pedals. The bike comes with clips and straps, but since I already ride a pair of Wellgos on my road bike I decided to get the same for this bike so I could be sure I could use my only pair of cycling shoes with both bikes.

I had it shipped to my office. I ordered it the Friday of Presidents Day weekend, so with their 5-day shipping estimate I figured it would be at best Thursday or Friday of the following week when the bike arrived. I was stoked when it arrived at my office on Tuesday(!) morning at 9:30. That's a little under 4 days for delivery, across a holiday weekend. The bike got to me so quickly that I had to wait a few more days to get my clipless pedals and cycle computer. The box was in pretty good shape, so I wasn't worried about the condition of the contents.

The thing felt pretty light. Opening the box was a pretty good wrestling match; once it was open, I could see everything tucked tightly into place.

The seatpost is a Kalloy Micro Adjust 27.2x300mm in black, mounted with a nondescript black saddle. Since I already had a Fizik Pave' saddle on hand, I've been using it in place of the stock saddle while riding.

The wheels looked nice, and the packing job was thorough, with cardboard, foam, and clear plastic taped or zip tied in place to protect all the shiny aluminum of the frame and the black components. I admit that when I placed the order I was concerned about the level of care that would be used in packing. Everything came through just fine. There was the seatpost and saddle, a parts box, and the mass of the frame and wheels. The rear was already installed, while the front was zipped in place. Interestingly, the front also had the left crank slid in place between the spokes. It made for a solidly packed mass with little room to move around. That's good, since there's no one to inspect the bikes between the factory and the customer.

The parts box had the pedals, the 17-tooth freewheel (the 18-tooth fixed cog was installed), and a rear brake and brake lever with cable and housing. Also included was a laughable "owners manual" with a few pages of (very) generic content.

The welds are not especially pretty, but that's something I was willing to accept for the deeply discounted price at bikesdirect. The axles were covered to prevent them punching through the sides of the box. I took a good look at the rims and other components before beginning to assemble the bike.

The headset is a Cane Creek -- I was glad of that, though I'm sure it's low-end Cane Creek. The whole head tube was loose on arrival, but there was no apparent harm in that. Contrary to what you may have heard on the web, the Dawes stickers are all under the clear coat. The only sticker on top is that "Made in Taiwan" sticker on the head tube.

Here's a shot of the welds where the top tube and seat tube meet up with the head tube. Keep in mind that this is a 52cm, so everything pretty much runs together here.

With the handlebars in place and the headset tightened down it was starting to look like a bicycle. Initially I left in the full complement of spacers. I've taken about half of them out while adjusting my fit. The handlebars are 44cm C-C, which is a full 6cm wider than the bars on my road bike, and likely too wide for anyone who buys a 52cm frame.

I bolted on the front wheel and installed the seatpost and the clips and straps, and voila, it's a track bike. There's no toe overlap at this frame size, and there's plenty of clearance in back for fenders, with braze-ons for racks and two water bottles. I didn't put on the rear brake right away, but of course this bike has cable guides on the frame, so I was sure I would install it soon. In this picture everything is still stock. At this point I was ready to go for my first ride.

The clips and straps took me back to my high school days. Everything on the bike was pretty tight. The only thing that slipped was the rear cog when I backpedaled to slow down. For the rest of the ride I stuck to the front brake for stopping. We're a little too close to winter here still, so the 30F temps and light drizzle meant the first ride was short.

Since I didn't have any track-bike specific tools yet, I tightened the cog by standing on the pedals. I carefully used a hammer and nailset to tighten the lockring, which tightened about a quarter turn. The crank and all other parts were already all the way tightened down. Since I bought the bike mail order, I've been trying to be nice to my LBS by going there to buy a lockring tool and a chain whip, as well as a Topeak bag mounted under the saddle to carry my spare tube, 15mm wrench, and multitool.

