Spare the Child and Spoil the Rod

What do I want for Son and Daughter? That's complicated, but I can make even the simplest things complex.

I want them to have a good sense of perspective. I want them to be able to objectively come to the conclusion that lots of the people they know are hopelessly dim and narrow. We're going to travel with the kids which will help this, and Daughter's already gone more places than most people I know. I'm also going to teach them about why people do the things they do. All the absurd, destructive, and bumbling actions that people take have some kind of motivation behind them. Example, if in 15 years Daughter says, "Steve invited me to a party, but he's just trying to get me in bed. He's a fucking idiot anyway.", then I'll be thrilled.

I want them to run with their curiosity. I want them to follow up those little flashes of curiosity with more investigation. That's something I can work with a lot. They ask a question about something and we'll figure out how the hell it works.

I want them to want to do well at whatever it is they choose to do. Not much else to explain there.

The Christmas Spirit

Daughter and I made cookies. There was a point where things got out of hand as so often happens with cookie making.

This Confession Has Meant Nothing

Forgive me. I'm still not feeling very funny. Maybe I'll have some better stuff closer to New Years.

I just watched American Psycho again and it got me thinking. Not about the directly correlated stuff like vapid materialism and lust and rejection of core humanity either. Instead, I ended wondering about how to convey a story like this without the blood.

Well, of course it's possible, but I guess I should ask; Is it possible to convey an interesting story like this without the blood?

Everyone knows the phrase, "Who, What, Where, When, and Why". It's the foundation of storytelling. Different types of stories focus on different components. Your more popular fiction is pretty centered on the What. What happened, the story, the plot. The more literary stuff coasts between the Who and the Why. These are the stories that bore the hell out of people because, generally speaking, no one cares that Rosebud was a damn sled. The Where and When are really more details. They can definitely be important details, but they aren't the core of the story.

So, continuing to reframe my question; If you've got your Who and Why, your Patrick Bateman as the sociopathic golem driven by everything that was wrong with 80's America. That's a great Who and Why, but no one's going to read about his fastidious morning beauty ritual alone, at least no one who doesn't bring a MacBook to Starbucks. That's where the What comes in. An engaging, and maybe a little outrageous, What can sell stories, so why not bolt some titillating story onto your beatifully crafted Who and Why?

Bottom line, I think it is possible to create a more prosaic What and still sell your Why and Who, but it's pretty damned hard. Lost in Translation is a good example of this. Great Why and Who, kind of a boring What though really. Still, the Why and Who were so well crafted and the slow What was both well made and 100% supportive of the theme, that it still achieved some popularity.

I'm pretty sure it made less money than Titanic though.

Run Ning! Run!

I'm doing something dumb, which is hardly unusual. At least this time it doesn't involve power tools or the local electric-grid.

I'm making Ning run. Not through chasing her or anything, but that's not off the table. I've gotten a little concerned about her bones lately. See, she eats well, better than I do really, but her calcium +D intake might be a little low. Combine that with the fact that she's been cooped up at home with the kids for a while now, and you get a lack of stress on those bones. Bones are like muscles, they get stronger when you use them. Interesting little fact, "The dominant arm of a tennis player has 35 percent more bone than the non-dominant arm" (MSNBC). That and all the general benefits of a healthy level of activity pushed me into starting her on running.

So why is this dumb? Well, making someone exercise is something that's almost always doomed to failure. Most people who start exercising do it because they want to look better in a bikini, god knows that's why I did it. That's kind of a tricky thing though. It's like wanting a sports car. Most people are going to go buy one, but some guys with the right background are going to build one from scratch. Building a car is a long process that some people will enjoy and most people will dislike and see only as a chore. Here's the rub, you can't buy fitness. The only way to get it is to put in hours of hard and mostly painful effort.

Unless you actually enjoy exercising, then you need an extraordinary level of discipline to slog through it.

What I'm gambling on is that I can tap into something that will hook her and keep her going on her own. Competition, achievement, hell even habit can work.

I Bring Nothing to the Table

The holidays drastically reduce my net weekly output of "The Funny". So my apologies for that.

Here's a poorly spaced sign instead.

What Rough Beast, Its Hour Come Round at Last?

Daughter has started to fear things. She'll grab my hand and hold it in front of her face if any scary parts come up on one of her dvds. Now, the 'scary' is relative of course, so I'm often shielding her from something like an ogre doll in Little Einsteins.

It makes me wonder how she processes fear at this age. She hasn't exactly had anything happen to be scared of, so it's strange how she can associate these things with fear. I know she has nightmares, but I really wonder what happens in them.

Saint Mikey the Slightly Dented

I've been busier than usual lately. Standard workload for the normal job, and I've got a pretty full load of contracts on the side. I've managed to mostly keep up with training, though swimming is way behind.

Christmas is coming fast, and, thankfully, Thanksgiving is behind us (see what I did there?). I don't like the holidays very much at all, but with Daughter and Son around I'm trying to do a good job of hiding that. They'll probably see through the act when they're older, but by then it won't be as big of a deal for them.

It's kind of hard for me to put together something cohesive right now with how fragmented my focus is. So, hopefully throwing out this grab-bag crap of a post will help clear out the pipes.

In Which I Express Surprising Hatred for Common Things

The alphabet pisses me off.

I realize that this statement might need a little more explanation than most of my random declarations, so first, some background.

I have kind of an arms-length relationship with reality. The world that exists in my head is a nifty place, full of well-formed theories and concepts that aren’t sullied by all that nastiness that floats around the real world. Try sending me grocery shopping for a good example of this. You want me to get eggs and milk. Those are what I consider ‘implementation details’. In my head I’m going to the store to get ‘food’. So when I come back with a sandwich no one should be surprised. That’s if I even manage to make it to the store without forgetting where I’m going and autopiloting to work.

