And that's a pretty weird feeling.  It would probably be awesome to write up a little post mortem on the defense and all that, but I don't think it's terribly likely I'll do so.  Sad.

Anyway, I posted here after reading  this excellent article by Paul Krugman.

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

It’s appalling on every level.
...
And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.”

I'm eyes-deep in thesis-writing, but I feel like there should be some kind of new years post. I'll make a quickie.

This year I accomplished the following things:

• Got engaged
• Bought a piece of land for cash - a little lot out in Lago Vista that we scored at a great price
• Accumulated "wealth" in the form of a tiny bit of gold, and a good deal more silver, which was a goal of mine - get some good non-cash assets
• Had the first real conversation with my grandfather in at least 20 years - he's old, and it's good to talk to him and learn from his experiences

Date:	2009-12-12 21:06
Subject:	My three-point economic plan
Security:	Public
Mood:	optimistic
Music:	Tiesto podcast

So I was thinking and discussing with first James, then Ira a few days later, what's wrong with the economy and how to fix it. I've always been a unthinking, I guess, proponent of free trade, because that's obvious economics. Free trade is good because the bigger your market, the lower-cost all the goods are, and being able to produce goods in the most efficient way is optimal. However, an implication that I'd not thought of was that as a result of a "free trade" policy, the markets essentially merge and the economies equalize, essentially, and the standard of living will equilibrate between the countries. That, of course is ok with respect to say, western europe, but clearly not OK with respect to third-world countries... We should consider if the optimal situation is to equilibrate the standard of living between the US, China, and India. I vote no on that. Call me selfish if you will.

What free trade is great for, in all cases, is business. In free trade situations, profits go up, income moves. In theory costs to consumers in the US go down, but low prices don't really help without an income.

I feel like a simple "trade war" type situation of just closing the borders is sub-optimal, as trade with countries like Western Europe is good for us. So incentives just need to be changed. Make sure that it's no cheaper to produce things in other countries at the expense of labor, safety, and environmental regulation.

So how to "fix" the US economy? If I were Emperor of the US, it could be done in a few easy steps.

1: Trade with China is done. Right now, step 1, they're cut off. They can come back to the table when they have reformed their government to ensure freedom of speech, thought, Tibet, etc. Their government does monstrous things and it shouldn't be tolerated just because they have slave labor. Once they are a country with meaningful human rights, they can deal with us on "regular" terms. We still don't trade with Cuba, what is the justification for trading with China, except that they have slave labor? None. It's not ok. Change your shit and come back to the table.
2: Starting one year from today (or the day of announcement), all products imported into the United States need to be shown to meet or exceed US standards for labor, safety, and environmental impact. This should almost certainly make it cheaper to move production of most things back to the US. We should pride ourselves in producing the best goods, and we should produce the best goods. No reason not to. A company wanting to produce overseas would have to pay the US minimum wage in dollars, provide documentation of meeting all regulations (which means paying an American regulator to go regulate that factory in the country of origin), or having that government agree to share or exceed US standards and they certify those goods. This would anger a lot of countries and people, but shit, it would raise the US standard of living immensely - remove the ability to arbitrage your labor costs.
3: At some point in that cycle, prices would probably raise significantly - as the supply of shit from China dries up. So at one point, to avoid crushing the US consumer, there would be a one-time issue of $10k (or maybe even less) to each American. That would cost way less than financial system bailouts, and could be recovered by the fact that all kinds of production will move back stateside, and incomes will go up as people get jobs. When tens of millions of manufacturing jobs come back to the US, demand for labor will increase dramatically, and we would have full employment with rising income - all that income would just up and move here. Amazing. But prices would go up, clearly, so this would just smooth the transition from "shit job buying cheap Chinese garbage" to "good job but paying more for quality American products".

It's been quite a surprise changing my opinion on the optimal economic situation; I'd never considered before anything but the mantra: free trade is optimal because it lowers production costs - more efficient production is best! But I truly think that those three steps would radically improve the situation of the USA.

On a related note, when trying to decide whether the optimal situation is to provide for the highest standard of living for American people, or trying to provide the highest standard of living for everyone in the world, Ira and I decided that as long as there is religion, there cannot be human equality. So until religion is no longer a factor in the world, we should try to optimize our lots in life.

Also note that this is only to address the underlying economic problems in our country, and one of the next steps would be the asset-seizure of tons of banksters and probably nationalizing most of the banks, but that's a different topic.

And, really, since none of this is realistic at all, I'm just putting my post-graduation efforts into moving to Europe, because fuck this corruption.

wow. bank of america just decided to add another "spike for your pleasure" to the cock they want to slam in your ass. they "took my mortgage offline" or something so i couldn't access it from the 13th to the 16th. so i'm like, whatever, log in to pay it just now (it's now late, but since my mortgage was offline i was going to see what I could do to bitch and get that removed), and now they have this "new and improved system" where instead of just transferring it from one account to the other, they charge you to make your mortgage payment on the web.

they can fuck right off. so i had deposited the $700 in my checking acct, and was going to transfer it just now, but now i am going to go to the branch, withdraw $700 from the teller, then make a $700 mortgage payment

and then poop in the lobby

I hate bofa so much

so apparently if i schedule it to be paid by the 3rd, it's free, but something like from the 4-15th it's $4, then after that it's $6. so it's just effectively jacking up the fees, trying to get you to pay your mortgage sooner
which i guess is probably the most thinly-veiled legal way they have of raising my fees
can they even do that, you ask? doesn't the original terms of the mortgage state its not late till the 15th?

well yes, they can't just add a fee to make the payment, but to use their, "pay mortgage by web service"... so that's why they did that, i guess, which is why i'm going to withdraw the cash, maybe take it into the bathroom with me, then come back with slightly wetter cash.

assholes.