I have a day job and the days are still short, so I can only ride on the weekends, but right now I have about 70 miles on the bike, including a couple of rides of 20 to 25 miles. This picture shows my bike as it looks now after a few modifications. The provided rear brake is installed, and a few new components have been swapped in. As I mentioned before, I already had a Fizik saddle I intended to use, and my clipless pedals and cycle computer arrived from the land of ebay. I knew the handlebars were silly wide, and after I road it a few times I realized that I missed the hand positions afforded by brake hoods. So I returned to ebay where I picked up a 40cm Nitto Noodle handlebar, some Tektro R200 aero brake levers, and Cinelli macro-splash cork tape. My LBS had the 38g Bontrager composite water bottle cage. Now the bike really felt like it was mine. I was amused, after I thought about it, to realize how closely the setup of the Dawes mirrored the setup of my regular road bike. So far I'm pretty happy, but I'm still making adjustments to the fit to find the most comfortable position.

Many thanks to the fixed gear folks over at bikeforums.net where I lurked for about 6 weeks prior to ordering the Dawes, and where I continue to find inspiration.

I need to put some more miles into this setup to be sure it's right, but I find it more comfortable than the stock parts. I'm a roadie by nature, and most of my rides are 20-40 miles on flat to rolling hills. My only shorter rides are tooling around town with my kids.

Riding and working on the bike has been an education in fixedness. On my road bike my cadence is generally 90+ ... on the fixed gear, particularly on hills or into the wind, I'm forced to generate a lot of force at lower cadences. It's a different kind of workout.

As delivered, the rear wheel fits at the tight end of the track ends. There's some kind of black, protective plastic on the right chainstay.

The stem is solid but uninspiring. It's 110mm; I may swap that out for a 90mm soon.

And here's a closeup look at the Tektro R200 aero brake levers I switched to. They're heavier than the cross levers that came with, but I like riding on the hoods. Since I'm on a budget I wanted cheap, and I knew the Tektro levers would work with the stock Tektro brakes. A note for anyone else considering this upgrade -- I needed new brake cables and housing because the existing ones weren't long enough. The hoods mount far enough out on the bars to make both cables several centimeters too short. I did keep the stock rear brake cable and cut it down to use as the front brake cable so that I only had to purchase (again at the LBS) a new cable for the rear.

I live in a town of 1800 people in the middle of Illinois corn and soybean fields. All of my riding is on blacktop chip and seal roads. I don't ride in the winter, so I'm just getting used to being back in the saddle. This makes it hard to compare the comfort of the Dawes vs. my road bike, which I still haven't ridden since early December.

The 48x18 gearing is good while I'm learning to ride fixed, but I may knock that rear cog down to around 16 teeth to increase my top end. I haven't made up my mind yet whether that will cause me trouble in the open on a windy day. Give it a couple of months and the corn will be over my head on both sides of the road, and that will help some with the wind. Bikesdirect states that the crank length varies based on frame size; these cranks are 170mm. If a future edition of this bike comes with a carbon fork, that would be a nice enhancement over the current design. I hesitate to add an aftermarket carbon fork due to the cost.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments; I'll try to answer them. I'll also come back with an update that gives the full list of changed components with their costs.

Spam Nation II

A year ago today I complimented Google for their ability to filter spam, and griped about the roughly 350 pieces of spam that went into my GMail spam folder on a daily basis. At that time, I had 10,251 messages in my spam folder, and I was receiving spam every 4 minutes, 12 seconds.

I don't know whether we're winning the spam wars, or perhaps Google is doing some upstream spam filtering, but my spam folder currently stands at 1324 messages, an average of just over 44 messages per day, or one every 32 minutes, 37 seconds. That's about an eight-fold improvement, and now I can actually check my spam folder for false positives again!

donald appleman / cerl

The following events all occurred on March 12, 1974 --

* Donna Gail Manson, 19, disappeared from the campus of Evergreen State College, the second of "Son of Sam" Ted Bundy's 28 murder victims.

* John Lennon got into a tiff with a photographer at The Troubador in LA.

* Goldie Hawn was filming "Shampoo".

* Lt. William Calley was freed on bail pending an appeal of his convictions for murdering Vietnamese civilians at My Lai 6 years earlier.

* Paul & Susan Newman were spotted in Beverly Hills at Dan Tana's.

* NASA's Mars 6 spacecraft reached Mars where a descent module broadcast the first data returned from the atmosphere of Mars, for 224 seconds, before crashing into the surface.

* My first PLATO signon, donald appleman/cerl was created for me by Bill Golden.

Dawes SST-Al

OK, it's been 10 years since the last time I bought a bicycle. So, this year I spent a sliver of my tax refund on a new fixed-gear bike.

