Sapporo to Yubari

We woke up to cloudy skies but dry roads, so after breakfast, we made ready and set out for Yubari.

In conversation with the hostel manager the night before, I had been told that 274 would be a decent route once we managed to get out of the city. To get there, I chose to pick up the bike path from the river at the center of town and then ride it until I got to route 12. Once on route 12, we stopped at a 7-11 for the ATM and some snacks. (Yes, 7-11 is one of the few places guaranteed to have an ATM that can access foreign bank accounts!) We then found the entrance onto 274, but I somehow got turned around and ended up on 274 North instead of 274 South. Of course, I didn't realize it immediately, so we spent the next half hour or so riding as though I knew what I was doing.

Riding on the sidewalk is expected of cyclists in Japanese cities, and really there were many places where the main road was moving extremely fast, and the sidewalk was the only place where we had a prayer of being able to read the signs at leisure. At one point, we saw a woman walking her dog on the sidewalk ahead of us. As we rode up to her, she saw that she was in our way, and then pulled her dog over and then bowed down and apologized to us repeatedly for being in her way!

From Hokkaido

Finally, we rode up to a river that looked familiar, and I realized my mistake. Not wanting to backtrack, we decided that we would try to recover by riding through Oasa. Once onto the side streets it was a relief, as the road took us over tiny bridges and little streams.

In Oasa proper, we stopped at a supermarket to use the rest room, and I spotted a bike shop and walked over with the map, hoping to get some knowledge. There was a road that looked like it went right through the park, and we decided it looked like a very pleasant alternative to all the roads around the park. The shop owner pointed me at the direction of the park, but then said that it was only suitable for mountain bikes. Of course, I've learned over the years to take such declarations with a large sack of salt, so we proceeded to ride to the park and check out their nature center and trail map.

The trail itself was wide with soft soil backed with a little gravel, which was very ridable unless it got very muddy. The sign in front of the trail said (to my Chinese eyes) that typical cars were not allowed. Well, none of us had typical cars (or bicycles), so away we went! As trails go, it wasn't technically challenging, but there were enough mosquitoes and other bugs that kept me moving at a good clip. It was also quite nicely shaded, a respite from the day which had warmed up quite a bit.

Midway through the ride, however, we found the reason for the closure --- the trail was blocked by a fallen tree, so once again portage was required. "You're 2 for 2 now --- every day on this tour we've had to carry our bikes over obstacles!" declared Mark.

By and by, we got to the end of the trail, which even Yana enjoyed. Tired of riding in busy traffic, we opted out of 274 in favor of the country road designated as 1080.

By this time, it was almost 1pm, and after a few kilometers, Yana spotted some cars turning right into a driveway. We followed, and sure enough, that turn off led to a restaurant placed right next to a produce store which served ice-cream. Lunch was an interesting hybrid of Japanese and Western food, all eaten with chopsticks. We followed that up with ice-cream from next door, only to find that the restaurant closed while we were having ice-cream. Japanese lunch places close at 2pm, so if we had pressed on we would have missed lunch altogether.

We turned off onto 337 towards Naganuma, where a buddhist temple caught our attention and we took a quick visit, interrupted only by Brooks losing the cleat covers for his Speedplay cleats and then finding it again. Once onto highway 3, the flat farmlands gave way to gentle hills as we crossed Yubari river. Characteristic of what we would discover about Japanese roads, the climbs were gradual, even subtle, until we hit a brightly lit tunnel, after which we found ourselves at a quiet ski-resort with a convenience store, where we stocked up for tomorrow's ride.

The descent into Yubari was similarly gentle. At the intersection with 452, we made a left into town and then zig-zagged our way into the hills where Yubari Forest Youth Hostel was indicated on the map. Not seeing any signs to the hostel after a good bit of riding, I stopped at a house where a woman was gardening outside and asked her where it was. She ran to find a man who explained (also in Japanese) that it was right around the corner. Sure enough, we had stopped to ask about it not more than 400m away from the entrance to the hostel.

Yubari Forest Youth Hostel looks much more like a country lodge than a youth hostel --- there were 2 log buildings, and the bathroom (as separated from the shower room) had a bath big enough for 2. It amazed me how much they fit into such a small house. The surroundings were all farmland, looking very rural, though the driveways were carefully manicured if you took the time to notice, with trees giving way to flowers that lined the roadside. I was impressed.

If the physical facilities impressed me, however, the food blew us away! We each got a piece of fish on a plate, and then a separately baked fish wrapped in aluminum foil, with salad carefully arranged and presented. One bite into the fish and I was sold --- flavors subtly seeped into my mouth as the fish yielded up juices. I couldn't believe that I was in a country where gourmet cooking was served in its youth hostels. After dinner, the hostess served us tea and then asked if we were alright with Japanese food the next morning? We said, "Sure!" "How about Natto?" she asked. "A little difficult," came my reply. I didn't like Natto any more than any of the others.

The hostel also had a laundry machine and dryer, which we took advantage of, discovering that the washer worked really well, but not the dryer.

Sapporo

From Hokkaido

I woke up to a light drizzle, and stepped out to find that Mark and Yana had gone out for a morning ride to explore the city and take pictures. At breakfast, Brooks, Mark, and Yana, brimming with enthusiasm, declared this weather ride-able. Well, the hotel served breakfast with Natto, so I took the opportunity to teach them how to eat Nori on rice as well as cajoling everyone into a taste of Natto. The look on their faces said it all.

It was a little blustery, and since we had a full day, we bought a day-use pass for the subway (which with its easy to use menu, and English options, was a far cry than my first attempt to negotiate the Munich transit system). We couldn't agree on where to go, however, so Brooks and I ended up exploring the fish market while Mark and Yana went to the Botanical gardens. The sushi was really excellent for the price, and well worth the trip.

From Hokkaido

Brooks wanted to buy some Japanese pens, and I discovered I had forgotten lubricant for my CPAP machine, which led me to a drugstore where I discovered that Google translate did a good job in helping me tell the pharmacist what I wanted.

From Hokkaido

Brooks and I walked around town some more, and then relaxed a bit at the hostel before visiting the Beer Museum for Jingus Kan (Genghis Kahn), the well-known lamb BBQ dish that's a Hokkaido specialty.

From Hokkaido

The museum's style was very cute, full of tiny diaoramas of various parts of beer making, and posters of Sapporo Beer ads all through the decades.

From Hokkaido

Dinner was Ramen for Brooks & I, while Yana and Mark, intrigued by Jingus Kan, went back to the beer garden for it. We regrouped after our respective dinners at the McDonald's for ice cream, and took a final walk through Pole-Town, the Sapporo underground shopping center, before returning to the Youth Hostel to make a phone call for reservations at the next day's accomodations. We then turned in for the night.

Chitose to Sapporo

Between jet-lag and the time it took to put together our bikes, it wasn't until about 11:00am that we had checked out of our hotel and taken the lift down to the surface street. It was drizzling, so I put on my rain cape and everyone else put on their rain gear.

We left the airport in the drizzle, riding across 4 lanes of traffic to get to the exit lane leaving the airport and marked for Sapporo. Within about 10 minutes, the heavy traffic convinced me to ride on the sidewalk that was marked as a bike path, especially since the road went almost immediately under a long tunnel. Fortunately, the rain was relatively warm, so I did not regret leaving my Skoody behind.

As I rode over an overhead bridge, I spotted the Sapporo highway (Number 36) below me. That convinced me to turn everyone around and ride towards the highway on the surface bike path which from the bridge looked like it led directly to Highway 36 rather than the bridge. A couple of false starts later, that bike path dead-ended right into a wire fence. Since it wasn't very tall, I proposed that we lifted our bikes over and climb over the fence:

"We're not even 20 minutes into the tour yet! The airport's still in sight and Piaw's already found something to climb over. We better document this!"

