I work the egg system again

Way back in April I played Safeway’s buy-one-get-one-free deal by splitting with the lady behind me, saving me a buck in the process (look back at April 27, 2006). This time I played a different hand and still did well. It turned out that I had thinned out my wallet before going to Washington D.C. and hadn’t put all my cards back in, so my Safeway card wasn’t in my wallet, and I had no idea what phone number was associated with it. This could have been an expensive mistake. On the other hand, I had grabbed two cartons of eggs (they were buy-one-get-one-free for the 18 count cartons), and had intended to just give one of the cartons to the person either in front of or behind me. I asked the guy behind me if he had a Safeway card I could borrow and offered to give him the carton of eggs in return. He was, of course, willing. So I unloaded my free eggs on him, used his card to save a bunch of money, and left a happy man.

I really think that people get a lot more accomplished when they aren’t so hermit-ish and communicate with other people. This whole culture of being an individual with the iPods in the ears all the time, not talking to anybody or sharing anything is unhealthy in so many ways.

My Doctor Fingers

Today I resurrected my camera from the horrors of dust. This wasn’t just ordinary dust on the outside of the lens. That isn’t worthy of a blog entry. No, this was dust on the actual CCD and internal lens. The camera is a Panasonic Lumix FX01, a tiny little digital critter that fits snugly in my pocket and takes great pictures.

Taking it apart was no simple task, especially since I wanted it to continue working after I put it back together again. After deciphering its assembly, I did manage to take it mostly apart. The planning and engineering that go into constructing this little device are incredible. I carefully extracted the CCD and used a special cleaning paper to gently wipe off the miniscule specs on the chip and lens. I put it mostly together again (not quite all the way in case my work was not yet complete) and turned it on. Much to my dismay a grinding noise occurred as the gears for the lens assembly screwed up. It was an ‘oh crap’ moment, and for a lesser camera would have been the sound of its death. My little camera showed its strength and merely said on the screen ‘please turn the camera off and back on.’ I checked the assembly and made a small adjustment with some of the plastic pieces that held the gears together. This time it worked smoothly. I had one more moment of fear when the screen was working but the camera part was showing pure black, but that too was temporary.

The reconstruction complete, I tested once more to make sure the dust was gone, and to my relief the camera was working completely and the specks of dust that had been present in a few pictures were now gone. I have to admit I’m very relieved, and now I’m confident that I can perform the operation again if necessary. It really puts into perspective the stress that surgeons are under; my camera was $300, which is a fair chunk of change but still replaceable, but you can’t put a price on a person’s body, and if you screw up they die. It’s times like these that make me glad I work with computers all day.

Happy feet, then unhappy feet

I had a good weekend. Friday night I convinced myself to go ballroom dancing. The debate is a frequent one. On one hand, I know it will be attended by the same older folks that go every week, playing the same songs every week. I don’t really get anything out of going; it’s just keeping me from forgetting the dance moves I already know. On the other hand, I’m not going to meet new people by staying in my apartment. So I went. One particular odd thing happened that hadn’t happened in weeks past. During YMCA, nobody was dancing, so I grabbed the lady who teaches dance classes and brought her out there with the hope that other people would come out, too. After all, the electric slide managed to fill the floor. Anyway, the opposite happened. Rather than come out, there were cheers and clapping and everybody stopped to watch. Admittedly, I was showboating a little, but I didn’t expect that kind of a reaction. After that song was a hustle, which is one of my favorite kinds of dance, so I couldn’t sit that one out. I did take it easy with my partner and managed to catch my breath eventually. Once I left the dance floor, people kept coming up to me and asking where I had learned to dance like that, amazed that I had made most of it up on the spot, and awed that my movements were as smooth as glass and as on the beat as a metronome (I’m not exaggerating. That’s really what they were telling me). I’m always skeptical about my dancing because I see all the little mistakes and room for improvement, but it’s nice to get confirmations like that.

Since the dancing ended at 9, and I was still ready for more, I went over to another place, where there was a live band playing latin music (salsa, cha-cha, and merengue). I danced with a few people and had some fun. I really have no qualms about asking random people to dance. Even if they’re not experienced I find that I can get them to pick it up fairly quickly.

Eventually the dynamics of the place shifted and I went back to the first place for some younger club music, but was sorely disappointed. It was funny to watch everyone in a semicircle around the dance floor not dancing. The demographic was heavily skewed towards the non-dancing males, so I stayed long enough to justify the cover and left. Besides, I had a big day planned.

Saturday I woke up a few times. Eventually I woke up at 8 and sternly lectured myself on waking up so late. I had to hurry to shower and prepare all my ski clothes, and had to inhale breakfast. I went with Dave and his girlfriend to Bluewood. The hill opened at 9, but we figured that since it was our first day of the season and she hadn’t really skied before that we would be better off not skiing the full day. We arrived at 11 and had a good 4 1/2 hours of skiing. On my first run I got off the lift, my body said “oh yeah, I remember this,” and I bombed straight down. We had some really fast runs and some really challenging powder and tree runs. I think I could have continued to ski, so we might have done better to arrive earlier, but it was probably good that we took it fairly easy. I didn’t try any jumps, and never got fast enough that my skiis started bouncing, and afterwards I wasn’t very sore at all.