You can see marketing pics here --

    http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/dawes/sst_al.htm

I've never owned a fixed-gear before, so this should be an interesting experiment. Although I only ordered it on Friday, with a promise of delivery within 5-7 shipping days, UPS brought it to my office this morning at 9:30am; that's about 2 shipping days, tops, with the holiday.

Now I just need to assemble it and ride it.

Pages For All Ages

Wherever in the world the little room of literature has been closed, sooner or later the walls have come tumbling down.

-- Salman Rushdie, From The Quotable Book Lover (Lyons Press), Quote-of-the-Day on the website of Pages For All Ages bookstore, where today begins a liquidation sale after over 20 years in business

Tooth Fairy

The Tooth Fairy has found me!

--

The Tooth Fairy Project would like your help with an important scientific study.

In the 1960s, your parents gave one (or more) of your baby teeth to Washington University in St. Louis to study atomic bomb test fallout. Of the 300,000 study teeth from people your age, 85,000 were never used -- including yours!

Each tooth is in a small envelope, attached to a card with your name, birth date, and other helpful information that your parents provided when you were a small boy.

Our research group found your current address in the white pages. You and 4,000 other St. Louis-area male tooth donors your age are receiving this letter. Your answers to the survey below will help us understand if bomb fallout raised risk of cancer.

1. Are you Donald Appleman, born May, 1959, son of Herbert S. Appleman?

-- From a letter recently received by yours truly, from the Tooth Fairy Project

2008 Mileage

For the year 2008, driving my 1999 Saturn which now has >189,000 miles, with past years' stats for comparison:

                  2008        2007        2006          2008 delta  % delta
Total miles     : 24,346      25,847      25,111          -1501     - 5.8%
Total cost      : $2,188.79   $2,231.76   $1,942.72       -$42.97   - 1.9%
Total gallons   : 686.27      812.14      776.47          -125.87   -15.4%
Avg gallons/day : 1.875       2.225       2.127           -0.350    -15.7%
Avg days/fillup : 5.3         4.7         4.9             +0.6      +12.7%
Avg miles/day   : 66.52       70.81       68.80           -4.29     - 6.0%
Avg cost/day    : $5.92       $6.00       $5.27           -$0.08    - 1.3%
Avg cost/gal    : $3.14       $2.75       $2.50           +$0.39    +14.1%
Avg miles/gal   : 35.48       32.24       32.77           +3.24     +10.0%

Last year when comparing stats, I resigned myself to losing a chunk of mpg each year as the car ages. However, this year two changes came into play: first, in March I replaced my clutch, and mpg appeared to immediately jump about 5%. Second, the price of gas became ridiculous; I replaced my already fairly sedate driving habits with new ones, and mpg again appeared to immediately jump about 5%.

Sincerely

Dear Sir or Madam,

We are writing to let you know that computer tapes containing some of your personal information were lost while being transported to an off-site storage facility by our archive services vendor. While we have no reason to believe that this information has been accessed or used inappropriately, we deeply regret that this incident occurred and we wanted to explain the precautionary steps we have taken to help protect you. ...

Protecting the confidentiality of this information - and all of our clients' information - has long been a top priority at The Bank of New York Mellon. However, in late February 2008, our archive services vendor notified us that they could not account for one of several boxes of data backup tapes being transported to an off-site storage facility. The missing tapes held certain personal information, such as your name, address, Social Security number and/or shareowner account information. ...

Sincerely, Investor Care Response Team

Kickin' It Old School

In the past few weeks I've heard more news commentators mistakenly say the word "Soviet" when they meant "Russian" than ever before. Putin's machinations with respect to Georgia, and now Poland, have that old-school feeling of Soviet aggression.

Champaign Park District Mini Triathlon

On Saturday 08-02-08 I participated for the second time in the annual Champaign Park District mini-triathlon. I did OK, though I didn't win any prizes. It was a 400 meter swim, 6 mile bike ride, and 2 mile run. My time was 48:41.4, an improvement of 4:23 over my previous performance.

I finished 5th of 17 in my age group (men age 44-49), 56th of 142 among men of all ages, and 82nd of 305 among all men and women for the entire event. Of the 223 people I beat, 187 were younger. Of the 86 men I beat, 74 were younger.

I hate running, but I like both swimming and biking. If I can convince myself to do some training next summer, I should be able to improve on both my time and my placing.