Brooks had his speedplay shoes, which were decidedly unsuitable for such adventure, and decided to take the long way around, meeting us on the other side of the fence. This gave us time to get all three of us over, and for Mark to adjust his brakes and for me to doff my rain cape (since it really was pretty warm) while waiting for him. (The detour around the fence turned out to be incredibly long, as I would discover later)

Riding towards Sapporo, we rode past a Nissin Ramen factory and a Sapporo beer factory before the the traffic got annoying enough to force us to ride on the side walk here and there. I pulled into a mall that had a sports shop, and for 1000 yen, bought an LED light that happened to fit onto my light mount in substitute for my Joystick Maxx which I had left in the charger hanging in my garage. I would discover later that the light was inadequate for any purpose except for being a placebo.

As the rain got heavier, I started getting hungry --- all I had was a Nutrition Bar this morning, and it was inadequate. At the next road side cafe, I looked at the picture menu --- it looked really great, so we went in. It was good to get out of the rain, and I ordered the biggest dish they had and was surprised to find that it came with both noodles and Katsu:

From Hokkaido

I ate quickly and with relish---everyone had told me how expensive Japan was, but this meal blew me away, not only with how tasty and yummy it was (the flavors were extremely delicate, while still being very rich), it was less than $9!

City riding in Sapporo was boring. Not only was the road busy, the rain kept coming on, though never very heavily. Once in Sapporo proper, I saw a sign for a youth hostel. Following it took us to the Sapporo International Youth Hostel, where not only did the staff spoke English, they put us in 2 Japanese style rooms since they weren't busy (they would usually put 4 people in one room).

We took Japanese style baths in the hostel's huge bath --- a Japanese bath is shared --- you take your shower and scrub outside the bath, and only get into the bath to relax, as in a hot tub. Then we went out in search of dinner, though first stopping at the 100 yen store to pick up that most essential of touring gear, the nail clipper. We also got side tracked by Nakajima park right as we crossed the bridge over into Sapporo downtown.

I'm told that Sapporo at night is a pale reflection of nightlife at a major Japanese city, but I definitely suffered a major case of sensory overload by the bright lights, crowds, and smells. In addition, since election day was just a couple of days away, vans with loudspeakers cruised the streets, providing a cacophony of competing political advertising.

From Hokkaido

We never did find Ramen Alley, but we found the new Ramen Alley, and after a bit of browsing, settled at one and had a delicious meal. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by a convenience store to try out some Japanese snacks, including chocolate crusted potato chips.

Brooks had brought his netbook, and took advantage of the free Wifi at the hostel to read e-mail. We didn't know it at the time, but it was the last time we would see internet access on the trip that wasn't tied to my rental phone.

Tatami mats and bedrolls are comfortable if you like sleeping on hard surfaces. Even though our ride wasn't too substantial (45.2km, 121m of climb), we slept early and well.

First day in Hokkaido

20 minutes out from the airport, I find a dead-end, and we end up climbing over the fence to get to the road we actually wanted to ride on. That means we actually are having an adventure!

It was kind of rainy, though, and tomorrow's going to be really bad, so we'll be in Sapporo for 2 nights to wait out the rain and do our touristy things, before heading towards Yubari and Furano.

The food is amazing. I knew I liked Japanese food, but the quality and price has blown me away (yes, cheap!). If you want good food cheap, forget France. Tour Japan!

Prologue

The flight from San Francisco to Narita was the easiest flight with a bicycle I had for years. Not only was I charged only $25 for my bike box being over the 23kg limit, Mark and Yana's cardboard boxes were so unscratched that I could only attribute that to ANA's careful handling. Upon arrival, we had to pick up all our luggage and check it in onto the domestic airline. Since there was no X-ray machine big enough to inspect the bike boxes, we had to open up the boxes at the airport for inspection --- yet ANA's representatives (all beautiful Japanese women) were so polite and apologetic that we did not mind.

The second check in took quite some time, but we had plenty of time to go pick up our free rental phones, and then head out to the sun to try to get enough light to reset our body clocks:

From Hokkaido

Japanese domestic security was a breeze, and once inside we got access to some surprisingly good airport food (though rather ungenerous in portions --- I had to order 2 meals to feel decently full), and met a bunch of mathematicians who were going to Sapporo for a conference.

Arriving in Chitose at 8:10pm, we were glad that we had opted to stay at Chitose airport's Hotel Com. Not only did it save a 45 minute ride to the Sapporo while wrestling bike boxes (not to mention searching for our hotel), the staff spoke English, and was happy to store our bike boxes and other luggage while we were away on tour.

I looked at the weather forecast for the next couple of days, and saw that it called for rain, with a 50% chance of thunderstorm on the 28th. I thus made the executive decision to scrap our original plans and spend a day exploring Sapporo instead, shifting the city exploration to the start of the trip rather than to the end.

Why all the moaning about Kindle DRM is a crock

Much like the inane obsession over security, I consider the endless moaning over Kindle DRM to be a crock.

In June, my Kindle broke. Since I already had 6 Kindles locked to my account, this was the DRM-fear-mongering person's nightmare. All my old books which I had bought had become unusable. I wasn't using the Kindle much at that time (when I'm at home, I rely on the library, rather than spending money on books), so I wasn't motivated to even call Amazon about it.

Now, on the eve of my Japan trip, I finally was motivated enough to call Amazon's customer support. I explained my problem, and in 3 minutes, Amazon's customer service rep released all my licenses and I could download all my books again. Now I have to leave the Kindle plugged into the wall charger while it re-indexes the universe.

Seriously, I don't understand the hyper-ventilating over DRM. If Amazon goes out of business or de-supports the business (very unlikely --- I expect Google to give up on books first), the DRM is so insecure that it's probably crackable. If not, I'm happy to keep giving them money for such a useful device.

Pre-Japan Shakedown Cruise

I normally manage to ride my bike in touring configuration for 2 weeks before a tour, but between the house move, my touring wheel being out on loan, and random other things, I just didn't get it together until today. Since I now have to carry a CPAP machine, I can no longer rely on the Nelson Longflap I've had over the years, and ended up with a Camper Longflap, which is a huge bag!

Yana and Mark joined me on their unloaded bikes, and we proceeded to take local roads to Piece. On Pierce, I felt the rear wheel rubbing, and at a local crest discovered that my rear tire was getting ready to blow. I quickly deflated the tire, reseated it, and then pumped it up again. At the top of Skyline, Mark observed that my rear wheel was out of true. I checked it out, and indeed, it looked pretty bad, but not enough to justify abandoning the ride --- we intended to drop by the Cupertino Bike Shop on the way home anyway!

The day was really warm, and by the time we got to Los Gatos, it was 1:15pm. We ate Pizza at the local place, then rode up to Cupertino, where one block before the shop, Yana snapped her deraileur cable! Luckily, we were right at the bike shop, so I borrowed the truing stand from the shop, and proceeded to tension up the wheel, adding a full turn on the right and a half turn on the left side. The only reason I stopped was because the nipples started binding --- I'd have to wipe dirt off, add oil, and then try to turn the nipples. Ah well. Nothing lasts forever, I guess. I think it'll survive the Japan tour.

Mark replaced Yana's brake cable, I bought some spare spokes, and we both bought rim tape, and now we're all ready for the tour!

Review: Squeezebox Duet

Short summary: DO NOT BUY. STAY AWAY

When I first bought a nice stereo system, someone recommended that I try a Squeezebox. I didn't bother because in the apartment, my computer was so close to the stereo I could just plug it in, so why bother.

Well, now I have a house, and the office with the equipment closet (NAS, wireless router, cable modem, and the EEE PC running Skype) is far away from the living room, so something like the Squeezebox makes sense. I ordered one and got it on Thursday, hoping that if it worked out, Lisa wouldn't have to deal with CDs while I was in Japan.

The box contains 3 items: a charging cradle for the controller, the receiver, and the controller. The first sign that the product was sub-par in quality was that the cradle was too big for the controller. What this meant was that when you put the controller in the cradle, the controller wouldn't charge! I had to resort to tearing up little pieces of paper and wedging them into the cradle so that the controller would have a good contact with the cradle's charging posts. This felt very silly, since if Logitech couldn't get their manufacturing act together, they should have used a simple, mini-USB port on the thing, skip the cradle, and everyone would be happier.