No news is good news, as I always tell my parents. Life is awesome.

Tonight, though, as I'm waiting for my fiance to get ready, I'm sitting here in my best non-obscene halloween costume ever. I'm a pretty rockin' pirate, I'd say, and there is nothing revealing or suggestive about the costume. Weird. This breaks a long tradition.

Next year, though, I'd like to live in a house that gets trick or treaters. Never in my life since I moved from my parents house have I lived somewhere that a trick or treater would come. Weird, eh?

I was in the group that wound up winning the race, and can tell you what happened there. I'd been near the back of the pack and me and Brad (the guy who wound up winning it outright) had been right in front of me. On a long straight road, all of the sudden there was the sickening sound of bikes crashing, so I start looking at how to avoid it. I see the bikes tumbling, and it looked like a lot of the guys who went into the grass on the side of the road went down on going off the road. Brad and I wound up going way all around all that, and I nearly wound up in the mud of the farm field nearby. I unclipped, and by the time I ran up to the road the support truck had stopped for the two racers that had gone down hard. We put together a chase and could see the lead group about a minute up ahead for quite some time. We caught 3 other guys, and subsequently dropped one of them. The main group was see-able for some time, but then just disappeared (probably at your wrong turn).

The 4 of us worked hard in an organized, cooperative paceline, followed the street markings, but would have to yell to alert some of the corner volunteers know we were coming and ask where we were supposed to go. After the general unwillingness to work by the group before the crash, I was stunned that we didn't catch you guys, but I guess now we know why. Thanks for the coherent and cooperative effort by those guys. The sprint of our group wound up being won by the guy that had preserved the most. That's bike racing.

It was really weird, and I have mixed feelings about the experience (I thought I was sprinting for 4th-from-last, but wound up second), but I think that the initial results posted were correct. My teammate was the solo break, my other teammate won the bunch sprint, and another of my teammates wound up being one of the "58-milers". I'm shocked that the Matrix/RBM guys protested and got reinstated. My group - in good faith - raced hard, raced the course, and finished it first. The "in front of the lead vehicle thing" is nonsense; when the motorcycle went the wrong way *everybody* was "in front" of it. It just happened to find you guys after you went off course. If you were in a breakaway and for some reason the main field behind you had taken the wrong course, would you stop and wait for them? It's easy to claim to, but the fact that after crashes there tends to be pretty fierce surges from the fields suggests to me that on the road sometimes we react otherwise.

So thanks for the fun weekend of bike racing to everyone that raced with us. After that TT I REALLY wish I'd still had a TT bike, and I REALLY wish I'd known there was someone up the road when I attacked so hard for that points prime thinking that if I locked up those 5 points I'd have the Omnium win. But I guess we live and learn.

So Ira and I decided to go to this party put on by Ballet Austin called Fete*ish. It was the "accompanying" party to their big black-tie event of the year and was supposed to be all kinds of great words. Well, in practice, it was held at the Austonian, which, if you live it Austin, you know it's a construction site. Whole floors not even begun work on, no habitable units, it's just a construction site. They don't have even a sales office or something like that there. Just some dirt, rocks, and concrete slabs. Not a place to hold a swanky party. But we went, and we took a couple of friends along. Between the two couples we paid $500 for tickets to this event. Pricy, but something worth doing for a number of reasons.

Well, this is the letter I wrote to the organizers of it this morning.

I attended (in the company of my fiance and another couple that we had invited out) the Fete*ish party on Saturday night. We had a lot of fun, to be sure, but I wanted to write to comment on the egregious logistical problems that really made the night much less than it could have been.

I was impressed by the decorations in the "main" (I guess?) room. They were well-done and it looked like that had been a lot of work. However, the fact that we had to cross a patch of mud to traverse between the "red" carpet to the "gray" carpet was a bit tacky. Did someone run out of gray carpet?

Second, I was stunned to hear someone ask for water and be told by various bartenders that there was none to be had. There was apparently no potable water at the venue (though the construction coolers looked tempting at one point). How does one throw a party of any sort with no potable water? Burning Man has a better supply of drinking water...

I was then more stunned to hear, at about 10pm, that the supplies of champagne were exhausted. Really? How did someone let that happen? I think the upstairs bar had their supply last a bit longer, but not much. I never got a drink I liked from the bar with the exception of a Heineken I had at one point (shortly before they, too, ran out). Stunning. I appreciate the thought and idea behind the party and that the selection of drinks probably took someone some time, but really, I didn't enjoy any of them.

Then there's the issue of the restrooms. Do I even need to start there? The situation was marginally better than having a row of port-a-potties outside. The fact that one would need to go wait in line for an elevator to go to a bathroom that had been cobbled together in 15 minutes that afternoon was pretty remarkable. Did the thought that a party of 300 people would need bathrooms not occur to anyone until the day before? Far and away the worst part of that, though, is the fact that when I went to use the restroom at some point during the first show, the fire marshall (or someone in a fire fighter looking uniform) turned me away. He said, "No, I'm sorry, the next show starts in an hour." Ok? They were at capacity so the bathrooms are unavailable?! I told him that that was unacceptable, that those were the only bathrooms on the premises and that he would need to be letting people (starting with me) through. That situation kind of worked itself out, but then all of a sudden we had long lines for the bathroom, not because of capacity of the bathroom, but because the man would only let one person at a time "above capacity" or whatever in to use the bathroom (or go to the bar or whatever they were going to do). Then it would be time to wait in line for awhile (near the end, when the Fete party was getting out, a very LONG while) to go back downstairs to rejoin my companions...