Concepts are obviously a big deal to me, so things get a little sticky when certain concepts are implemented poorly in reality. For example, the horror that is the English alphabet. See, an alphabet is supposed to be a way to break down phonetic components of language to allow for transcription. The English alphabet technically does this, but that’s like saying that a drunk guy pissing on your lawn is fulfilling the responsibilities of a sprinkler system.

The letter C is a great example. It makes a sound like K or sometimes, for no appreciable reason, it sounds like S.

So why in the name of all that’s holy do we have the letter C at all? USE K OR S DAMNIT!

I get angry thinking about vowel ambiguity and the ‘silent e’ pisses me off to no fucking end. I remember very little of my childhood, but I know I learned to read pretty early, so I think that might have spared my kindergarten teacher being yelled at by a swearing five year old about conceptual clarity. Since then, I never really gave it much thought except when I’d typo an ill-constructed word and the rage would briefly flare back up. But now that we have two kids I’ve had to teach Daughter this abomination and I’ll be taking Son through it soon. When I was teaching Daughter phonics, I’d have to stop and explain that C says Kuh or Ess because somewhere along the line an idiot was put in charge of something that they shouldn’t have been.

I use that as an important life-lesson for her.

She’ll have fun with her teachers.

So will I.

I Can Do a Thousand Now

In case you haven't noticed, and no one really has, I've generally focused my melancholy, laser like, onto punishing my body through constant exercise.

So this leads to some delicious irony when I say that I'm in the best shape of my life.


Side note, you might notice a large gap between this and the prior post. Well I was in another country with a slightly authoritative bent, and blogspot access is a no-no. On the plus side, I did start Daughter in on minor harassment of the local authorities.

Accomplishment For Its Own Sake

I did another race a while ago. It was a very short one because there were some guys from work doing it for the first time. I did better overall and actually got second in my age group, but I'd blame that more on the less competitive crowd at these shorter races.

So that pretty much ends my season. I've got maybe one more in mid-October that I might do, but other than that I'm aiming for next year's ice-breakers.

Since everyone is just salivating over the thought of my training plan, here we go:

For running I'm putting in miles and doing a 5k training plan. I'm at < 20 miles a week right now and won't peak much higher than 25. Depending on how I'm doing with this I'll probably go to a 10k plan early in 08. I won't do anything other than distance for at least a month. I just need miles now to get my legs ready. I'm going to start the running portion of the coaching in a month, so hopefully that will help.

For biking, miles miles miles. I've upped to 90minute rides, and I'll probably peak at 2 hours. Then I'll work in hills and speed.

I've started seeing a swim-coach, and that's working out well. Swimming is absolutely about technique. They guys working the hardest are usually going slowest. From what the coach says, I wasn't 'horrible' but I've improved a hell of a lot, so I think that translates to me actually being something close to horrible.

For next year I want to drop 15 minutes off my sprint time, which would put me competitive in my age group.

Oh Sweet Merciful Christ SHUT IT OFF!

I'm not a terribly domestic person. Like most statements, a lot of the actual meaning behind a statement like that depends on the precise definition applied to a single word. So 'domestic'; We've got kids, so we spend a lot of time at home, but I don't pay a lot of attention to the environment itself. Some people pride themselves on having a spotless kitchen, which is fine as long as they stay this side of OCD. I don't even really notice that I have a kitchen unless I'm hungry or it's caught fire in some small way. That's the way I'm using domestic.

Now given that I pay as much attention to household appliances as my cat does to drywall texture it might be a little surprising to hear how excited I am about a blender. Blenders are the cock-teases of the kitchen appliance world. A bold and moderately frightening statement, I know. They promise so much. They've got 30 different settings to pulverize food most of which have names that sound like sound-effects in a second rate comic book. So you buy one, or more likely get one as a wedding gift from an aunt that you forgot existed, and your happy little head is filled with visions of low-cost frappuccinos and smoothies and, if you swing that way, margaritas. Seven months later your wife has figured out that condoms aren't normally needed for most business meetings and you've been given 12 hours to clear your stuff out from the house. You find the forgotten box behind the also unused punch bowl, and you decide to give the thing, no pun intended, a whirl.

This is a spur of the moment thing, so you don't actually have all the ingredients for a smoothy, but hell, you're bored and hungry, so good judgment be damned, the apple sauce is going in there. You throw in whatever fruit you've got and ice that's been in the freezer trays for nine years. Since you really only want a drink for yourself you end up using about a 17th of the capacity of the damn thing, but hey, you're still craving the fruity goodness of a smoothy so you bravely continue on. You fire up the beast, put it on frappe or fricassee or whatever the hell the middle option is and watch the ice cubes bounce around for a few minutes while the rest of the mixture turns a color you wouldn't think possible from fruit.

Now you're thinking, well that's the hard part right? Wrong. Trying to pour that lumpy sludge into your cup is one of the most surprisingly frustrating things you've ever tried to accomplish. Only about a quarter of the stuff actually pours into the cup easily. You manage to scrape out another quarter before learning one of the fundamental truths about blenders, you can't get a god damn thing out of a fucking blender. Half of your already small portion has chemically bonded with your blender. Remember those commercials where they superglued a hard hat to a beam and then hung some dumb son of a bitch over certain death. That's what your smoothy is doing in the blender, only it's not kicking and wetting itself like the dumbass in the commercials, no, your smoothy is making rude comments and using surprisingly inventive hand gestures to communicate unflattering facts about your genitalia.