OK, then I had to install the SqueezeCenter software on either the EEE PC or my NAS. I installed it on both just to see which one would give me a good experience. Both installations went very smoothly --- products that rely on servers are usually nightmares, but this phase of the install went really well and I started looking forward to it.

I then connected the controller (which runs over WiFi, not infra-red) to my WPA network, started playing music, and all was well. Well, all was well for about 15 minutes. I showed the controller to Lisa and she loved it. Then midway through one of the songs on our playlist, the controller said, "Music stopped." That's it. An attempt to play got us nothing. The SqueezeCenter also would do the same thing. I rebooted the controller, and it got stuck at "connecting to Music source". I let it sit overnight, and woke up the next day to find all was well again.

For all of 15 minutes, then the controller started dropping out of WiFi. This time, though, controlling the receiver from the SqueezeCenter software worked. But the whole point of the deal was to be able to run music from the controller! My guess is that Logitech cheaped out on the Wifi Antenna for the controller (which is insane, given the price, but companies have been known to do insane things). I did a quick web-search and discovered that indeed, this was a common problem, and not isolated to just my house (which has great WiFi coverage everywhere, as you might expect --- it's just not that big!).

Well, at that point, I quickly packed everything backed into the box, printed an Amazon return label, and shipped it back. Logitech made way too many poor decisions in this product.

The standard system for this kind of stuff, according to people who would know, is Sonos. But at $1000 for a basic system, that's insane! I could buy another EEE PC, have it connect to the Firefly server, and dedicate to playing music, and still have enough money to buy a round trip ticket to Zurich for that! (Sure, the EEE PC won't have a remote, but I think I can write code to allow anyone to control the EEE PC from another PC)

I think my next step (to be done after I get back from Japan) is to try the Roku Soundbridge. It won't have as nice a remote controller, but it also won't break the bank either. If anyone has experience with this, let me know.

Review: Wireless

Wireless is a short story collection by Charles Stross. I had missed many of his earlier short stories so when it came out I immediately bought it.

The first story, Missile Gap made me think I had made a mistake --- it's about all of humanity being transplanted to a flat earth. There wasn't much resolution, and I didn't get any sense of the story going anywhere. I then discovered that I had read two of his previous stories, Rogue Farm and Down on the Farm. Despite their names they're not related. Down on the Farm is a lot of fun, but only if you've already read one of his earlier laundry novels, such as The Atrocity Archives.

Unwirer was written with Cory Doctorow. I've learned that I don't like Doctorow's work, so it wasn't surprising that I didn't like this one, either. Trunk and Disorderly was very reminiscent of Saturn's Children. It's a lot of fun, so I picked up at that point.

The kicker, however, was Palimpsest, easily the best novella I've read all year. This is a truly unique take on the typical time-travel story, and it was worth the $9.99 Kindle price all by itself, and boosted the book from mediocre to highly recommended all by itself. Buy this book just for that novella.

The Joys of Homeownership

I'm going to start a series of blog posts about owning a house. I'm learning about this homeownership stuff as I go along, and it's amazing how much there is to learn. Most of it, unfortunately, has to do with the house being a financial burden in unexpected ways.

Here's an example: we had the house remodeled (put in central heating/AC, a laminate floor, and double paned windows everywhere) before moving in. When I got the first water bill on Saturday after moving in, I was stunned by how much it was. It turned out that the previous owner had put in a new lawn, and new lawns have to be watered frequently while they establish themselves. Well, they don't have to be watered that frequently after a month, which was when we bought the house, but of course, I didn't know to turn down the water frequency. Sigh.

Then there's the Radon problem. Turns out that the ground under many parts of California is radioactive. Not in a directly harmful way, but enough so that irradiated air can come up into your home, since your home has a lower pressure than the outside. Well, breathing that air can be pretty bad for you, so we have to do some radon testing. The state of California subsidizes the test, so it's only $5 for a self-test kit. But it's one of those things that nobody seems to know about (about 12% of homes are affected, so it's worth your while to get tested!) Mitigation is relatively cheap, but it's non-trivial.

On the plus side, when it was 90 degrees on Saturday and Sunday, I really enjoyed having a well-insulated and air conditioned home! Boy, it was worth every penny. And it turns out that you can sign up for the smart AC program and get regulation of your AC system at peak demand times, which is pretty cool. And of course, not being in a carpeted environment is expected to do good things for my allergies as well.

I'll get into other housing annoyances as I find them, and I'll try to keep in mind that I really do enjoy living in a house as well.

Yellowjacket Sting OWOWOW

 

I got stung by a stinging insect on Saturday while riding my bike. I didn't even see it, since I was descending Stevens Canyon road at well over 30mph. First I felt a burning, and then I felt my glove feel extra tight and a burning sensation. Fortunately I was headed home anyway and got home within 15 minutes. By that time, my hand had become incredibly swollen! I had been stung many times before by insects, but never had such a reaction!

What really scared me, however, was that old sting sites started popping out of my skin as my body remembered every sting, every insult inflicted upon my body by insects previously. It was scary. I went to a doctor and he didn't seemed terribly worried, but prescribed me an epipen and prednisone "just in case I wanted to take a more aggressive approach." I did take Claritin right away, since my research on the web told me I should take an anti-histamine and I had it handy.

The next day, the swelling still wasn't down, so I took Prednisone and Benadryl. It took until Monday for the swelling to come down a little, and I stopped taking prednisone then, but kept taking claritin. By Tuesday I could ride and now I'm almost perfectly normal.

I did see my allergist today, however, and she told me what I should have done. First of all, epipen is nothing more than adrenaline, and your body knows how to produce it. So the first thing I should have done was to immediately turn around and hammer up a hill at maximum heart rate to induce my body to generate adrenaline. That works for at least 15 minutes, and apparently there are stories about folks who produced enough adrenaline to eliminate any reaction whatsoever (usually those were folks running from angry beehives!). Then, I should have immediately popped benadryl and then prednisone. Apparently, the sequence of events goes like this: sting -> epipen (works within a minute, lasts about 15 minutes --- long enough to get you to a hospital) -> benadryl (works within an hour) -> prednisone (takes about 6 hours to be fully effective, but starts working after a first hour). The epipen is just to get you to a hospital where the doctors will make you pop benadryl and prednisone. Claritin works too slowly to be of use in insect sting situations. Apparently, if the doctor I saw knew what he was doing, I could have saved myself a lot of grief, and might even have averted a severe reaction. This is not the first time that made me realize that the same huge difference between programmers also leads to a huge difference between doctors.

I asked, "So why don't I just do that and not go to a hospital?" "Because you're not a doctor," came the reply.

In any case, I was warned not to get stung again within the next month (I wasn't planning on it, thank you!), and then to submit to a skin test and then start insect venom immunotherapy sessions. She also gave me a prescription for 2 more epipens, along with instructions to carry benadryl and prednisone while I'm traveling in Japan.

Followup: I'm now on allergy immunotherapy shots

Review:Schlage Keypad Locks

We've had contractors in and out of the house to remodel it before moving in on Saturday. One of the last things to do would have been to change the locks. Then on Sunday I saw Amazon advertise a fingerprint door lock, and thought, hey, that's not a bad idea --- I can go key-less, and then authorize or de-authorize users as I please.

I quickly ruled out fingerprint readers, however, since all it would take is one flat tire on the way home from work and I would not be able to get into the house on account of dirty fingers. A keypad system, however, seemed to be the ideal compromise. For the front door, I chose the dead-bolt, because I wanted locking to be an explicit decision --- I didn't want to walk out to fetch mail and then end up having to press four buttons to get back into the house. For the back, I had no choice but to go with a self-locking handled setup, since the back door didn't have a dead bolt.

Incidentally, the place to order from is factory locks. They charge a bit more, but if you order more than one lock, they'll automagically key all the locks to the same key, which is very nice. Furthermore, if you order more locks in the future from them, you can give them your order number, and they'll key the new lock to the same keys! That's worth the extra cost in my opinion. They also ship extremely fast --- I got mine in 3 days.