So that night I tried to go ballroom dancing again, but the normal people who put it on weren’t doing it that week because of some medical emergency with their daughter.

The next morning I tried to go skydiving, but the ceiling was too low and didn’t get better all day. By that I mean the cloud level was around 800 feet or lower, and the temperature and dew point temperature were equal, so the clouds could form as low as the ground and wouldn’t be going away most of the day.

So the happy feet were from being able to dance and ski, and the unhappy feet were from the actual dancing and skiing. Saturday evening and Sunday allowed my feet to get back to normal.

San Francisco

I actually visited San Francisco way back in September, but didn’t get around to writing about it because so much happened and when I tried writing I ended up with a few pages of the first day alone. It turns out that by waiting a while, the less important details get filtered out, and the trip condenses, making it more appropriate for writing here.

I had three reasons for visiting San Francisco: to see some friends, to evaluate S.F. as a potential place to live, and to go somewhere I’d never been before. I’d have to say that all three of those goals were successfully accomplished that trip.

Hightlights from the trip include:

  • Clubbing friday night, though frustrating, was very different from clubbing in the tri-cities.
  • Downtown S.F. Saturday morning with Pier 39, driving down the steep hills, and dinner at Pier 39.
  • Clubbing Saturday night at Ruby Sky, dancing to techno at a CD opening party until 3 in the morning.
  • Sunday morning Chinatown, dim sum, Alcatraz tour, visit to the beach, cross the Golden Gate bridge, and Highway 1.
  • Monday to downtown S.F. again to walk around during the day, then up to Berkeley and the campus.
  • Tuesday getting back on the plane.

Of course, that’s a really vague overview of the trip, and a lot happened in between. One of the things that I hated about the Bay Area was the commute anywhere. Sure, there’s tons of stuff to do, but when it takes 45 minutes to an hour to get there, that takes a lot of the fun out of it and really eats into a day. I also realized that the big city is definitely for me rather than a small town. And I found people like me, which is something I haven’t really found here.

I haven’t ruled out S.F. entirely, but it’s not my favorite place to be. I think Seattle still trumps it.

Jump 8

Today was also my 8th jump, and certainly my most interesting. You are supposed to do your first solo rip cord pull immediately after your final practice rip cord pull, so I had to do two jumps today. It was raining lightly as we got in the plane. The wind sock couldn’t make up its mind at all, and the ascent was just as bouncy as before. This time I jumped closer to the drop zone, but not by much.

I exited the plane, counted to 3, reached down and grabbed my rip cord, pulled it out and threw it, and waited a couple more seconds for the chute to deploy. It was a completely different experience from all of my other jumps. Since I didn’t have the chute pulling me from the beginning, I felt myself move forward more so that I was parallel with the ground. It was great. Then once my chute came out I felt it pop as it caught the air and watched it completely deploy. I let out a whoop, grabbed the toggles and made a turn to indicate to the radio on the ground that I had control.

But though I had control of my canopy, I had no control over the wind, which was blowing in an unfriendly direction. I faced directly into the wind and was still being blown backwards. I knew there was pretty much no way I was going to land on the drop zone. I tried a few tricks to reduce my drag, but nothing helped me move forward. I suppose I could have started spiraling so that I would drop faster and not be in the air long enough to be blown back, but it didn’t occur to me at the time.

I started to look at where else I could land. There were some softball fields downwind that I might have been able to make, but there were fences and trees and it would have been a stretch to make it that far. There were a couple parks, but they had trees, and I didn’t know how big they were at 2000 feet. There was a sewage treatment plant to my right, so I knew I had to avoid that area at all costs. Below me was ok. It was essentially light brush, so I figured I’d go right below me as much as possible.

Fortunately, at about 1000 feet, I managed to penetrate and started moving forward. There was no way I was going to make it to the drop zone, but at least I was going to land in really light brush right next to the runway. So I steered myself a little bit and managed to land 50 feet to the side of the runway. I didn’t even bother to try to stand my landing and instead tried to not hurt myself. It turned out that the ground was amazingly soft, but densely populated with ragweed, the incredibly thorny and sharp bush. I wasn’t affected by it, but I was really concerned for the chute, which could easily have been torn by it. It was also starting to rain more, and wet chutes are not a good thing. So I carefully extracted my chute from the weeds and rolled it up. The pilot came and picked me up in the airplane, taxiing down the runway in the manner only a small airport could get away with.

So I have now pulled my own chute and done a solo dive, and boy was it awesome. Now I start getting to do more freefall, going to ever higher altitudes. I’ve also got some practical experience with wind and weather patterns and finding a good landing spot.

wooo!