Wisely, you give up and try to drink the portion that you've gotten out. I say 'try' because that's precisely what you're doing. The ice is still in chunks that are the perfect size to block the straw and you keep running into chunks of half-frozen bananas, which is odd, because you didn't actually have bananas in the blender. So, now you're still hungry, you've eaten some chunks of unknown things, and you've got an hour less to move the contents of your life to your mother's basement.

...oh but now you've got the clean up the blender. You poor bastard.

How in the holy hell are you supposed to clean out something that's a funnel shaped container with blades at the bottom. Cleaning a blender is like trying to give a suppository to a cat. Neither of you really want to do the task, someone's going to get scratched up, and the job's going to be half done at best.

Obviously I have issues with blenders that, are, frankly, a little surprising even to me. So when a friend recommended a thing called a 'magic bullet' to me I was resistant. Well, first I kind of thought it was a sex-toy and I was a little confused about his motives. Flattered, but confused.

He explained that a magic bullet was, in fact, a blender. It's a fundamentally redesigned one though. Really, they took all the evil and hateful problems right out of a blender. It's like they took Satan, and got rid of the all the goat killing and fire and stuff, and just left a guy who really throws kick ass parties.

Just go buy one.

Now a word of warning to consumers on both sides of the perversion aisle. The 'magic bullet', as you might expect, really is the name of a sex-toy too. So I just want you to be sure which one you're ordering. The little sex-toy wouldn't make a good smoothy, and while the blender could probably be converted to a sex-toy somehow I really wouldn't recommend that unless you consulted with a certified and bonded electrician and follow proper safety guidelines.... and pick an easily remembered and pronounced safe word.

and I will tell you what you are

This is bound to piss people off, but I may as well come out with it.

I have to eat constantly and I'm getting sick of it.

I started out skinny, and I've dropped almost 10 pounds in the last 5 months. I've upped my intake a hell of a lot and I'm trying to load up on the heavy calorie foods, but I've really only managed to hold steady. On top of that, I'm looking to up my run distance over the winter, so I'm going to have go up even more calories a day just to hold even.

Now if I wanted to eat crap-food this wouldn't be a problem. Hell, two poorly chosen meals at just about any fast food place would take me over my quota. But no, I get to try and eat relatively healthy which means I'm eating all the god damn time, which gets old.

Here's a tasty after dinner snack.
Brown half a pound (I use ~.6 lbs) of extra-lean ground turkey
Put in a big bowl with a full can of vegetarian refried beans
Add enough cheese to make tasty, but not enough to clog the arteries
Microwave until the cheese melts, add some salsa and you're good to go.

That's a little less than 1000 cals.

I just finished one of those babies, and I'm probably going to have a bowl of cereal in a while. The whole evening I've also been snacking on raisins. This is another good reason why I shouldn't go beyond Olympic distance, aside from the fact that my joints would basically secede from the union of my body if I tried Ironman distance I'd literally never be able to stop eating if I wanted to stay above skeleton body weight.

Rarely Runs Races Rapidly

Oh the shame.... Oh the soul crushing guilt

I never put up a report on my last race.

I did better than the prior one. Overall I went down two minutes which is good progress. Oddly enough I was two minutes slower on the swim this time and I added about a minute with a slower transition time. Last time I managed to skip just ahead of the crowd before the first turn. Not this time though. I ran right into the bastards at the buoy then was fighting my way through and getting stopped.

The bike was better. I stayed aero the vast majority of the time and ended up just under 19mph average (1mph better than last time). When I started out there was an older guy ahead of me. He was in a t-shirt and on an older, standard road bike, but this guy had legs like tree-trunks. You could tell he'd been doing this for years and years. It took me 12 miles, but I finally passed him and pulled away. Still, had he decided to, I'm pretty sure he could have blown me away any time he wanted.

The run was also better, but not fast. Which makes sense, because I'm not very fast even on training. Over the last month I've come to realize that I need to put in more mileage before I can work on any real speed at a 5k or 10k race. There aren't any shortcuts around that. So, I'm upping my mileage aiming for a 10k workout plan.

Anyway, on a more important topic, yesterday as I was coming in from a run, Ning and Daughter were just coming out the front door to go out. Daughter saw me running and promptly started mocking me by jogging in the driveway. If you haven't seen it, a two year old jogging, not running but jogging, is a pretty amusing thing to watch. She was trying to lift her legs more and hold her arms up by her side. She was also explaining that she was running in case someone misunderstood. Cute, but also a good example that kids might not listen to what you say all the time, but they sure as hell watch what you do.

Save me...

Another benefit of having a Chinese wife is that I can learn how to deeply offend people in a new and challenging language. There's a lot more to this than just learning how to say 'assface' in Chinese. You've really got to get deep down into the culture and learn how to offend. You've got to learn how shake the very foundations of a person with a single well placed phrase. It takes study, commitment, and a complete disregard for basic human decency.

I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty good at this. Don't think that I run around spewing offense like a tourettes riddled ADD patient, but on special occasions I've been known to make a grown man weep with impotent rage... or just plain impotence, either way, there's flaccidity and tears.

It turns out that I'm so good at this, that I can do it completely by accident. One night, years ago, I made some joke comment to my wife that was rooted in a Simpson's reference. It was a pretty innocuous comment, so her wide-eyed look of shock and gasping out, "WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?" was a little bit of a shock.

It turns out that I'd accidentally said what is pretty much the worst word you can utter in Chinese. I imagine that Ning regretted explaining the whole thing to me, because, really, this is like finding the loudest and craziest guy you can find wandering the streets in a rotgut haze, then giving that guy the keys to a shiny new tank. Ning explained that this was way out of the league of the other words she'd taught me, and that I was to never utter it again lest the gates of hell open their unholy jaws to swallow the land of the living.