I got the locks today and they were installed immediately by one of our contractors. The system works as described by the manual, though programming it is a little tricky because you really have to wait for the interface feedback before proceeding --- since there's no LCD display, you have to wait for the buttons to flash or change color before you start the data entry. But the results are very slick! It's amazing how freeing it is to not have to worry about keys when I leave the house any more. It's also nice to give each contractor and/or cleaning person an individualized pin that you can then enable just for the day of their visit and delete after they're done.

One potential flaw that someone pointed out to me was that the keypad itself could become worn down after a while, and if you stick to using the same pin over and over again, it suddenly becomes apparently which keys are frequently used, so you should switch pins every so often. And then there's the problem that there's a manual key override. What this means is that the lock system combines the security flaws of both the physical keys as well as the security flaws of the keypad system. You could disable the physical key system, but then now you have no backup override if you went for a vacation and the battery on the system drained while you were gone! My take on the whole thing is that security is a massive boondoggle anyway, and the real security you have is to buy in a neighborhood with low crime, because if a really determined person wanted to take your stuff, they'd just break a window and climb in. So I'll just not worry about it.

The big flaw I can see in the system so far is that the batteries will have to be changed, and it's not an easy battery change. You basically have to unscrew the whole door knob or dead bolt to put in a new 9-V battery. If the batteries last for the specified 3 years that's not too annoying, but it does mean that you should leave a manual override key with a relative just in case you go on vacation and come back to find yourself locked out.

Despite all these flaws, this is an incredibly slick system. I really like it, and it's the first thing about buying a house that hasn't been incredibly costly and a major pain in the neck. That makes it highly recommended.

Management

Reed Hastings and I had a conversation in April to catch up. I was reminded of it again when his presentation on corporate culture came to circulate around various social networks. One of the questions Reed asked me at the time we had the discussion was whether I had any thoughts about management in the valley, having worked at more startups than he had (and also being in the less enviable position of not being the CEO at any of the startups).

One thing that conversation did was to get me thinking about the academic model of management that Google espouses. When I say management, I'm really talking about promotions, because that's how company culture reinforces its values (slide 7 in Reed's presentation). In 2004, I was an enthusiastic supporter of the academic peer-driven model. It felt much better than having a manager evaluate an individual contributor --- that model, I felt, always risked the problem of having a manager that was susceptible to brown-nosing. By the end of last year, however, I was seeing weaknesses in the academic model, many of which are articulated better than I ever could in The Trouble with Physics. In particular, what I saw was that certain types of problem-solvers and approaches were systematically under-valued --- and in many ways it's better to be someone who puts out fires than someone who prevents them from happening in the first place (note that it's not just the academic model that has this problem --- the top down model also does this --- in many large organizations, it's far better to quietly prepare a fire-fighting scheme if you see a fire happening than to try to prevent fires). The problem was that I couldn't see a better model, despite all the weaknesses of the peer-driven model. Like Democracy, I thought, the peer-driven model was the worst one in the world, except for all the others.

Reed told me he was a big fan of the traditional top-down model well done. The problem was that at startups (or even most big companies), I had yet to see the traditional top-down model well done. I frequently saw yes-men type middle management who couldn't say no to senior management, and all too frequently talent ignored in favor of hiring yet another manager from outside (something that startups do all too frequently). So I started asking around. I was struck by an insider's explanation of how Silos were broken down at Microsoft: the top 50 or so managers were called "partners", and their compensation was not at all related to their areas of influence, control, expertise, or title. Their compensation was tied completely to how the company performed, which basically made it so that all partners would help each other out if it was important to the company. That's a fascinating approach to solving the Silo problem, and to me, anyway, it provides an alternative to the academic peer-driven model that I saw as being imperfect. The problem is that the top down model still depends very much on having good managers. Even having had the luck to have exceptionally good managers at Google and elsewhere, I still run into enough poor managers at otherwise high quality places to believe that management hiring is anything but a crap-shoot at best --- no amount of interviewing will tell you that this guy who's a super-star on his resume is actually going to lead all your good people to leave over the next 5 years because of the way he plays favorites amongst his reports. This is why I believe that startups should grow managers from inside if at all possible. As Andy Grove once wrote: "People often complain that when you turn a great engineer into a manager, you get a mediocre manager and lose a great engineer. But think about the alternative? What message do you send if you pass over the smartest folks on your team in favor of someone from outside?"

In any case, I see the Netflix culture document as Reed's expression of his ideal approach to management --- it's another data-point in how to approach the fundamental problem of how a company organizes itself. There're also many ways of doing it wrong --- the worst of which is to pick a model that doesn't fit your management style and then coming across as hypocritical to all employees.

Ultimately, however, one must bear in mind that these discussions are moot if the business is unsuccessful --- that Google, Netflix, and Microsoft have to contend with these organizational headaches is a good sign --- failed businesses never have to worry about scale.

Gazos Creek Loop

Only Brooks Sizemore was interested in this ride, so I meet him at the corner of Homestead & Foothill at 9:35am. He was joined by 3 other friends, and we rode together up Redwood Gulch on what turned out to be a surprisingly warm day. At the top of Highway 9, the others said goodbye to us and we proceeded down 9. Traffic was unusually heavy down 9 and 236, and indeed when we arrived at Big Basin State Park HQ there was a massive traffic jam.

We filled up our water bottles, ate some bars, and then proceeded down to Gazos Creek road, the highlight of the ride. It's a wide double-track fire road, and in the summer it gets quite loose and dusty, but it's a nice shaded easy grade with no traffic --- until we got past the second gate and ran into the first of two BMWs driving up the road. I guess it can't be too steep if BMWs can drive up it!

The road then got a little steep and gravelly, and in places my bike fish-tailed around a bit as I hit gravel and sand together --- the toughest part was how rough it was, and there were moments when I started seeing triple because I was being bounced around quite a bit.

I kept waiting for the steep and tough part that I remember from many years ago --- dust that came up to ankle deep so I was forced to walk, but it looks like the road had been regraded and we made it all the way down to the pavement without any need to walk whatsoever. The paved part of Gazos Creek road was really pretty, which surprised me --- I had no recollection of doing it before, having done it last about 10 years ago.

Brooks was hungry and had brought no food, so we headed to Pescadero where there was again another traffic jam and we proceeded to wolf down a loaf of that Garlic-Artichoke bread. After that we headed over to North road, and made an easy climb out of Haskins hill and West Alpine before descending Page Mill road. From the top of West Alpine, we could tell it was getting late in the afternoon as we could see fog coming in from the coast, slowly covering up the coastal hills.

I got home around 5:30pm, making it an elapsed 8 hours. A challenging ride with 82 miles, 8091' of climb, 7 hours saddle time, and interesting scenery. Recommended for those who have decent enough bike handling skills for the 11 miles of unpaved fire road portion of Gazos Creek Road. Folks will tell you that 28mm tires are required, but Brooks had 23mm tires and I only had 25mm tires.

Comments Vampirism and the Segregation of Communities

The last few days have been interesting experiments in the nature of social networking and social networking sites. I mostly write my mid-length articles on my blog, which gets syndicated to FriendFeed and Facebook. The problem is, the two communities are mostly disjoint, and each has their own comments mechanism and database, so the two never meet.

Take for instance, my recent blog post on Politics. It has 1 comment on the blog proper, two comments over at friendfeed, and two comments on Facebook. And none of them talk to each other. Might we have had a more interesting discussion if somehow everything went into one comment database? I'll never know, but I know for sure I'm irritated at having comments split between my blog and 2 social networking sites with no ability to consolidate them or having them indexed by Google, unlike the comments on this blog!

What's good about comments on the social networking sites is that I never have to moderate them (or at least, I haven't had to do so yet), since they only get written to by my friends. The blog itself does get semi-frequent bouts of link-spamming, which is why I have moderation turned on, but what I really want is a service that will consolidate all the comments together in one place and allow a true conversation to take place, regardless of whether you're coming through a social network or through a Google search. Let's think a bit about what features such a service would have:

1. Multiple moderation modes: I'd be happy to leave Facebook comments unmoderated, and moderate Friendfeed entries after the fact, but the blog has to have comments vetted since it frequently gets spam.
   