We had been considering buying tickets to the Fete event, and when those were being sold to my fiance, we were promised a (some number of glowy adjectives) party from 7:30-4am. Wow. That sure sounded like a lot of party, and we decided against attending that dinner, and so imagine our surprise when the party was all of a sudden over at midnight. Just when it was starting to get fun (though we'd been running out of drinks so it was probably short-lived anyway). Upon looking back at the emails I received from you it does say that the party was only going to last until midnight, but it was surprising on Saturday when we found out about that. We would have made our arrangements differently if we had not expected it to be a longer party.

I know you don't control this, but the air/weather/whatever was also quite uncomfortable. I did not plan on this event being outdoors (though perhaps that was bad planning on my part), but in retrospect I'm very glad that the weather has been so bad recently so the temperature wasn't smothering, just uncomfortable.

So when I thought about writing this letter in my head I was reminded of the joke (that I heard from Woody Allen) that two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."

That's essentially how I felt about this event. On the one hand, the crowd and the people were wonderful, we had a lot of fun seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and all of that. But really, I felt like we had a great time despite the planning of the event. I came expecting grand, sassy, sultry, spectacular, cabaret, moulin rouge, etc. Well, instead I waited in line for a few hours and then it was time to go. My fiance and other companions agreed that it seemed like we remember spending a vast majority of the time waiting in line. The whole idea that one hold a party with all those wonderful adjectives at a construction site should have been a non-starter. Austin is full of great locations to host great events. I can only imagine what the Austonian must have given to have this event there, but I do truly hope (and am asking) that you not hold future events at construction sites without drinking water, available restrooms, or any kind of weather control.

I plan on attending your future events because I love to support the ballet with what limited resources I have available, and it boggles the mind to even have to ask, but there you are...

Best,

We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it.

I just fired off this message to Grande Communications (who I am generally a big fan of). I got a kick out of writing it so maybe someone will get a kick out of reading it.

I recently decided to downgrade my cable to a lower-priced plan. I was told that the technician would be out to my house today to do whatever it is he does out on that ladder, and I had no plans to interact with that technician. He was going to have nothing to do with me, nor I him.

On Saturday I missed a phone call from an automated messaging service regarding my "appointment". This phone call was completely worthless, as I had no appointment. I also knew, from dealing with this horrific system in the past, that whether or not I replied to this automated system (by suffering through listening to several minutes of horribly recorded audio and not having the option of speaking to a human), the technician would be out to perform the work. So, that's time from my life wasted to listen to, figure out what is the point, and delete that voicemail. Four hours later, I got a similarly grating, annoying, and obnoxious message. More irritation.

This morning, I got a phone call from a second phone number that was calling to "confirm my appointment" with your technician. I was told, by your automated and terribly annoying system that your representative would be out to my house between 8am and 7pm. Not only was this singularly unhelpful in helping me plan my day if I had had any plans of observing your technician doing his work out in the street, but I had no such plans. So again, time of my life wasted, massive irritation at your horribly obnoxious automated calling system. It truly is bad. I don't know what aspect of it is so frustrating, but whatever company sold you that automated calling system did you a great disservice, as I cannot imagine a human being not being annoyed by it.

Just now, I received a phone call from a third different number regarding this "service appointment". This one seemed to be wanting me to rate my satisfaction with my most recent interaction with Grande Communication. Are you serious? My last three "interactions" have been with a horrible automated calling system that I hate. I truly hate it. I've been a loyal Grande customer for a long time and highly recommend your services, but I truly hate that automated calling system. Now a different automated calling system is asking for my feelings? You must be kidding. My fourth-most previous interaction was with a very helpful and friendly customer service agent over the telephone. I presume your technician who came out to disconnect my cable was able to find his way in and out of the Grande Communications box up on the telephone pole competently.

So I decided to contact you directly to tell you how incredibly dissatisfied I am with your calling system. I know it may be complicated to do, but in the interest of keeping a loyal customer, could you please try to arrange a list of people who can avoid the grating and infuriating automated calling system you have implemented? I would appreciate it very much and consider it an improvement to my quality of life if I never hear from it again. Be certain that the thought of having that thing start harassing me with phone calls will influence any future decisions to upgrade my cable services in the future.

Thank you in advance, your attention to this matter is greatly appreciated,
me

Two letters today to my representatives -

Dear Senator Hutchison,
I have two reasons for writing this letter this morning. The first concerns your role as my senator, and the second concerns your intention to run for governor of the state of Texas.

First, I think that health care needs to be fixed, period. I understand that you are not a supporter of single-payer or government-provided, or any of the other systems that have been shown to be very effective in every other civilized country and cost much much less than the existing system we have here. I will be brief and say that though free markets are very successful in things like setting the proper price for widgets and doo-dads, health care is not a widget nor a doo-dad. It, for better or worse, has become something that is much more complex and integral to the life and well-being of people to be effectively managed by people whose motive is profit. It's just not possible. So I do understand that you, as a Republican, will not vote for it, but I would ask you to look at the wishes of the American people, who last fall overwhelmingly voted in support of candidates who were promising massive reforms in health care, ending the war in Iraq, and reforming the business culture in our country. Look and see that most of the people in this country - and probably in Texas, would be much better served by a more coherent health providing system than we have now, and work on providing that. I know that many of the most vocal and vitriolic of them are vehemently opposed, but a calm and rational look at the situation will show that us, with the most "free-market" health care system, pay twice as much as most of the countries where people don't have to live in fear of their insurance companies. I could go on, but I think it would be better if I just said please instead. So please consider that.