Anyway, fast forward a few months to a dinner...or a lunch, god help me if I can remember a meal. We were out with a few of Ning's friends and, as per usual, I'm the lone white guy. I'm fielding the standard questions, ("Yes, I can use chopsticks.", "No thank you, I've had enough crab anus dumplings.", "Yes, like a horse." ) when Ning turns to me and says, "Hey, tell Susie that bad word I taught you."

Confused, I say, "...but you told me never to say that word."

"Yeah, but you can say it now"

Persisting, I say, "...yes, but you were really emphatic about it at the time. I still have a scar on my chin from when you..."

"No it's ok, go ahead."

So I turn to Susie, who's all ears at this point, and quietly say the damnable word.

Ning has kind of a full body spasm, hits me again and gasps out, "Oh god I didn't mean THAT word."

He Made a Million Dollars You Know

My wife, being all kinds of Chinese, exposes me to lots of interesting bits of culture that I really wouldn't get otherwise. What I've been seeing a lot of lately, is the penchant for status seeking through purchasing. It's kind of like the western, 'Keeping up with the Joneses'. Here, neighbors and friends will have small, and never acknowledged, competitions, things like 'whose lawn in the greenest', or 'whose kids kicked heroin the fastest.'

In China though, it's a little different. It's really a competition to see who can spend the largest amount of money on the most useless item possible. Brand names are huge there. You can make the biggest ugliest sunglasses in the world, but you put a little Gucci symbol on there, and they'll pay damn near any price you name. Not only that, but it's treated like a huge accomplishment which will be duly bragged about in excruciating detail to anyone unlucky enough to get in the way. It's like the guy in the office who ran a marathon. For about two months afterwards he'll corner people and tell them about his toenails falling off and his nipples bleeding.

This seems to extend to services as well. We had Daughter washing the car for us, which actually meant throwing a sponge at the car repeatedly and wandering off with the hose, when Ning explained that automatic car washes are more expensive in China than it is to pay people to do it.

and people use the automatic ones

because they're more expensive

...

ok, so that kind of broke something in my head and I came up with a money-making idea. Now, I've never been much of an entrepreneur. I've always associated that with inspirational speaking, broken dreams and substance abuse, but still, I think this new idea could make some real money. I'd have to live in China for a while and it would take some clever marketing and there'd probably be some legal hoops to jump through (read: bribes to pay), but the basic idea is:

People will pay me $3,000 U.S. and in return I will kick them in the balls.

A little crazy I know, but think about it. It's a completely useless, and maybe long-term unhealthy, service that costs a lot of money. I'd only do one or two a week to increase scarcity and I'd randomly turn people down just to make it seem more exclusive. I could be pulling down 24k a month, and I'd be doing what I love. And there's no way I could feel bad about it, because anyone dumb enough to pay me money for that, deserves a kick in the balls. It works beautifully. Ok, 'beautifully' might not be right, but it's convenient if nothing else.

Here's how the bragging conversation might go the next day at the office. The names have been westernized to make this seem a touch less offensive.

Bob limps into the office smiling broadly. Steve, who's spent most of his morning trying to figure out if the receptionist is wearing a bra, looks up from his research to say, "Hey Bob, how was your weekend?"

"Oh pretty good. You know, I went out with my wife to lunch on Saturday...watched a movie, then on Sunday I got kicked in the balls."

Steve chokes on his coffee and coughs out, "No way! By that crazy white guy?"

"Yup. I did some research and he's the best. He's not cheap though, you know his base rate is $3,000?" Bob says, a little louder than is needed.

"Wow, your frivolous spending has really raised your status in the eyes of your contemporaries. That rocks!"

Bob, dripping with pride, whips out his iPhone, "I've got a video of it. Come here and watch. By the way, you know how expensive these iPhones are right?"

Steve leans over the iPhone and starts to watch the video, "Yes, the sheer volume of your disposable income has cast me and my ancestors into shame. Hey, that's you! and there's the white guy."

"He's got really long legs you know. It really lets him get some good power going."

Heavy foot-steps, a dull thump, and a high pitched scream come from the tinny iPhone speaker. "Oh no way! You paid for the running start option? That's another $1,000. Oh man, you were lifted right off the ground."

Bob says, "Yes, crazy white guy said it was some of his best work."

Steve, still watching the video, "Wow...so how long did it take you to stop vomiting?"

Proxy Venting

Here's a contribution from someone who's notable for being not me:


Ever heard of working poors? Very common here in Cali, a state blessed with sunny weather and high tech firms. With stock options, stock grants, stock discounts, bonus checks... many of us worked hard and we spent even harder. I noticed that people kept wishing they had more money. Nothing wrong with this particular wish. I myself always wish I had more money from time to time. But many times what happens is that while yearning for more wealth people don't quite enjoy what they have NOW.

In a typical tech firm fashion, we all worked like there was nothing else in life -- 60 hour week is nothing to complain about. Stress level was high. How do I know? My doctor said that 90% of his patients are from my company and more than half had to seek Rx for depression or insomnia. We worked like ants carrying food that's 100 times their body weight. For what? I don't know. Ants get to put food on their table. We human work our a@# off to have "Whole Foods" and drive Lexus. After MBA I worked for 8 years, in a gray cubicle, in and out of meetings all day and yell at engineers for having no financial sense. I worked from 7 to 5, then I would eat at the dinner table dreading the 9pm meeting with India. The job did pay for my Whole Foods, but not sure if I achieved anything worth mentioning, promotions is always a happy occasion but it simply means a little more money or boss more people around, it's nowhere near self-actualization at the top of Maslow's Hierarchy. Not for me anyways.