2. Comment mirroring: all the comments from one social network or the blog would get mirrored to all the other social networks. That way, a conversation can happen between folks who aren't signed onto the same social networks, with my blog as the common link. Conversely, if I delete a spam entry, I want all the networks to mirror that deletion as well.
   
3. Identification: I would like to be able to see, "Hey, so and so replied to me from Facebook --- he must have a Facebook account, and I forgot to add him to my friend list, so I'll go do it now."
   

I'm sure there are other nice things to have such as threading, direct messages, etc., but since I don't run a high traffic blog, just those 4 features would make my blog more useful to my friends, and go a long way towards having real conversations on the web be interesting. Of course, with Facebook's policy of running a walled garden, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for someone to implement this.

Review: Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream - A Day in the Life of Your Body

Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream is Jennifer Ackerman's science book about your body over a 24 hour period. Amongst the many topics, it discusses the circadian rhythm, how brains, stomach, muscles, and sleep works, all in a very general but literate way (you can tell Ackerman was an English major).

The unfortunate side effect of all that literacy is that Ackerman frequently digresses into personal details, so much of the book talks about her family, her memories, and everything else.

As far as the scientific details are concerned, this book reminds me very much of I am Joe's Body, an extremely high level introduction to the biology of the human body, though clearly Ackerman writes for a much higher level of reading skill than Reader's Digest.

Unfortunately, the result of such broad coverage is shallow-ness. You certainly don't get the in-depth study of sleep seen in The Promise of Sleep, and the section on multi-tasking is no better than what I read in Traffic. This is very unfortunate, since every new fact she came up with I feel like I'd read already in some New York Times article (like the one about exercise actually improving your ability to think) or some other book.

I guess if you're not a science junkie like me, this book might give you something new. Otherwise, give it a pass.

Hubs

Recently, Pardo and I found a click-click-click noise in my 3.5 year Shimano DuraAce 7700 freehub. While it was well past the warranty period, this wheel had only about 10000 miles on it, and was never ridden in the rain, so while we took it apart, overhauled it, immersed the freehub driver in bio-diesel, and re-lubricated everything, we discussed what other hubs would have lower maintenance but still remain relatively light.

The lowest maintenance hubs out there are probably the Phil Wood FSA hubs. As Pardo says, "Cheap, durable, light, pick any two. Oh wait, the Phils are just durable. They're expensive and heavy." But nothing beats Phils for durability --- I bought a pair in 1993, rode them for 10 years or so, and sold them in 2005 for $10 less than what I paid for them. Yes, there's inflation, etc., involved, but still, that's pretty darn good.

Then we looked at another important factor, which is the rear hub flange spacing. To check out the numbers, download Spocalc, and try playing with wR on the rear hub. Then observe how the difference between left and right spoke tensions change as you increase or decrease the distance the right flange is from the center of the axle. A decrease from 20mm to 16mm (just 4mm) results in the right side tension dropping from about 75% of the left side tension to 50%. That's almost 30% loss in strength, which is directly related to the total tension in the spokes on the wheel. (You have less overall tension in the wheel when you can't tighten up the right side spokes)

So we took a survey of various hubs using information we could find online (these are all 130mm cassette hubs):

Hub	wR (mm)
Shimano 7700	21.1
Shimano 7800	20.55
Phil Wood Touring	18
Chris King	18.5
White Industries H2	18
DT Swiss 240s	17
Campy Record 2007	15.2

Yes, for wheel strength, Shimano rules, and Campagnolo sucks. This is by design --- Campagnolo designed their cassettes to require more space on the right side of the hub, which meant that for any given model of hub, the Campy version of the hub is weaker than the Shimano version. But you can see when it comes to actual hub implementation, nobody can touch Shimano. A wheel built using the Campagnolo hub is weaker than one using the same hub and spokes and built using either of the Shimano hubs listed here. (Note that there's quite a bit of variation among Shimano hubs, so it's not enough to just use a Shimano hub, you have to use a good one)

No, this doesn't mean that non-Shimano hubs completely suck. If you build with off-center rims (OC), they help you regain some of that lost strength, which means that it doesn't matter as much that your hubs' right flange isn't optimal (in fact, if you're running Campy wheels, you have to run OC rims to have any wheel strength at all). On the other hand, you can build with a Shimano hub and an OC rim, and that'll be even stronger! In exchange, however, you do have to overhaul Shimano hubs every 5000 miles or so, and until the 7900 debut, you have to deal with cone wrenches and hub pre-load adjustment, which I consider a major pain in the neck! I haven't seen the 7900s yet, so I don't know how much of the "you no longer need cone wrenches" part is marketing.

On the plus side, Shimano hubs do look pretty good, roll nice and smoothly when properly maintained, and have a very quiet ratchet (I'm do like how quiet the freehub is --- you can barely hear it if you're rolling along in a quiet neighborhood).

Obviously, even Shimano hubs can be badly built into wheels, so ultimately good wheel-building technique still trumps all, but given how much time it takes to build a good wheel, you might as well start with the hub that gives you the best results given your effort.

More Right Wing Stupidity

Ben Stein suggests that providing healthcare is the province of charity and the states:
I am bound to say I feel queasy even writing this, because I do sincerely feel it is wrong for the poor not to have good medical care. But maybe this is the province of the states or of charity. Maybe it is something that can be worked out without the federal government dictating terms to the affluent. Maybe as important as health care is, individual freedom and private property are indispensable, too. The whole subject is almost terrifying.

Just as one person, I would give a lot to charity to save my family and the future from this kind of redistribution that could mean eliminating freedom and devastating the financial plans of the most productive among us.
The states are pretty much tapped out. Total charitable contributions in 2007 was $307 billion (and it's gone down since). The Medicare budget for 2007 was $394 billion. And that leaves the 40+ million Americans uninsured!

That's right, you could direct all the charitable contributions into healthcare, and not come close to even being able to sustain Medicare. That's right wing ideology for you --- ignorance of facts, and inability to look at numbers --- jingoism and free-market ideology will get us through!

Review: ProBar High Performance Nutrition Bar

Cynthia Wong recommended this bar to me, despite it being extremely expensive. Since she's almost as much of a cheap-skate as I am, I bought an entire box, figuring that if I didn't like it I could sell it to her. (Plus, I'm a sucker for Banana flavored anything --- I love bananas!)

I tried it yesterday on a short ride with 42 miles and 5300' of climb. The bar is small and compact, which is great if you're trying to carry a lot of calories in a small package (each bar is 380 calories) The first impression you get when you bite and chew is that wow, this thing has great flavor. The next impression is, "wow, it's kinda dry, good thing I'm next to a water fountain." It does have honey in it, so it's not completely dry, but there's enough food that you have to down it with a significant amount of water, so it's not a good choice on a really hot day if water supplies are far and few between. Lisa liked the flavor, but found that she couldn't finish it all in one go during a short hike, because of the amount of chewing required, and the dryness.

All in all, the bar is not terribly cost effective --- most food bars a $1/200 calories, and this one is more like $1/165 calories. On the other hand, it tastes pretty good and is nice and compact (3oz/bar) for high calorie density, so I expect that I'll be using it on tours when energy density is a prime requirement and water is plentiful.

Politics

I once dated a lady who told me that politics is for young people. "Older people," she said, "have no time for it." Yet I've found for myself that as I get older, I become more concerned about it, and not just because Healthcare and Health Insurance Policy affects me deeply and personally.

A colleague and I were having dinner the other day, and he complained to me that his significant other wasn't taking her impending job loss seriously, either by searching for another job, or starting her own business. My response, "Well, I used to puzzle over that, and then I realized that I went to school working two jobs rather than taking on debt, while others were happy to go to school full time, and I take vacations that are ambitious and difficult. The number of people in the world willing to work as hard or hustle as much as you and I are is very limited, which is why when I meet them I am willing to invest in them."