Jump 7

Today was jump 7, which was my third and final PRCP (practice rip cord pull). It was an interesting ride up. The weather is getting worse, and it was raining last night. When I was about to jump, it wasn’t raining, but there was quite a bit of unpredictable wind, and some fun turbulence on the ascent. The jumpmaster was new to me, and he didn’t seem to have a full grasp of what was going on. He wanted to take me up to 4500 feet first, and thought I was pulling my own chute, despite being told twice on the ground of the plan. We got it all straightened out, though, and circled around again. When I looked out of the plane, I couldn’t see the drop zone before I jumped. We were being put out far from the landing area, which also made me a little nervous.

The jump went well and I reached my fake ripcord and pulled it out perfectly. My chute deployed correctly, and I tried to make it back to the landing area. The wind was blowing hard, and it was a little bumpy at times. Essentially, I faced almost perpendicular to the landing area the entire descent, facing into the wind so that I wouldn’t be pushed too far downwind and would eventually make it onto the landing area. Fortunately, I did make it, but it was quite a ways and I was amazed that I did. I flared at the right time and had a standing landing. The jumpmaster and another student weren’t so lucky. They ended up a few hundred yards away because they didn’t make it far enough. The wind was really unpredictable, and I started to feel drops of rain on the descent, but it was great practice and a lot of fun.

A marathon of work

In the last two days I have put in 25 hours of work. And the marathon won’t be letting up for another week. Next week I travel to Tampa for a supercomputing conference, and I am the project manager and sole developer for a project that will be visible conference-wide. In fact, you can see the project I’m working on here: http://infostar.supercomputing.org/ InfoStar, SC06. For the Reader’s Digest version, it’s a web site that allows anybody to get all the information about the conference on any device that can connect to the Internet, including a searchable schedule, maps, bulletin boards, web cameras, photo galleries, a blog, exhibitor information and events, statistics, and even some neat graphic visualizations of everything that’s going on.

It’s a little odd leaving the building so late, having the only car in the parking lot, driving home without seeing any cars, and struggling to find a decent parking spot at the apartment. I’ve also completely dropped my athletic endeavors lately, but that’s also partly because it’s getting dark and cold. I’ve dropped a few pounds (I don’t know where they came from. I’m already skinny), so the headaches of malnourishment are starting to recur.

It’s not all bad. I am developing a really cool application with a lot of features. I get to go to Tampa for a week and show it off. And all this work on project is certainly going to make me look good to the people who dole out the raises and maybe even to the people who are looking for dedicated and creative and smart employees.

Jump 6

Yesterday I went to a friend’s house to help him build a roof in the back yard to provide shade over the patio. I was there for an hour, and the wood hadn’t arrived yet from home depot, so I took the opportunity to go for another jump.

In a word, my jump was flawless. I hit my arch immediately, waited a couple seconds, reached down and pulled my fake ripcord and threw it, went back to the arch, and waited until my chute had finished deploying. This was my second practice ripcord pull. The instructor had pulled my real chute as I was jumping, so I was practicing pulling and throwing a fake ripcord.

I descended for a couple thousand feet under canopy, but as I was about to start doing my maneuvers to get back on the ground, the guy on the radio started giving me instruction, and it was nowhere near what I expected. I looked at the windsock and saw that it had changed direction from what I was used to. I immediately knew what was going on and how I was going to end up on the ground. My landing was awesome. I flared at just the right time and was able to stand without even needing to take an extra step. If I had had my hands free, I would have thrown them up like a gymnast after landing.

The next time I go will be my last practice rip cord, and then the same day I have to go up again and pull my own ripcord for real. I’m really excited about that.

To finish the original story, as we were circling and jumping, I kept watching my friend’s house to see if the wood had been delivered. I still hadn’t when I was in the air. I made it back to his place in under an hour after leaving, and managed to beat the wood by a few minutes. We worked hard to get most of the wood up. It was dark by the time we were ready to start putting the plywood on, so we put that off for later.

New best game – until I choked

Today I was rockin’ at disc golf. On the third hole I birdied thanks to an amazing drive that landed me within feet of the goal. On the sixth hole I birdied again, and this one was even more surprising because you can’t even see the hole until you’re right on it because it’s behind a bunch of trees. Somehow I managed to get it to the right side of the trees, and then it arced left at just the right time and landed under the basket. For the first nine holes I was at -1.

My luck continued and I kept hitting par with a couple missed birdies. On the fifteenth hole I managed to get another birdie and brought it down to -2. Then things started to get bad. On sixteen my drive broke left instead of right and my approach hit a tree, so I got +1 on that hole. Then disaster struck on hole seventeen where I destroyed any hope I had of getting par for the course with a dismal +3 on that hole, putting me at +2 overall. Eighteen was looking bad, too, when I hit a tree and really slowed down my drive. My second throw was even scarier, as it looked as if it had gone straight into the pond. Luck was with me, though, and I finished out the hole with +1, ending the course at +3. This is tied with my best score.

If it hadn’t been for that darn hole 17, I would have made par. I usually make par on that hole, so it was very odd for me to choke so badly there. Oh well. It was my best game to date, except for that hole.