I missed my baby. I'm lucky that actually HAD a baby. Infertility rate was so high in my company that they started to offer reimbursement for expensive infertility treatment as part of their initiative to "balance work and family life". HR even gave out raffle prizes for people doing stretching exercises twice a day in a "designated area" (a cubicle intersection on each floor, great place to meet people btw. Sad, but I did meet great people during these official breaks of the day), blood pressure checks were readily available, and set new rules that people can work from home more (people end up working MORE at home b/c they don't have to commute, I'm sure this is all a well planned strategy to "increase productivity"). Everyone had nightmares about work. When we gathered over water fountains and shared our work nightmares in the office the next day as funny stories, you know we're a sad bunch of people. If we were a sad bunch of people at work, we sure make it up by spending lots of money when we're not working.

Working poor is a trend in this town. It doesn't mean welfare mothers go back to work and end up losing more money due to daycare and taxes. Working poors here are those who "have it all" and still aren't satisfied. Have a 3,000 sqft home? Too small, how about moving to a 5,000 sqft one? I can't change my job to do something I truly love, I've got bills to pay (BMW SUV, for example).

The cars on the street are new and expensive, the local high school's auditorium is so obscenely luxurious it puts a modern movie theater to shame. Everywhere I turn I see green (money, not trees). But many think they're poor and they MUST keep working to generate more money to "survive".

It's like people smoking crack. They're so obsessed with making more money I just don't think saving another $100,000 in cash next year will truly make them satisfied either. Only sky is the limit. They'll be chasing after that dream of building more wealth all their life even tho they already ARE wealthy compared to most. Count your blessings people and treasure what you alreayd have. Money won't buy you happiness -- The last time I heard a mega rich girl bragging about how happy she was on TV together with her hubby... she filed for divorce the next month, shaved her head bald, and went in and out of rehab.

McCarthy Had a List Too You Know

No one sent this to me, but having things to write about can't hurt.


1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? My father. With most parents, naming your child is pretty much the first thing you can make a mistake with. In this case my mother getting falling down drunk when she was pregnant with me would make my name mistake #2.
2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? I'm crying right now. I saw a picture of a kitty.

Kittys make me cry.
3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? My handwriting makes catholic priests cross themselves and run. Handwriting analysts have said that I should be closely monitored only having seen how I hold a pen...so yeah, I'm ok with it.
4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Peppered turkey
5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS? Two. They're fascinating.
6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? This is a hard question, because there kind of already are two of me. See, I've had a friend for 12 years who I'll call Dopply. Dopply is freakishly like me. Mannerisms, hobbies, sayings, everything. It's so damn odd. But underneath that we're quite different people. I think he's who I'd be if I didn't have to be so mean.
Anyway, if there were two of exactly me, we'd probably team up to accomplish great and terrible deeds, but I don't think we'd be friends.
7. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? A while ago I actually found a way to make sarcasm into a physical substance. I then constructed a time machine out of this new sarcasm-clay and traveled back in time and invented sarcasm.
At least that was the plan. When I got back there to the puddle full of protoplasm just waiting to burst forth with life I found a note. It was from me. It said,

"I already did it. Good job on hitting that snooze button this morning.
Hugs and Kisses, Me/You"

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? I think so...honestly, this is the kind of thing I'd forget.
9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Now I probably wouldn't. I'm married, so impressing girls is not something I spend time on, and doing this sure as hell wouldn't impress my wife anyway.
Note: What guys won't tell you is that all stupid things they do are usually not to impress girls. Most of the time it's for other guys. They get really uncomfortable with this, but it's true. Just fyi.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Cocoa Pebbles or Fruit Loops.
11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Usually not.
12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? I can do whatever I need to do.
13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Vanilla
14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? The amount of threat they pose.
15. RED OR PINK? I refuse to answer based on a lack of context.
16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? The near-constant sobbing. I've really got to pull myself together.
17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? Wife and kids. I'm evidently a masochist.
18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? No. Under no circumstances is that to happen.
19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? I'm not playing your little sex games.
20. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? The heart of my vanquished enemy. You know, to gain his strength. Just like Mom always said.
21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Various conversations and the hum of a laptop.
22. IF YOU WHERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Black
23. FAVORITE SMELLS? Ewww
24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? My boss
25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Sent to myself, so... meh.
26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? Don't watch them. Why would I watch a game that I cannot affect the outcome of?
27. HAIR COLOR? I'm not sure...brown?
28. EYE COLOR? An angry blue.

Yes blue can be angry damnit.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? No
30. FAVORITE FOOD? Mashed pototoes. 'Favorite' questions aren't good to ask me. I switch frequently and quickly. You've been warned.
31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Scary movies can have happy endings. It's really a matter of perspective. For instance, I see the movie Audition as a love story.
32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Hot Fuzz. It was muddled.
33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? Blue... not angry, just regular.
34. SUMMER OR WINTER? Winter. My kingdom for jagged rocks and deep snow.
35. HUGS OR KISSES? I'm not playing your little sex games.
36. FAVORITE DESSERT? Another favorite question....Ice cream.
37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? My cat.
38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Everyone in the world
39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? Re-reading the last Potter book, a Pratchett book, a film textbook, a couple tech books.
40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? At home, daughter. Here some goofy financial company ad. It was conference swag.
41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON T.V. LAST NIGHT? We don't watch TV...
42. FAVORITE SOUND? Silence
43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES ? Sympathy for the devil.
44. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Pretty much as far as you can get without going into space.
45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? I'm not playing your little sex games, but I do admire your persistence you little minx.
46. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? At the top of a hill under a rainbow.
47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK? Do not, under any circumstances, answer.

There's No 'I' in Win

I'm having some motivation trouble right now. I should be on the trainer right now... well technically, I should have been on it for the last hour. Instead I've been nibbling away inefficiently at various kinds of work.

Aside from trying to motivate myself through a lot of self-directed swearing, here are some other ideas I've either done, or have considered.