When Pengtoh and I were roommates in college, he was on a scholarship while I was working my way through school. He and I started doing system administration in Silicon Valley as a side-job --- we would drive down in the evenings around 7pm, and work till 6am setting up workstations for Crescendo Communications, which would pay us $20/hour. I would then stagger into the class I was the TA for (I was an undergraduate TA) at 8am with bloodshot eyes and graded papers, scaring the heck out of my students.

With that kind of background, you would think that I would grow up to be one of those wild-eyed libertarians, and to be honest, I've had one date accuse me of being a Republican during our first date (needless to say, we didn't have a second). But the truth is, what I've noticed is that it's usually the white, over-privileged types that become Libertarians, not those of us who struggled and hustled like mad when we were younger.

The reason is that most of us who were under-privileged were grateful to our lucky breaks. In my case, the Pell grant paid for my first year's tution, and the work-study program paid for my second year's, whereupon I had built up enough credit and reputation (together with a half year's paid internship) to land both the gigs I discussed above, and then a career in Silicon Valley. Without those breaks, my life would have been even tougher.

The federal government and the state of California invested in my brothers and I in terms of our education (Berkeley's tuition is an incredible bargain). At this point, that investment has paid off hundreds of times, maybe even thousands, in terms of taxes we've paid back to the state and to the federal government. That's one reason why when several folks I knew were fleeing for lower-tax regimes, I didn't feel like I had to join them (the other reason was --- if I'm rich enough to retire, I'm going to do it some place where the weather is actually decent --- you're not rich if you can't afford good weather so you can go cycling/sailing/hiking year round).

What amazes me, though, is that the Libertarian party line seems to be that investing in smart, under-privileged people (in other words, people who are under-valued by the market) is considered robbing the deservedly wealthy to giveaway to the undeserving poor, rather than investing in under-valued properties that has potentially high returns (sure, not all such investments make back the money --- but just like with startups, you only need one such good investment per hundred to pay off all the non-performing ones). No wonder Libertarians have given up on Democracy! With that kind of anti-social attitudes, no wonder so many of them dream of building their own country --- they have to, because if they moved to a tax-haven, their own body guards would be tempted to murder them. I'm going to be very entertained to see if such Libertarian paradises work out (I suspect they won't, unless they're simply monarchies owned by the "libertarian").

What amuses me more is that many Libertarians try to hide their anti-social attitudes (which is really more like, "I've made my millions, screw you!") by posing as defenders of freedom. I grew up in Singapore --- I've seen what it's like in a totalitarian society --- the people who defend freedom are the ones going to jail there, not these posers, who're really only out to cut taxes on themselves. They certainly aren't the ones speaking out on behalf of civil liberties, and are in fact, frequently complain that giving women the vote was a bad idea.

I had a conversation with Brad Delong a few years ago when he visited Google. I asked him if he had any hypothesis on the number of libertarian programmers out there. He had what I think was a very plausible theory: "There is a need for a 23-year old to justify his sudden wealth. It's against his ego and self-image to imagine that he had been lucky, somehow he must deserve it." Hence, I call Libertarianism a religion --- it makes you feel good about yourself, gives you justification to consider outsiders worthless, and makes you think that democracy is a terrible idea and theocracy is a better one. Too bad the recent financial crisis has given the lie to the free market ideology.

Review: The Language of Power

The Language of Power is the latest in Rosemary Kirstein's imaginary future Earth. As with the previous books, it advances the overall plot only by a little bit, which seems to be Kirstein's modus operandi. I guess she's hoping to milk this series all the way to retirement age (and maybe beyond, if that's Robert Jordan's is what the trend is with novels).

This time, Rowan, the scientist/adventurer/protagonist heroine of the series settles in a city to do research on who the leader of the wizards is. While doing so, she encounters an old friend, and finally gets exposure to what she thinks of as magic, but the reader realizes is just technology too advanced for a world of fantasy.

What annoys me about this series is that every book reveals more questions than it answers, and the reveals are rather parsimonious with respect to the overall plot. A few more books like this and I'm going to start pining for the days when books weren't trilogies.

Review: After the Software Wars

After the Software Wars is Keith Curtis' book (with free download) about the future of software. In this case, you pretty much get what you pay for.

The first section of the book is interesting --- Curtis believes that the the software field will only progress when software is open-sourced and GPL'd. His argument is that today's software industry is a lot like alchemists in the middle-ages: all sorts of software techniques are considered secrets, and so very little information occurs --- that means improvements don't accumulate from company to company, and one discovery doesn't benefit the next engineer since it's either buried and embedded in a product that you don't have source code to, or it's documented but the source code is not available.

I definitely believe in this theory, since one reason gtags was open sourced was so that I would never have to re-create the code again, if I were ever to work for another company with a huge source base. I don't believe that this means that GPL software is destined to takeover, however --- we've had Linux for well over 15 years, and Linux still isn't something I could give my mom to use, and printing is still a disaster for me in the office.

If he stopped there, I think it would have made a great web article or blog entry. But like many newly converted, he gets carried away with grand visions and soon goes into irrelevancies like Space Elevators and Carbon Nanotubes. He then proceeds to destroy all his credibility by pontificating on his favorite subject, the religion of Libertarianism (which some day I'll write more about).

All in all, this book is not worth paying money for, and I've summarized the most important part of the book so you can skip it. But since the download is free, if you have a Kindle, go ahead and download it and skim the relevant parts. Not recommended.

Review: Virtuality

Virtuality was Ron Moore's post-Battlestar pilot. It provides an interesting view of space travel, and characteristically enough, uses known technology to portray an exploration of the universe --- no obvious laws of physics were broken in the movie, which by itself makes it almost unique!

As with Battlestar Galactica, the use of negative spaces in the movie is prevalent --- reality-tv like filming techniques are used throughout the entire movie, which lends the movie a very immediate experience. What's fascinating to me is that the traditional movie-making approach is only used inside the virtual reality-experiences, heightening the viewer's dislocation and discomfort with distinguishing what is real and what is not --- which is probably one of the points Ron Moore is getting at.

I think this movie's very much worth watching, though it does (like any good TV pilot would) leave you wanting more.

Review: The Lost Steersman

The Lost Steersman is Rosemary Kirstein's third book about her fantasy universe which is really set far in the future, after an unknown form of environmental catastrophe has hit the planet.

As with a lot of science fiction, the characters really are wooden. In particular, the protagonist, Rowan, seems all too easily deceived, despite her previous experiences. And after the build up of the past two novels, we're hoping to get some resolution to many of the questions --- what are the wizards, and why did they do what they do? What are the demons? Are they robots? How did the steerswomen get founded.

One of those questions gets answered, but not very well, and and the others --- let's just say that at this point, I feel like Kirstein is dragging this out to be a fifty book series --- the reveals are coming way too slowly for the overall plot to move very fast and for reader satisfaction.

I will probably read the next book in the series, but only by checking it out from the library.

Doubts about Asset Allocation

There's definitely been a recent bunch of articles about the so-called failure of asset allocation. I'm amused and horrified at the same time. My amusement comes from the use of the last 2-3 year's worth of results to argue that the past 70 years or 100 years of studies on asset allocation are invalid. As I've pointed out, financial planning is a multi-decade process! The only reason why equities can perform as well as they do is that once in a while you get a really good buying opportunity, and if you don't rebalanced into that opportunity when the time comes, don't expect your results to be any good!

My horror stems from the idea that this would lead folks to jump off their financial plans. Now this is understandable. It's very easy to say, "I'm willing to tolerate a 50% drop in my equity portfolio" when times are good. It's another to actively rebalance into that same losing portfolio when times are terrible. The last few years have been tests of conviction for those who might have been uncertain about what their risk tolerance is.

In 2007, when William Bernstein visited Google, he made the point that during a financial crisis, all assets correlate to 1. In other words diversification fails you when you need it the most. But that's why you don't put everything in stocks --- even if in a financial crisis, your bond portfolio takes a hit, it's not as big a hit as it is in stocks. And you do want to position yourself for when the correlations are not 1 --- i.e., when the crisis is over. The unfortunate problem is that nobody knows when that is, so the best plan, as always, is to stick to your asset allocation.