Secondly, I am a cyclist and was appalled that Governor Perry brazenly vetoed the safe passing legislation. I don't pretend to understand his rationale, and I do know that this is an extremely important issue to myself and others. I generally ride about 100 miles a week on Texas roads and see all kinds of responses from people. A vast majority are calm and considerate about passing me in a safe manner, but there are occasions where this is not the case, and those situations are ones where I am following the law and the driver of a vehicle puts my life in extreme danger. We have several deaths of cyclists at the hands of careless at best and angry at worst drivers each year, and that is definitely a tragedy. In Europe (where they all have health insurance), cars are much more respectful of cyclists (and vice versa) because both understand that the cyclist does have a right to the road and they understand that the person on the bicycle in front of them is a human being and that taking actions that put that human's life in extreme danger is a Bad Thing. I think that here in the United States, and especially in Texas, there is not the level of understanding by drivers of automobiles that the cyclists do have rights on the road. Period. The law that was passed overwhelmingly by the Texas legislature would have gone a long way, I think, to educate drivers. It would show them that the state respects the lives of all its citizens on the road, and maybe they should too.

Thank you for your consideration,

Dear Congressman Doggett,

I have been and continue to be a supporter of yours and of your work in Washington. Thank you for your service.

Thank you, also, for standing up for Americans and supporting their best interests in the form of supporting overwhelming reform of health care. I think that the plan proposed by President Obama is not nearly progressive enough, and much more could have been done, but it's hard to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So I thank you for supporting it.

I heard about the town hall meeting in Bastrop and felt embarrassed on behalf of Texans. I'm a relative newcomer to the state; I moved here in 2006, and lived here for a few years in childhood before that. I was appalled to hear about the treatment you got and just wanted to offer you my good wishes and thanks and support for your efforts to make lives better for Texans.

Best,

As I was making my coffee, I thought of this analogy... The economy and stock market are like a game of poker. Economy is the cards and the stock market is the players. Saying that the market is an indicator of sentiment is totally true, and that's important. It's like when you're at a card table and some total newbie sits down and is very easy to read. You know when he thinks he has a hand, but then you don't really know whether your third nut flush is good - is he excited to have gotten a pair? - all you know is that he's really excited and that he'll call anything. What to do? So consumer sentiment is good information, but only to the extent that the consumer has any fk'n idea what is good.

It seems like what we've been through, though, is a long game where the bears aren't willing to/can't afford to take a hand through to showdown. Everyone knows the economy is fundamentally screwed, but the big money at the table wants to keep that information secret for as long as possible...

So as I was riding in this morning on a slightly longer route (did the Couples Triathlon loop around Decker Lake on my way in essentially, so 23 miles instead of 6), I was thinking about some stuff.

We have something like 50,000,000 (50m, 5x10^7) people in the US who are not insured for one reason or another. Estimates are somewhere in that area so let's say that. The big health care plan proposed would cost, say, $1,000,000,000,000 ($1T, 1x10^12)) over 10 years, and that would provide a public option for health care or just expand medicare/medicaid/whatever to anyone who wants to opt in or something. Just round numbers. This is a completely unacceptable cost to people on the right. That winds up being about $20,000/American for 10 years, or $2,000/American*year to dramatically increase the quality of life of those people. Many would argue that it would have a huge number of other beneficial effects on our society (like making us a respectable first world country, for example), but for now we'll just go with the fact that it would improve the lives of those 50 million Americans.

Six years ago, we started a war with a sovereign country under false pretenses (WMD, anyone?). Many people will defend this action as it was a Good Thing to depose Sadaam Hussein because he was oppressing his people. I'll accept that it was a Good Thing, and base the calculation of costs of this Good Thing on that. Officially, though the end of 2010 Washington has spent/allocated $1,000,000,000,000 ($1T, 1x10^12), though many people claim that the cost of this war in Iraq has been at least $5,000,000,000,000 ($5T, 5x10^12) due to indirect costs to us as a country. Iraq is a country of about 30,000,000,000 (30m, 3x10^7) people. So for the last six years, we of the USA have spent that $1,000,000,000,000 in an effort to measurably improve the lives of those 30,000,000 Iraqis. That comes out to $33,333.33 per person throughout the conflict, or $5,555.56/Iraqi*year. That is 2.77 times an amount that is "unconscionable" to spend on Americans.

One can then debate whether the quality of life of the average Iraqi has dramatically improved, and I would argue that based on the millions of displaced refugees in and around the country, in addition to the death tolls that are as unreliable as they are offensive, and in my opinion there is a very shoddy argument that that $1,000,000,000,000 was well-spent. I'm not sure who would actually vocally defend that position, but whether or not it is defensible (or defended), it is the way things have happened and there are few glimmers of a better situation on the horizon.

In totally unrelated news, I was on a long beautiful bike ride this morning that featured a few sections where the shoulder was not wide enough to accommodate me. I am usually pretty assertive about taking my lane in these instances, as I've found that if I simply ride to the side of the road, I get a much larger number of what I (and the legislative branch of the Texas Government) deem "unsafe passes". Riding in the lane forces the cars to make a full lane change to go around me and on the very light traffic times/roads like I normally travel, it's not an inconvenience for them.