I made chocolate chip cookies. This did NOT work.
I ate chocolate chip cookies. This worked worse than just making them.
I thought about using some kind of electro-shock device...then I had another cookie.
I worked out some potential ideas for the shock device. No cookie this time. I'm full.
I started a blog entry with an arrested development allusion.

I am a failure pie with a crust of delicious chocolate chip cookies..

All the Useless Things These Hands Have Done

I have lots of little anecdotes, unfortunately most of them are really sad. Still, there are a few that won't turn your hair white.

A few years back I worked in a small office with three other guys. A guy who I'll call Steve worked across the open air hall from us. One sunny week in spring, Steve had a full remodel of his office going. While the drywall guys were inside getting dusty, Steve decided to refinish a desk. Now, Steve wasn't the handiest guy in the world, or a guy with a lot of follow-through, and this wasn't a grand old desk that you'd normally bother to refinish. So, right off the bat the situation's a little off. There was no power in his office, so Steve ran an extension cord from inside our office out to the hallway where he was sanding the desk.

That was Steve's mistake.

It didn't take long for John, a friend at work, and I to wander over to the window to watch Steve work the orbital sander. From there, it only took about a minute before we started randomly pulling the plug on the extension cord. It was more fun than you might think. We were peeking through the blinds and basically had a silent movie playing out in front of us. We'd pull the plug and Steve would look down quizzically like a dog who lost track of his water dish, then he'd give the sander a shake or two and we'd plug it back in.

This is where things got brilliant.

One of us, we still can't remember who, had one of the best ideas to occur to mankind since putting meat in fire. "Hey, lets only pull the plug when he's holding the sander with his right hand!" It was the moment John and I were destined for, and we were ready.

We waited until he had been using his left hand for a while, then, with one of us spotting through the blinds and one of us with a hand on the cord, we waited until he switched to his right, then *ponk*, no power. He did his confused dog thing, shook it, etc. When he went to check that the sander was plugged into the cord, he switched it to his left, and the thing came back on. Steve shrugged and started sanding again. After a minute, he went to his right hand again, and *ponk*, no power.

After the third round of power failures, his ex-stripper assistant came out, and he (again, we're watching a silent movie) explained his right/left problem. She took the sander and, hey, it worked fine for her no matter what hand she used.

He took over again, and still no luck. The assistant wandered away to drink diet coke and flirt with the contractors leaving Steve alone with his problems. About this time our boss came by to figure out why we weren't actually earning our pay. Our boss was a pretty 'down to business' kind of guy, but when we explained the situation, he told us to carry on and report in when we were finished. Steve's popularity was really working out well for him.

After a few more tries Steve just gave up on his right hand and tried to power through with his left. He'd lean way into it, try all kinds of positions to ease the fatigue, but of course nothing worked. He took a break and went inside after a few more minutes and John and I went back to work. I can't remember if we left the cord plugged in or not.

He never actually finished the desk, but that's hardly our fault. There was about a 10% chance of Steve actually completing that task anyway.

Smells Like Mediocrity

Did the race yesterday and, overall, I did OK. So, of course, I'm disappointed.

There were good and bad points. The swim went very well, way better than I expected. I started wide outside and passed the main knot of swimmers in my group by the first buoy. From then on I was picking off people one at a time with a good steady pace. I managed to pass several of the slow guys in the prior age group who had a 5 minute head start.

I had a decently quick transition time, that's owed mostly to the various gadgets I bought.

Then the bike leg... and the disappointment. My average came out to less than 18mph, which means I spent almost an hour on the bike, which means I've got a lot of work to do on that. Towards the end of the ride I started getting some flareups of side aches. Those are something that I had pretty well under control during training, but not this day.

I made it about a 1/4 mile into the run before the side aches shut me down completely. None of my tricks worked to get rid of them and my pace was a little slower than a ninety year old woman with a walker. Just before the halfway point I finally burned through them and was able to somewhat run the last 1.5 miles back, but the damage had been done.

By my clock I finished somewhere in the 1:43s. Not good, but I've got a bench mark now.

Stretch Those Goals

Race day tomorrow. I'm spending tonight packing and doing some transition practice. It's a straight sprint, 800m, 25k, 5k.

Since, this is my first race on this distance, I don't have anything to really compare it to for times. So I'm just going to shoot towards the fastest time I can make and other than that, get a baseline time setup for future races.

If I finish in 1:30, then that will put me well into the top 20% (based on this course's past results). I really don't think I'll be able to that. That's a very aggressive time for my level. Still, if I make that, it will be damn good for my first race of this distance.

Sunshine and Umbrellas

I worry a lot.

Too much really. It's something that makes me good at my job, but kind of cuts into a lot of other stuff.

I should clarify 'worry'. I don't sit around nibbling my nails and rocking back and forth or anything like that. I just end up thinking about different situations and how to deal with them. The fact that these situations may be completely unlikely and years down the road doesn't really matter.

At work I've gotten pretty good about figuring when not to worry. At home, not so much. Here's a simple example - As I posted before, Daughter is pretty damn smart. I actually had a lot of text typed out describing how smart, but lets just leave that out. It seems like bragging. It suffices to say that she's damn smart.

I've got a very smart little girl who's way ahead of where she should be. So, what am I worried about? I'm worried about that fact that I've got a very smart little girl who's way ahead of where she should be.

You might be thinking, "Just enjoy it dummy." But here's the thing with that. What if she keeps up on this pace? How do you take the most advantage of that while still keeping her 'normal'. She's got me for a father, being normal is going to be enough of a struggle as-is. Does she get skipped up a grade or four? That's going to be hard on her socially. Home-schooling? Not so conducive to social-norming. Private schooling? Tutoring? Hybrid approaches?