Bicycle Wheels: Loctite or Not

One topic not covered by our lectures on the bicycle wheel is the loctite issue. Many wheelbuilders swear by loc-tite or spoke-prep when building wheels, and it's a question that comes up on a regular basis on cycling forums.

I don't build using loc-tite. If you pay attention to the lectures, you'll see that at one point, I say, There's no such thing as too much lubrication. I emphasize this especially when building with modern rims such as the Velocity Aerohead, which have no eyelets or sockets whatsoever, but also when it comes to the spoke-thread/nipple interface.

To consider why loctite is unnecessary if your wheel is built to the correct tension, consider why a spoke can unscrew itself. The spoke is effective a very long screw under tension. As long as there's tension in the screw, the screw can't unscrew itself! It can only do so when there's no tension. The loss of tension comes from there being a big load on the wheel, which is absorbed by the spokes loosing tension. If the spokes aren't sufficiently tensioned, then the spokes will unscrew themselves, which will lead to the wheel becoming untrue. When the wheel becomes untrue, then, that's your warning that your spokes were insufficiently tensioned, and you should re-tension your wheel.

What happens when you loc-tite the spokes instead, is that the spokes don't unscrew, but they do flex a bit, usually at the elbow (spokes flex even if they are lubricated and unscrew, so it's not a good idea to under-tension wheels, regardless). Eventually, if the elbow flexes enough times, the spokes break and then your wheel really becomes untrue.

So you have a choice: have your wheels go untrue so you notice the problem, or have the spokes break eventually. Now you know why so many professional wheel builders loctite their wheels --- a wheel becoming untrue happens really quickly, but spoke breakage can take many cycles (and a lot of people just don't ride their bikes enough to do that). In general, then, I consider use of loctite/spoke-prep bad practice, and usually used to cover up sloppy wheel building. There might be reasons to justify it, but if you're building wheels for your own use, just use lots of lubricant and none of those "miracle" preparations.

Review: Pushing Ice

Pushing Ice is Alastair Reynold's novel of alien contact. Janus, the moon of Saturn, turns out to be an alien artifact that starts accelerating out of the solar system at an unusually high speed. A mining ship, The Rockhopper turns out to be the only ship capable of intercepting it, and the crew, led by Bella Lind, votes to pursue it.

The first third of the book introduces the ship as well as the folks on board, including engineer Svetlana, who uncovers something sinister about the company who owns the ship and has sent them on this chase.

As the plot unfolds, we see the collision between Bella and Svetlana, first as friends, then as unyielding enemies, and then finally uneasy allies. Nevertheless, the novel never forgets that it's science fiction, with a big emphasis on science --- there's tech galore, time dilation, relativistic effects, as well as nano-technology.

And yes, Alien contact. Not just one, but multiple alien contacts. Unlike the kind of aliens you run into in Star Trek, these are real aliens, with different politics, and interesting objectives. I was in any case quite impressed by the ending.

While not particularly deep, and obviously an early work, Pushing Ice is still recommended as a good airplane novel.

Paris 1998

Paris 1998

This was a tough trip. First, my boss cut down my vacation from 3 weeks to 1, so I had to put off the cycling part till the fall. Secondly, this was my first trip to continental Europe, and it was very rough. I spoke next to no French, I had yet to learn the Lonely Planet isn't all that reliable, and I could not deal with the jet-lag at all. I also had diarrhea on this trip.

And then, in an attempt to escape Paris, we ended up on the TGV to Lyons, where due to the Soccer World Cup, all the hotels were taken, save one. And that was my very first encounter with that delightful life form, the bed-bug!

All in all, it was a good thing that Christina had patience. Or maybe not --- we haven't done a trip together since. :-)

Crater Lake National Park and the Northern California Coast

Crater Lake National Park and the Northern California Coast

In the summer of 1999, my parents and I took a short trip to visit Crater Lake National Park. This was the most disorganized trip that I had ever arranged --- I packed a tent and forgot the tent poles, for instance, and we were forced to buy a cheap $20 tent at a general store late one evening when we discovered that!

On the way back, we took a short visit to some of my favorite sites in the Northern California coast. I had all but forgotten about this trip when my scanning project dug up these slides!

Paragliding off Big Sur: A Photo Essay

Paragliding in Big Sur

Christmas 1999, my family and I decided to visit Big Sur. While driving and walking around, we saw a para-glider enjoying the day. Since I had film to spare, I decided to try to capture the spirit of gliding with the winds.

He self-identified himself years later on one of my earlier on-line photo albums (hopefully Picasa Web outlasts all the ones that didn't), but I lost his contact information. Nevertheless, he was a great subject! (Most of these were shot with my 200mm/2.8L and my EOS-3)

Sailing in the San Juans

San Juan Sailing

During the summer of 1998, Scarlet, Larry Hosken, Lea Widdice and I set off from Anacortes aboard the sailing vessel The Healer for a week long tour of the San Juan Islands. Larry did a fantastic job of capturing my notes and providing his wry observations, but I never did scan those pictures and get them posted.

Well, I'm scanning all these pictures and putting them up now. Sailing isn't as good for photography as hiking, but hey, at least I brought a camera! I've since learned that I prefer warm water sailing.

Cycling is not good for your bones

It appears that there's been a spate of research showing that cycling is not good for your bones. When someone posted this to a cycling mailing list, someone asserted that since the studies were only done on competitive cyclists, it probably wouldn't matter to recreational cyclists.

What kind of people join cycling mailing lists? Enthusiasts. These are folks who are enthusiastic enough to bike to work every day, go on cycling vacations, and bike on weekends, so unfortunately, if that describes you (and it certainly describes me!), you're at risk.

In 2005, just before the Tour of the Alps, Lisa and I got ourselves tested as a precaution. Sure enough, our bone density was T -1.5, which is osteopenia. Osteopenia is not really a disease --- it just means your bone density is below normal, and you're at risk if you don't change course.

So change course we did. After the Tour of the Alps, I cut back on my cycling by about 50%. This meant that one weekend day was devoted to hiking (we tried running --- it was no fun, so we knew we couldn't keep it up). 2006 was devoted to the Coast to Coast walk, and we didn't do as much cycling as we normally did (note that cutting back 50% still meant I was doing 6000 miles a year from commuting and fun rides). I added weight lifting to my exercise regime, forcing myself to spend time in the gym for the first time in my life. I also added calcium supplements to my diet.

In 2007, we got tested and we had gone from T -1.5 to T +1.5. Not only were we in the normal range, we now had stronger than normal bones! The lab technician stared at me when she did the bone scan, and stared at her records again, because she had never seen such a radical change in so short a time! Her comment was, "You changed something didn't you?" My doctor looked at the report and said, "Wow, when I told you to take up hiking, I didn't expect you to walk across England. I don't even have to test you for another 5 years. Keep doing whatever you're doing." (The funniest things about doctors is that they always seem genuinely surprised whenever a patient takes their advice --- I certainly don't pay my doctors just so I can ignore them!) We did do a Vitamin D test though, and it seemed that I had low vitamin D --- my skin's too dark even for Northern Californian sun to give me much vitamin D naturally.

Incidentally, after I posted my results to a cycling forum, someone sent me e-mail with calculations showing that I couldn't possibly have made such a big difference so quickly. When I inquired as to why he was skeptical, he responded that he tried lifting weights and hiking but it made no difference to him. Further probing revealed that he was in his late 50s, and more importantly, had not cut back on his cycling --- he was still doing double centuries. It is very important to realize that if you've been diagnosed as having a problem, you cannot just keep going as though nothing has changed --- you have to cut back on the ultra long rides that are doing the damage!