At one point in my ride, however, a car passed me stunningly closely. I was shocked that I hadn't been struck, and my fear/anger/danger response kicked in and I set off in pursuit of this car, after waving my arms wildly. Interestingly enough, I caught the car at the next light, and this was my first encounter with a motorist who had acted in such a way. I should note that the driver had not seemed angry or overtly aggressive, but at this point it seemed simply negligent. I pulled up next to the car and knocked on the passenger's side window. The driver was an overweight lady who looked to be about 40 but living the kind of lifestyle that makes you look 50. Poor. But with a handicap license plate and a very shiny new minivan. There was also a child in the back seat in a carseat, so I was determined to not be overtly mean or swear or anything offensive like that. Just to inform her that she had been spectacularly unsafe. She looked at me and rolled down the window.

"Do you have any idea how close you came to me just back there?" I asked her in a not-very-nice tone.

"I'm sorry, I just, I'm on my way to the doctor and just wasn't..." She was visibly distraught and looked terrible and at this point I was just confused because I'd thought about this several times, but never had it actually happen.

"Be more careful next time." Or something to that effect, I said as I then pulled forward and out of earshot of her excuses.

I was kind of proud but more shocked at the whole situation. And in retrospect, I feel very bad that I handled that in a much more poor way than I could have. I think that I could have been more polite and asked her nicely to be more safe because it could kill me. Very easily. I think that I am a quite forgiving and polite cyclist, and don't mind being passed most of the time, but this was certainly much too close for comfort. If something like that happens in the future I would like for it to be a much more constructive conversation. Simply letting the driver know that you are a polite and decent human being and would appreciate having people not come within inches of killing you shouldn't be too much of a stretch, should it?

I typed this up and didn't want to just waste it in a facebook message, so I'll mention here:

I went out to the 4/5 crit last night at the driveway with the goal of making top 20. I took a couple of flyers off the front, was in a couple moves that had tried to break off but didn't quite go, got real tired, so just sat on the back until near the end.

I think I wound up about 15th or so... I think I was about where I wanted to be just after the bell and in good shape to be competitive, but that last time up the hill was when I got pushed off the road the worst. I had a nice great line, I thought, but then the guy to the outside of me decided that he would rather go off the road, so I went off the road, too. That kinda screwed with my head (and Iost a lot of position). Coming around the last corner I had a lot more gas in the tank than I thought and was able to charge hard to at least get in the top 20 so I could see my name, and made it, but then they had the camera issues.

Also, on the last straightaway, I was coming up the left, and I noticed (but didn't see it happen in detail) that about 3 guys went off the right hand side of the road, at least one of whom was riding in the grass for at least 100m. Crazy.

So I got pushed off the road the time mentioned, another time I was approaching the corner at the top of the hill, at a speed that was pretty normal, and the guy right in front of and slightly outside me, grabs a HUGE handful of brake and dives HARD for the corner. So hard that he cuts off the inside of the corner by about 6 feet. SIX FEET! I was forced to follow him and so cut the corner even more egregiously. Good thing the course is so safe.

Another time around the top of that hill I was just behind a guy who was really wobbly and narrowly avoided having my front wheel taken out by one of his sudden swerves. About 15 seconds later, I tried to move around him, and another of the sudden swerves did, in fact, rub my front wheel. I stayed up no problem, but it was obnoxious.

So yeah, I think next week I'll do the 3/4 race.

So I've decided (awhile back) that I'm going to be a cyclist today. This past little while I've put some hard work in for the first time in a long time and have that feeling of being very tired and torn-up, but at the same time very renewed, because you know, body is making lots of new muscle and stuff. I also got kind of grossly overweight (I weighed myself for the first time in months yesterday and was 175 - I'd rather be more like 162) and that's very sad and I need to work on that.

But my last little cycle was spending every day last week on the trainer, the highlight of which was Thursday when I actually did intervals (it was just 3x4min) and that was a familiar shock to the system but I didn't want to overdo it. I then did an easy spin Friday, went out to ATC and did that on Saturday where I blew up spectacularly but fought my way through it, did an easy spin Sunday, then yesterday went out at 3pm (THREE PM!!!) and did the same ATC loop with Derek. We did the loop (28 miles) in about the same time as I did it on Saturday, even though it was 100++ outside, which I'm pretty happy with. I took two bottles of water, a gel, a third bottle of water, then a bottle of slurpee that we got at a gas station. THAT was yummy. Then another bottle of water once I got back to the shop. Sheesh.

I went and played on mapmyride.com, and it looks pretty awesome, I'm impressed with how that is coming along... I'll need to play with it more. Here's the elevation of that ride that I've done twice in three days now. It's fun to see how you can make it look REALLY hard if you just vertical scale it more and more and more... ;)

From random

I wrote this in reply to another LJ post and thought I'd put it here for posterity and whatnot.

So there are a couple of things that are being conflated lately that I think deserves some clarification.

There are two "prices": the price of money to buy the house (the interest rate) and the price of the house.

We experienced (nationwide) a huge inflation in the prices of housing for the last quite some time. Prices of houses are still WAY too high given historical norms (something like 2.5 income for the target buyer is more appropriate) and will come down.

Right now the government (and pseudo-governmental-whatevers like the Fed and Fannie and Freddie and all that) is trying very aggressively to make the cost of money to buy a house as low as possible. They are doing that because they REALLY want to keep the cost of housing propped up at an absurd (and obviously unsustainable) level (8x-9x income).