This is all years away, and it's not the slightest bit definite, but still I worry.

Needs More Stickers

I've been meaning to post about the new bike for a while now. I went with the cheapest option, which wasn't altogether that cheap, but will allow me to look at getting some race wheels later if I need to.

















I've only taken it out on a couple rides since I've been spending a lot of time on the road bike in the trainer. The rides were good. The rides are more comfortable than the road bike was. That could be the fact that I'm switching between aero and upright positions, so the load is being spread, but I think the bike fits better. The aero position works well, though it takes some serious getting used to. You're basically laying near flat forward and steering with your elbows. Also, as the pic shows, the brakes and the shifters are kinda far apart. So if you're in aero, braking is not something you're going to do right away.


















The bike does have a really good set of components. Dura-ace shifters and derailleurs, carbon seat post fork and crank. The carbon does make a difference for the ride too. It's noticeably smoother on the road. The geometry does make a big difference on what muscles are used. It focuses on the quads very much.

Just Stop Swimming

I'm a little tired.

Working until 1-2am I can deal with, but combining that with a 5am wake up to go swimming just isn't cool. With my standard 30 minutes wait time before I actually go to sleep, I'm looking at 2.5-3.5 hours of sleep on these nights, and that's to go into an endurance workout. That dog won't hunt, Monsignor.


So what's an insomniac with acheivement issues to do? Well, I can cobble together a swim workout for the next few weeks at my local pool with some 1/2 mile open water swims in the lake, but long term I'll probably join a 24 hour gym with an indoor pool. The morning masters program was good, and I got a good amount of coaching out of it. So, I'm more comfortable training on my own now.

On another note, yesterday was a pretty crap day. One good thing came out of it though, Daughter had a big break through on reading. She memorized her alphabet forever ago, and got the sounds each letter makes shortly thereafter. So, when I read to her, I'll pick one short and simple word out of the book and take her through how to read it letter by letter. Last week she started saying the letters with me, then yesterday I got her to read a few different words on her own. Dog was "Duh, Ahh, Guh ... dog" I picked words that I knew she didn't have memorized, like 'hat' and 'bat' to test her and she got them all. Smart little bugger.

The Evil Overlord List has something to say about that,
"I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father."

Lessons We Haven't Learned Yet

I did my first race about six weeks ago. I placed in the middle of the pack, which was to be expected. I hadn't trained very long, first race, etc. I'm fine with that. But something has been bugging me ever since.

I could have done better.

I don't mean that I could have trained more or gone in with an expensive bike. I could have pushed myself harder. Much harder. Right after I finished and the nervous looking little kid handed me a bottle of water I realized that I wasn't tired enough. I still had plenty of gas in the tank so to speak.

That's been nagging at me ever since. It's not even trying to beat the others, though looking at it more competitively would probably help me. It's just that I didn't do as well as I could have. I've got three weeks to the next race and I'm not going to do that again.

Birds of a Feather Attract Opposites

It's interesting to see how radically different Daughter and Son are. Also, Daughter's personality is really being shown in sharp relief as Son is starting to show his personality more and more.

Son is a happy kid. Smiles constantly, laughs easy, generally in a pretty good mood.

Daughter is much more serious. Harder to get her to smile, rarely laughs, and she has a sense of humor based heavily around throwing things. Not to say that she doesn't enjoy things. She's happy, you just can't tell by looking at her.

So what we've got here, is a 2 year old girl equivalent of me.

That's a little creepy.

I got my bike. I'll talk more about that later. And you might notice that my training's slacked off. That's intentional. I'm taking a slow week to recover, then I'll build back up for two more, then taper for the July race.

Little Plaid Ones

You ask a guy why he married his wife and you'll get a different answer depending on when you ask the question. If you ask while his wife's around, you'll get an answer ranging from, “I love her”, to a sonnet describing the nature of true love and how it somehow resides in his wife's perfect smile. Fun fact, the sonnet guy either had sex 30 seconds before you asked that question, or is trying to work his way out of a six-year dry spell. Now, if you ask a guy without his wife around... well, guys generally don't do that.

I don't get that question a lot. It's usually something more like, “You're married? I thought you were gay.”, or “How on earth did you get her to go along with that?”, then it's usually back to, “I could have sworn you were gay.” Once you get past my evidently questionable heterosexuality and the natural incredulity that I was smooth enough to trick a girl into marriage, then you run into another detail that throws people off. I'm a goofy white guy, and my wife is quite noticeably Chinese. In the mess of race-relations in America, an Asian-White intermarriage is one of the more acceptable deviations from tradition. Combine that with living in California and we don't have to worry too much about catching flak. Still, from the goofy white guy side you manage to run into a couple major stereotypes; nerd or fetishist.

I'm really more geeky than nerdy, but that's a pretty fine line sometimes. To the fetishist charge I'd have to fall back on my dating record, which prior to Ning, contained no Asians. So, if I'm not an anime/manga obsessed Asian-fetishist, then what could possibly be the attraction?

Miniskirts.

I like miniskirts. Wait, let me rephrase that. I like women in miniskirts. Saying it that first way leaves the option open that I might like wearing them, and, to be perfectly frank, I don't have the ass to pull off a mini. Evening-wear we can talk about later. Anyway, Ning looks pretty damn good in a miniskirt and I'm pretty sure she knows that.