I signed up 8 weeks ahead of time, but the event was full, and I was #43 on the waiting list. Usually only a handful of people drop out in time for the people on the waiting list to be helped. This year, I got a call with just 17 days to go stating that they were expanding the field by 50, so I was in. I hadn't been running at all, but was able to leg out a number of 2-mile runs to get ready.

Tetris In Real Life

I got a job at Fed Ex and it is like playing tetris in real life.

-- Kim Compton, Champaign, IL, 22 May 2008

No Regrets

We should have no regrets. The past is finished. There is nothing to be gained by going over it. Whatever it gave us in the experiences it brought us was something we had to know.

-- Rebecca Beard, physician, speaker, author

Not How Old You Are

It is not how old you are, but how you are old.

-- Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)

Duck Rape

So there are these ducks that live along the Boulware Trail, a walking path near my office that runs parallel to a creek. The ducks are Mallards, and there are two pairs (that I know of) that live along the creek on the 1/2 mile or so of path that I occasionally walk as a break from work.

Today there was quite a ruckus. One of the pairs of Mallards was being attacked by a third, male Mallard. As I watched, the interloper tried again and again to copulate with the one female. She resisted by trying to fly away, but was overpowered. Her mate resisted by attacking the interloper, biting him on the head and pushing him underwater.

After a few minutes of this, the attacking male apparently got what he came for and broke off. The original pair then swam away together. And it turns out this isn't so rare. Mallard rape is well documented, and male and female duck genitalia have evolved to address this problem.

See "Duck genitals locked in arms race" (with pictures!)

Google has 1.37M results for "duck rape", including YouTube videos.

Spam Nation

I use Google Mail (gmail) as a simple way to get ubiquitous access to my email with good spam filtering. They leave stuff in the "spam" folder for 30 days. And they display how many messages are in your spam folder, so it's easy to tell (roughly) how many spam messages were received per day over the past 30 days

I'm just guessing here, but I seem to get a lot of spam, and I'm awfully glad gmail is good at catching it. For the first time today, my spam folder hit >10,000 messages. It currently stands at 10,251 (it was 10,249 when I started typing this), for an average of 341.7 spams per day, which works out to 14.2 spams per hour, or one spam every 4 minutes, 12 seconds.

Now it's at 10,254, up about 300 since yesterday, which indicates a *lot* of spams in the last 24 hours.

XLink ITC-BT Bluetooth Gateway

Last night I installed the XLink ITC-BT Bluetooth Gateway. It works as advertised, which is very cool. And I got it from TheNerds.net for just $124.99, which is also very cool.

Here's the deal -- I ditched my land line ($65 per month) for an additional cell phone on my Family Share Plan with Verizon Wireless ($9.99 per month). Now, this creates the problem of having a two-storey house plus basement with a single cell phone ringing somewhere inside it when someone calls the house line.

This device is the solution. It connects to your cell phone via bluetooth. It has a phone jack on the back. You connect your house phone(s) to the jack on the back of the device. It delivers a dial tone for calling out via house phones, rings the house phones when a call comes in, and passes through Caller ID, all using the cell phone for connectivity (remember, I dropped my land line).

As a bonus, it can connect to as many as 3 cell phones at once, provides differential ring tones for those cell phones, and allows you to switch among the cell phones as if on a multi-line phone system. It also implements call waiting on your house phones in case of multiple incoming calls to different cell phones.

2007 Mileage

For the year 2007, driving my 1999 Saturn which now has >165,000 miles, with last year's stats for comparison:

                  2007              2006            Change
Total miles     : 25,847            25,111          +736
Total cost      : $2,231.76         $1,942.72       +$289.04
Total gallons   : 812.14            776.47          +35.67
Avg gallons/day : 2.225             2.127           +0.098
Avg days/fillup : 4.7               4.9             -0.2
Avg miles/day   : 70.81             68.80           +2.01
Avg cost/day    : $6.00             $5.27           +$0.73
Avg cost/gal    : $2.75             $2.50           +$0.25
Avg miles/gal   : 32.24             32.77           -0.53

JJ

At 4:32 PM yesterday my number one daughter Tia gave birth to my second grandchild. Joseph Allen Schum Junior weighed in on arrival at 7 pounds 3 ounces, and 18.5 inches long.