So right now the prospect of buying a house is taking a bunch of your money (hopefully you're planning on putting at least 20% down), and leveraging yourself really hard with a bet that all the historical prices/valuations of houses were wrong. Especially now that house construction keeps getting worse and worse as building methods gets cheaper and cheaper. Historically (and correctly, in my opinion), buying a house should be looked at much the same way that buying a car is. It will be deteriorating and depreciating and it's a big liability. You will spend a lot of money maintaining the house and it's been shown that that absent some huge variations in reasonable-ness (real estate bubble, anyone?) the cost of maintenance will outstrip the "rise" in value of the home with time. (Here's a study that looks at 1983-2001 in particular, but there have been many more of these recently: http://preview.tinyurl.com/mxr4ts - Depreciation of housing capital, maintenance, and house price inflation: Estimates from a repeat sales model, John P. Hardinga, , Stuart S. Rosenthalb, , and C.F. Sirmansa, Journal of Urban Economics, Volume 61, Issue 2, March 2007, Pages 193-217).

The rate at which physical capital depreciates is fundamental to investment in the economy. Nevertheless, although housing capital accounts for one-third of the total capital stock, the rate at which housing capital depreciates has only rarely been directly estimated, in part because prior studies do not control for maintenance. For that same reason, widely publicized measures of house price appreciation overstate the capital gain from homeownership.

Using data from the American Housing Survey we examine these issues. Over the 1983 to 2001 period, results indicate that gross of maintenance, housing depreciates at roughly 2.5 percent per year, while net of maintenance, housing depreciates at approximately 2 percent per year. Moreover, although the typical home appreciated at an annual real rate of roughly 0.75 percent, after allowing for depreciation and maintenance, the average homeowner experienced little capital gain.

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Originally uploaded by alkaloids

this professor is insane
he seems to think that our lab, after having moved, will have particular bits of DNA properly stored in an easy-to-find place - along with text files of all the DNA sequences
oh, from 10 years ago
100% personnel turnover and a move
i do know where the shit from the person in question is
but manohman
her tubes are all labeled in code/gibberish that's mostly wiped off
gross
so in order to do this
i have to dig through a box of shit that's at -20 degrees
which is irritating
try to decipher gibberish
then, if i find something that looks particularly promising
design a set of seqencing primers so i can figure out what the shit in the tube is
dig through my shit to find my username/password to the seqencing-primer-ordering-facility
(oh, and our sequencing primer ordering protocols changes pretty much hourly, so i'll probably do it totally wrong)
order said seqencing primer, wait 2 days, get the primer, prepare the proper seqencing reactions, submit them
wait 2 days
get the sequence
find the sequence-analysis software (which is likely broken)
analyze the sequence
figure out i have the wrong shit (likely)
bitch
moan
tell the guy i couldn't find it
ORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR, i just tell him now that i couldn't find it.

So today I'm mostly a mess and non-productive (like always), but today is special. I have a reason.

Last August or whatever I was dating this girl who was kind of a Team Hump member, (some discussion of it here) but that ended and it was sad and whatever. I didn't take it very well, and didn't really deal with her for a long time. By the time I did, I had Ira (which was great) and she was dating another Team Humper, Beaux. Beaux is an awesome and friendly and helpful and fantastic guy. We'd had some fun trying to meet/chase/date girls, and he, a non-drinker, was always the most enthusiastic about our Team Hump pub rides. I'd always wanted to be closer friends with him and hang out more but it hadn't happened for whatever reason. Then he was dating Jen. That's fine.

Ira met them when we had a big dinner at James and Bree's house (who Jen lives with) and it was kinda awkward, but no big deal. Ira really liked him. But then, Jen & Beaux broke up, which was promising for me - being around the two of them was uncomfortable - but I lost that kind of "built-in" hanging out with Beaux. But whatever, we could hang out more and have more to relate about now.

Well, last Sunday, the 4th, Beaux and Jen arrived at the same Sunday morning J&A shop ride. From what I understand, there was a big and public falling out. Beaux proceeded to go on the ride with the group, and somewhere near downtown Manor, hit a large crack in the road wrong, crashed, and landed on his head. The swelling was such that the doctors put him into a coma to stop him from seizing. They took him off the drugs keeping him "down", but he hasn't woken up. Apparently now they are not very optimistic about him ever waking up.

I haven't been to visit because I didn't know how it would be appropriate. He was asleep. If things went horribly badly, I was emotionally prepared to be sad and go to his funeral. If he woke up, I was excited about going to see him when he woke up. But while he was asleep it seemed like just "family time". But now they think he just won't wake up. What the fuck do I do now?

I'll go visit him this evening, and ... and I don't know what. I really don't know what to think or how to feel. There's a huge range of emotions, as I'm sure you can imagine, but I don't think any of them are worth really grabbing onto. I'll see about feeling them, experiencing them, and letting them go.

Whoo! So, coolest thing ever. Tiesto came through Texas last night on his way to ... somewhere. It was a kind of last-minute addition to his tour I think, and not advertised on his web page... So we got tickets the day they became available, and was pumped about it. Whoo! I get to see Tiesto again, right? Awesome.

Well then, shortly after that, Ira let me know that he'll be playing in Monterrey, Mexico a few days later and that that's reachable. Soooo... Look into it, buy tickets through the Mexican website (which was funny), and figure out our plan - drive down to Laredo, cross the border on foot, jump on a bus to Monterrey. Perfect. He's playing at a 17,000 person stadium. Holyshit.