Outside of Vegas, or Reno for those on a budget, a miniskirt does not a marriage make. Usually you have to throw in a little conversation first, if for no other purpose than working out a prenup. Amazingly enough, a hot Asian girl, and a goofy white guy can actually carry a conversation that isn't centered on characters in Japanese cartoons. At some point during the first date she must have figured out that 67% of the things I said were some form of joke. Had she not, then I'm pretty sure that second date wouldn't have come around. We both worked in technology. Her in finance and me in the part that actually contributes something to the company (See how I joke?) , so we had plenty to talk about there. Mostly I was able to tell her when her techies were lying to her, which happened a lot back then. She was smart, and decent enough not to play dumb to make the man feel better about himself. She obviously had a good sense of humor or I would have been pepper sprayed and kicked in very sensitive parts on the first date.

Sure enough, we continued dating and she continued wearing miniskirts, so all was well. She has a good sense of humor, which I mention again because it really is necessary to spend any amount of time with me, and she was very up for trying new things.We had lots of interesting trips overseas. She remembers the scenery and food. I remember things like telling the staring Chinese man that I loved him or causing a teeny little disturbance in Tienanmen Square. Now that I think about it, she probably mentally blocks out a lot of my little adventures. I imagine that makes it easier to keep going on trips with me.

Ning hates paperwork. Fewer things get her angrier than filling out any kind of government form. It's kind of cute to watch. I'm kind of angry all the time, so when Ning gets really worked up about the forms she's about as angry as I am when I'm asleep. It's like watching a kitten play hunter and stalk a toy mouse. That aside, my logic, which I still think is sound, is that once we were married, she would have to fill out a lot of paperwork to leave me. Which gives me a nice buffer zone for whatever stupid things I end up doing. Eventually I spent an unholy amount of money on a ring, took her to a lake and offered her a deal. She marries me, she gets the ring.

Evidently, it was a nice ring.

Small Box. Smells Like Beer

To drastically misquote Huxley in a way I'm sure he wouldn't approve of, Mother's Day is kind of like a dirty joke, Father's Day is just outright offensive.

I can deal with the Mother's Day part. Get Ning presents, day off, etc. Father's Day though, what are you supposed to do with that? Barbecue things I think. Beer is usually thrown in there somewhere too. For some reason I think there's some lawn care involved. Unfortunately I don't barbecue or drink, and I have a hell of a time keeping my lawn alive.

So what will I do for my Father's Day? Well, if it's this Sunday like I think it is, then that means I'm due for a bike/run brick. That'll take a couple hours. I usually pick up a couple books for the week on Sunday so I'll do that too. Hell, maybe I'll cook a pot-roast. It's been a while since I threw that much fat at my cardiovascular system. Other than that I'll probably just try to ignore the "Father's" part of the day as much as possible.

Note to me: Don't wear the 'Daddy' shirt. It's actually from a leather shop in New York, but try telling that to the register lady at the grocery store. Seriously, try it. It's pretty amusing.

Project $ Drain

Since everyone knows that spending dollars is a perfectly valid way to make up for a lack of training time, I'm shopping around for a new bike. Aside from the above untruth, there's also the general male love of gadgetry and toys. I'm lucky in that I really don't get bit by that bug too often anymore, and even when I do, I usually manage to snap out of the consumer-trance in time to stop before I choose a shipping option, but I'm probably going to pull the trigger on the bike.

Doing fast bricks (combination workouts, no one knows where the 'word' brick comes from) has been giving me some leg trouble just when I'm getting my stride sorted out. That and I can get this new one fitted to my lanky body. Also, the new one really should be faster. People, especially beginners, get good time reductions on these things.

I've got some options...

First, I've got a line on a new bike that's on closeout because it's last years model. The price is good (though none of these damn things are cheap) . This bike is aluminum with carbon in a few spots. It's got good components, is slightly faster than a speeding locomotive, and is moderately attractive to women. Because this one is so cheap compared to the other options, I could conceivably buy a ridiculously overpriced set of racing wheels for it...which is super.







Second, is a sexy little red and white number. This little thing is all carbon, good components and faster than a high school kid on prom night. Annnnnd it's expensive. Also, because they don't make too many of these, they always sell out, so no luck finding a closeout deal on this. This is a solid, fast bike, but it eats up any $s I would be able to spend on more upgrades.








Third, and most expensive of the ones I'm looking at. Kestrel makes such delicious bikes, but the bastards charge so much for them. This is an all carbon frame, decent components (not outstanding), and this thing is probably faster than current laws of physics would really allow. So, I'd be paying for speed that wouldn't exactly exist in this or any known dimension, and that seems wasteful.










Per Ning's request, below is a picture of a bike that I'm not considering buying. For one thing, it costs about $15,000. More importantly however, it would be the most embarrassing thing in the world to be riding this and get passed by a 60 year old woman on a Schwinn. Ning thinks this bike is comical, but that's just her opinion, her wrong opinion. Here are the facts:

• There is no stock of this bike, they're all custom built... by fairies. Sexy Swedish fairies.
• The picture below is not of the real bike, it's just a mock up. The bike is so fast that it cannot be photographed.
• This bike will actually capture speed from other racers and use that to accelerate. If you're not careful, it will trap the other racer's souls as well. That is considered cheating and you will be disqualified from sanctioned races.
• This bike sprang whole from the mind of Zeus. It wasn't a headache that caused it though...it was the opposite if you catch my drift ;)
  

Inaugural

Our house has been a viral ho down ever since I got back from Central Asia. It's been awful. First I brought back a stomach-virus souvenir that I was considerate enough to keep to myself, then I got a nasty cold, then Daughter had a fever that turned into a mucous fountain, then Ning and Son got sick with Son ending up at the doctor's a few times.

Ning's generally taken the brunt of this at home while I fend off the ravening hordes at the office, but the kiddies are ensuring that sleep is a stranger to everyone.

One wise decision I made, my wise decisions are noteworthy exceptions to an impressive pattern of mis-steps, was to skip a race for tomorrow. There's a decent chance I would have drowned anyway... or at least been embarrassed enough by my finish time to wish I had.