So if you're one of those enthusiastic cyclists, you need to go get yourself checked so you can do something about it. And it is possible to do something about it. I certainly didn't give up cycling --- and I didn't have to. There are sacrifices --- for instance, my trips can no longer be as tough as the one I did in 2005 --- subsequent trips did not feature as much climbing. I might even have to schedule rest days this year as part of the Tour of Hokkaido, but you know, being able to go for a fun hike and not be sore for 2-3 days afterwards is worth something, and as mentioned before, the Coast to Coast turned out to be a great trip.

Coast to Coast Pictures (Consolidated)

Coast to Coast Consolidated

After all these years of traveling, hiking and backpacking, I still think that the best long distance walk I've ever done was the 2006 Coast to Coast. Everything came together on that trip: glorious natural beauty, historic and literary locations out of time, physically challenging walks, intellectually challenging route-finding (the coast to coast is not one route, but an infinite number of routes, and to have done it once is merely to have explored one of many possibilities), contrasted with luxurious (compared to a tent) accomodations, hot showers every night, good home made food, and friendly people who speak English.

Lisa and I extol the virtues of this walk to anyone who would listen --- you can do it in 7 days hiking 20 miles a day, or over 30 days hiking 6 miles a day. You might encounter boggy ground and fog and require a GPS to navigate, or you might encounter glorious sunshine and use your umbrellas as sunshade. We did the trip in 17 days, with 2 rest days, and frankly, I wish we'd spent more time.

As a trip done after we converted our point and shoot to digital, we had pictures posted soon after the trip. But I was at that time still carrying an SLR loaded with Fuji Velvia, and those pictures never made it to the web-site. When I scanned these, I consolidated them with all the digital pictures. If you like you can play "which camera took this picture" while viewing the album.

But really, the album is a poor substitute for being there. If you're physically capable and have the time and money (much easier now that the pound is so low), you owe it to yourself to plan and do this trip. I have to thank Scarlet for the idea.

Why the Buying Frenzy?

After years of being bugged by my allergist to move some place with a hardwood floor, and outgrowing our small apartment, I've finally bought a house. (The close is next Friday) When I was shopping around, however, I noticed that there seemed to be a buying frenzy for houses under $700k in the Bay Area.

A year or two ago, David Ziegler wrote a wonderful post about housing as an investment. In it, he noted that the historic price/rent ratio is about 21. A $700k house would have to rent out for $33,333 a year, or $2777 a month to be at this ratio. Not surprisingly enough, that does appear to be the average going rate for a 3 bed/2 bath home in the area at the moment. In other words, for a change, housing in the Silicon Valley area does not appear to be vastly over-valued by historical standards, which partially explains the current feeding frenzy, which I think is pretty inane --- one colleague told me that she had bought a house with cash, but only so she could rent it out --- I think any rationalization of that approach to housing as investment went out the window (to be fair, she was under undue pressure from her parents, which is hard to resist at any age).

Personally, I think that house prices have room to drop --- historically, markets don't just correct to a historical level, they over-correct, which means they drop even further than the historical average (which was just an average). While historically, more than half the de-valuation of the housing market comes from inflation rather than nominal price declines, the state of the economy is such that inflation is unlikely in the near future, so all the decline has to reflected in the price. Since house prices are sticky on the down side, this explains the proliferation of houses sitting on the market longer, followed by "price reduced" signs.

Furthermore, rents will also drop in a recessionary environment, which will tend to bring the price/rent ratio back up. I'll refer interested readers to the very competent blog entry by Calculated Risk.

Given that I believe all this, why am I buying? As David Ziegler points out, I don't view the home as an investment --- it's entirely a consumption expense. I'm moving to a bigger home in a neighborhood that's acceptable, in the hopes that the value of the home to me outweighs the price I pay over the long term. Given this, I bought as little house as I could (studies show that you get used to a nice house, but if your commute is hellish, you'll never get used to that!), and used very little leverage. And if you were to ask me, that's what I would advise you to do as well.

When do you need a financial planner?

I haven't written about financial topics in a while. A lot of this is because to some extent, I've written about all that I wanted to about the topic and pretty much stuck to my strategy. When all you do is Asset Allocation, it's really boring stuff and unlike a newspaper columnist, I don't have to repeat myself because I trust that readers know how to search.

I met with Brian recently. If you recall, he collaborated with me on the Concentrated Portfolio Problem way back in 2006. He was lamenting to me that someone he knew well still had done nothing with his highly concentrated portfolio, which obviously was damaging during the recent financial meltdown. He said he's this far from tossing this person to a financial planner, even though it went against his ethos.

At this point I said, Financial Planners basically are a way for you to dis-intermediate your emotions from your investing life. If you're the kind of person who has a hard time investing a large lump sum amount of cash, or if you have a hard time selling company stock, having a financial planner or advisor do it for you is necessary, and it's worth paying someone a fixed fee to do so. (A percentage of assets for someone to baby-sit you and tell you to push the sell button is too much!)

As an example, I knew of folks who could not bring themselves to sell company stock when it was at an all time high, but then also could not bring themselves to hold even when things were at a 4 year low! Folks like that could use a financial advisor. I know other folks who sold at a decent price, but then could not bring themselves to invest over a 4 year period. While cash is king right now, over the long term, inflation eats away an all-cash portfolio. So those people could use a financial advisor to give them a kick in the butt. A friend of mine once could not bring himself to open a Vanguard account without me sitting next to him and telling him what to do, which buttons to push, and what funds to buy. He knew intellectually what to do, but he literally could not do it by himself. This man obviously needed a financial advisor, and I was dumb enough to do it for him for free when I obviously should have charged a percentage of assets (joking!).

Do I have a financial planner? Sort of. I have one that I use to gain access to DFA funds, and I pay him a fixed fee. My condition for using him was that he would just behave like a broker --- take buy and sell orders, and not sell me on anything. Actually, he's been doing a bit more than that, since he's financially sophisticated enough for me to tell him to "sell this fund for tax-loss harvesting, and then buy it back after the wash sale rule no longer applies." Nevertheless, I keep a tight rein on my financial affairs. However, colleagues of mine have used his real financial services and don't seem unhappy.

Nevertheless, I can't endorse him or anyone else, since I haven't really done any serious interviewing of what his capabilities are, and at this point nobody's about to pay my hourly wages to interview anyone that way. (After all, I'm going to pocket the fee regardless of whether or not the guy knows what he's doing or not! And even then there are no guarantees --- there are plenty of smart, knowledgeable crooks --- just visit Wall Street!)

Hence, even if you are intellectually capable of doing your own financial planning (it's no harder than programming C++, I promise!), the last few years have taught me that you might still find a financial planner useful and necessary. Just don't overpay and make sure he's not a crook. How you would go about doing that, I don't know.

Review: Century Rain

Century Rain is Alastair Reynolds' time travel science fiction novel. (Yes, I'm on a Reynolds kick right now) If you want to be a hard science writer, but you want to write a time travel story, what would you do?

Reynolds' answer is to use space travel. Unfortunately, he has to resort to another artifact. Someone somewhere has made a file-system-like snapshot of Earth back in the 1930s, and hidden it behind an astronomical structure where the inhabitants can be blissfully unaware that they're not actually orbiting a star.

In the meantime, the real Earth has turned into a dystopia due to a nano-machine holocaust, and different human factions are now fighting over the ashes of the planet. Verity Auger is an archeologist, digging through the remains of old Paris to recover long lost records. When she makes a mistake and is sent to a tribunal for it, she's offered a chance to redeem herself by exploring the parallel Earth, where a previous archeologist was sent but has gone missing.

In this parallel Earth, a private detective, Floyd, is engaged by a landlord to investigate the death of a tenant that the landlord had become fond of. The two plot lines then converge and we get reveal after reveal of the various machinations that are tying together the real Earth and the parallel one.

As is usual with Reynolds' stories, the characters are wooden, and his attempts at portraying a romance is incredibly unconvincing. The world building is excellent, though it still left unanswered questions in my head --- at the end of the novel, I still felt that Reynolds had dodged a few intriguing questions that would have made the novel better if he had answered them.

All in all, this novel is pretty mediocre Reynolds, but still more than acceptable airplane material. Recommended if you can get it at a cheap price or if you check it out of the library.