Anyway, so last night we go down to San Antonio. Ira had gotten some super-platform shoes to wear with her costume (you have to wear costumes to see big DJ's) but they had come in the men's size, and so I decided to wear them. So there I am in like 8" platforms, black pin-stripe slacks, and then this super-scoop-neck skin-tight white shirt that I'd pinned a bunch of ties to. The ties were for tying a bunch of glow necklaces around my body in some kind of cool criss-cross way. Well, that didn't really work because though Ira had gotten a big box of necklaces somewhere, they hadn't come with the little things that hold the two ends together to make them necklaces. Weird. We battled that for awhile, but I just wound up kinda wrapping them up and making them into bracelets and so I was wearing like 9 glowing bracelets and was like 6'7. Sweet. Ira was costumed in a little black dress and a corset (which she likes to wear - cranks them down really tight, holymoly) and huge super-tall boots. So we could just walk through crowds like nobody's business. Rad.

After a long-ass wait in line, we got in just as he was starting his set. No long intro like at the beginning of the Elements of Life tour, but comes into some solid music. He didn't play much that was recognizable or extraordinary to me for the first little while, which seemed a little odd. At the Elements of Life tour, he played lots of the Elements of Life album. On this, In Search of Sunrise 7 tour, I'd think he'd play some music off that album. Well, nope. I kinda recognized a couple of songs from his weekly podcast (which is awesome, btw - you get Tiesto talking about the tracks in between them, and they're all super-great...) but not much. So we had been off to the side near a bar where we could have some room to dance and were hanging out with Ira's sister and her bf and a couple other friends. At some point, Dasha gave me the sunglasses she'd been wearing, and they were just big dark sunglasses. Perfect. For some reason the club just had TONS of ambient light, and it was kind of distracting I thought. So standing there rocking out in sunglasses you're just not distracted by the club - just the lights and the music and the DJ. Well, that and the kids constantly coming up and asking me if I have drugs...

So then we decide to head out onto the dance floor. It was a little crowded, but not too bad, and the music experience there was just so much more intense. I could put on the sunglasses, and then just bam. Me and Ira and the music. Perfect. It is again just a great show (though NOTHING vocal at all), until I kind of had a listening breakthrough during Tegan and Sara's, Back in Your Head At that point I kind of felt like I'd been able to "open a direct line from my ears to my pleasure center. I took the processing out and just let it flow directly there, in a much more powerful and convincing way than we normally experience it." Oops. Holy crap. Talk about intense. At this point the rest of the set (the next 120 minutes or so) for me is just a whole different world. Like my most intense drug experiences ever... It started with just becoming super-hyper-aware of all my skin-touch-sensations. Like if I moved, I'd feel the shirt moving over me. Wow. Then, through the next several songs he played (still none of which were vocal or from ISOS 7), which were all more trancey than other stuff he'd been playing I was just *gone*.

I would start to take a breath, and I would inhale, and as I was inhaling I would feel the most pleasant sensation ever as my lungs would fill and I was like, "Oh god, that feels so good I just want to keep inhaling forever. But then, my lungs would fill up, and then I would have to stop because though it felt so good to keep stretching them, I had to stop. Couldn't do it anymore. So then I'm sitting there with a diliema. I couldn't inhale anymore, and inhaling felt really good, and having my lungs filled with air felt really good too. And I didn't really know about exhaling, but that might feel kinda good, but I felt so good now, why would I want to change anything? Well, if I exhale, then I can inhale again, and that was amazing so I decide to go ahead and do that. Then my lungs are empty and I'm thinking, "Oh man, it begins again? This is gonna be intense, I don't know if I can handle it... Felt so good last time. Oh well, here goes." And I start inhaling.

I did this for like 15 minutes. So intense.

Around 1:30 he stopped playing and the lights came up for about 15 seconds and he started playing a slightly different set. Much more dancey, less trancey. But occasionally on like long beatless bridges I'd be just standing there *pinned* as he is there like making the 'arms flying through space' motions and I'm like, "Awww, that's exactly how I experience this music..." Very cool. And I'd see the people dancing and jumping up and down and be like, "Oh god, I cannot believe that those people can move so much, that would be just way sensory overload if I was moving in addition to all this." But then I'd want to, and then a real strong beat would drop and all of a sudden I'm jumping up and down and dancing and yelling. Jesus. I know I've always talked about how much you can get just "driven" or whatever by a DJ but wow. That was amazing. I text Joe at some point, and as I'm doing that and looking down at my phone with what I thought must have been just a super serene look (still wearing sunglasses) I hear one of the guys next to me like, "Oh man is he all right?" Haha. Yeah, me. I was fine, but must have looked just fucked up. I was really on another planet, and really, was sober, which was pretty crazy. I'd had a ton of caffeine and B12 and crap like that, and like 2.5 red bull vodkas over the previous couple hours, but really, was sober. Just flying.

Sometime after that, Ira busted out a joint and lit it up. These 2 kids next to us were just delighted. She smoked them out, and I had a couple hits. The funniest part of the night was one of the dudes smoking and he had a cigarette at the same time, so he takes his pulls, whatever, and then is like, "Man, that is some seriously good..." and as he had been saying this, he's moving his cigarette toward his face to smoke it, you know? Backwards. So right after he says, "good," bam, lit cigarette into his face. Oof. I felt and feel kinda bad, but it was really really funny. You must admit...

After that it was just WAY too much. The lights and colors and the contrast (even though there was no laser show at all, he had some huge screens behind him) were just so unnaturally vivid and ... yeah. So much stimulus. Then I just sat there and experienced that just overwhelming everything until the end of his set. We wound up working our way up to being about 5m from him by the end of the set (so like just a few steps away is Tiesto) and yeah. Crazy. He never did play anything vocal really, and only one song or two off the ISoS7 album, which was disappointing, I thought, but it gives us lots of hope for Mexico. Maybe he's saving the better stuff for a 5h set there. It was, on the whole, a much break-ier set than anything I've heard him play, I think, which is awesome, because I love breaks, but I would have just died to hear, "To Forever", "Denial", or even "Ride"....

He played the song - and I don't know what it is other than the song that plays under the "Fire" description on the Elements of Life live albums (apparently it's "Carpe Noctum", which I have elsewhere...). That song I've done bike intervals to before, and it's definitely now even moreso an, "I can conquer the world" song. Like, I can do and or endure ANYTHING if I can just latch onto that song. So awesome.

His set was about 3h long - from 11:30-2:30, and then some dj actually came on after that. I guess he was just to transition everyone out, but he came on and was playing really hard house that was just really an abrupt transition from the trancey floaty song that Tiesto had ended with. But whatever. He closed out after Tiesto, he probably knows something. Or someone.

Here's some pics:

Haha I was poking through my journal on some other place (shhh, it's a secret) and found this letter. I probably posted it here once before, but I thought I'd share it again.

Writing this letter cracked me up so much I had to share.

(To Time Warner)
You people are completely insane. I have had service with you for about a year and have a hard time imagining myself being more irritated with the "service" you provide.

I recently moved from one apartment to another, and I decided to just have my service moved because that was easier than shopping around. As an aside, despite several attempts, I had been unable to get my bill from you guys automatically deducted from my credit card. So I called up to get the service transferred, and I paid my bill up to current (I was a month behind due to the aforementioned difficulty in getting my payments deducted) and the agent was happy to arrange that. The agent was also delighted to not tell me that there would be a $34 fee to let me continue to be your customer. I can only imagine how many fewer people would actually transfer their service if they knew it would cost them about two month's service with one of your competitors just to have the joy of remaining your customer. However, I'm getting ahead of myself, as I did not find about this piracy policy of yours until just a couple of days ago.

So the scheduled moving date arrived and I myself was moving that day. I had some family in town and we were doing some projects on my new house and I was not told anything about the modem needing to be in the new location. So we were at the new house, and the modem was not - and it was not at all feasible to make a whole trip back to the old house to get the modem. So the installer tells us he needs the serial number of the modem, and I remind him that your company knows the serial number of my modem, as you are the ones who own it. If I were to not return it, I'm sure you would have all kinds of pretty documents with the names of lawyers affixed it assuring any court that this modem did in fact mean the world to you and you can tell me every detail of its existence. However, the installer needed the number off the back of the modem and told me that he could not proceed without it. I was stunned, but even after calling your office and telling the person there that of course you know the serial number of my modem, he needed to have me show it to him or tell it to him so that he could tell it to the agent sitting and staring at that number on their screen. This led to much stress and frustration, though the installer was a saint in coming back later that evening after my mother had had a chance to run back to the old house and call me and tell me the number on the back of the modem.

So then, I was blessed with your services. However, unlike the relatively good service that I enjoyed at my old apartment, I now had a situation where I need to reset the modem every couple of hours if I am uploading at any kind of significant rate. This is of course a joy to me because it is really so much better when you cannot move a large file of yours to another computer of yours at a different location. It is probably so wonderful for me because it reminds me so of my childhood and having a 2400 baud modem that would lose its connection when your grandmother would call. So that's been wonderful, but I've comforted myself by thinking, "Well, at least I'm not being overcharged at an astonishing rate." Oh how little I knew then in my days of innocence.

Now we come to a few days ago, when I got my first bill from you at this house. I open it eagerly and see that my amount due is $120. Alas! It cannot be! Clearly there's been some mistake! No I do not have internet, phone, cable, and have not watched every UFC match on pay per view. I've just suffered through mostly bad internet service! I look closely and see that for some reason, I have been charged for my service from you rendered in June (this month) AND July (NEXT MONTH!) AND I have that wonderful $34 connection fee for having someone try to ruin my entire day! Jesus Christ! Are you joking? This must be a mistake. I then (and I almost feel bad telling you this) resolved to find a new ISP, as that was just beyond irritating. The trifecta of the moving debacle, the fact that my service is awful here, and that you have decided that I am now on some kind of elevated-rate pay 6 months in advance thing was just too much.

I hadn't quite acted on that urge, but nor had I contacted you expressing my extreme displeasure with you having my business. I was just in a state of shopping-for-a-new-ISP bliss that is hard to explain.

Then came today. Today I got something else from you, this addressed to my old address. Apparently, if I tell you I've moved, and have you move my service, you keep sending the bills for that account to the old address. That is sheer genius! If there is a chance the customer doesn't get the bill, then there is a chance we can charge late fees! Whee! Good times for all! So I open this up, and am STUNNED - nearly floored - by the fact that you have billed me apparently for another month of service. This time also at my new upgraded $45/mo rate. So this is not me getting merely $120 in bills for my simple internet service but now it's $165. And if you count the fact that I'd just paid my bill manually (since you made it too hard for me - someone who can program in five languages and has developed several websites, and in fact still maintains two different web servers - to pay my bill automatically each month), that comes out to on the order of $238. That's crazy.

So please consider this cancellation of my services, as I have never once had or heard one redeeming thought about you. In fact, a friend of mine was just down at your offices today and told me that he was stunned that you have so many armed guards at your offices. "Mommy," one little boy there said, "Why are there men with guns walking around?" Probably because of your ability to greatly upset even the most undemanding of customers.

Sincerely,
Justin
(my address)

(Formerly at (my old address) - I give you that because I have no great faith in your ability to have those two accounts in any way associated with each other)