Flashes of Panic

Smart-aleck column title

Apparently mlb.com has a naming convention for post-game “notebook” stories: they’re “Short Hops”.

Which meant that after the Milwaukee Brewers lost Game 4 today, I kept seeing the headline “Brewers Short Hops” in the Sox Gameday window. It wasn’t until I also saw “Phillies Short Hops” that I realized the headline wasn’t some editor’s clever comment on the end of Milwaukee’s season.

Now Playing: Weathervane from Songs for a Hurricane by Kris Delmhorst

Technorati Tags: baseball, beer, headline, milwaukee

Posted by pjm at 9:31 PM | Comments (0)

Wood-splitting for fun--and an axe?

We went up to the Conway “Festival of the Hills” this afternoon, a cool pocket fair held on recreation-department fields in the center of that pretty little hilltown. There was a lot to like there, including a hilly 10-K (I didn’t race) and a small corral of goats, sheep, ponies and llamas patient enough to be patted by a swarm of fascinated kids. A series of bands played on the tennis courts; on one edge of the field a small group of people gazed thoughtfully as two people and a hydraulic contraption the size of a boat trailer carefully sliced up a good-sized log, a portable sawmill.

Next to the sawmill was the wood-splitting contest. Yes, competitive wood-splitting. It took me a few go-arounds to figure out what was happening here, other than that people were taking turns splitting wood.

In fact, there was a store of wood of firewood length (about 18”, but I may be wrong about this) which needed to be split to stove size (defined, roughly, as one end fitting through a ring set up nearby). People (men and women) signed up for two-minute segments splitting as much wood as they could with an axe. Everything split to acceptable size by a competitor was put on a big scale and weighed; sticks which remained too large or not completely split were tossed on the pile with the previously-weighed firewood of previous competitors.

The biggest total wins, and to be really competitive, you had to split over 150 pounds of wood in two minutes. The winner was over 200 pounds. Judging from the guy I saw wandering around with a shiny-new axe afterward, either the winner gets an axe or this guy brought his own equipment. (The 2007 champion defended his title, for those who are close followers of the competitive wood-splitting circuit.)

We watched two splitters, one pretty good and another not so much, and three weigh-ins, and figured some strategy. You have to hack at each stick long enough to get it down to size; it pays to not lose much work to the “too-large” pile. It also pays to be up early in the order, with a good selection of heavy logs to cut. (If you’re experienced, you know which sections will weigh more.)

Of course, strength pays: if you can quarter a log with just three chops (once through, then splitting the resulting halves) rather than wasting time on an axe stuck three inches into a log, you’re going to get more wood on the scale. The better of the two guys we watched was splitting the log on nearly every swing; the worse had to take two or three swings for every weighable chunk he got, and a lot of his chunks were rejected as too large.

You definitely don’t want to be a rookie in this sport. These guys threw the axe around like a lacrosse stick, but if you can swing an axe that heavy, that quickly, you’re risking toes if you aren’t precise with your placement. (This is why woodsmen wear steel-toed boots.)

Whoever supplied the original timber probably got two or three cords of mostly-split firewood in the end. Not a bad deal.

Posted by pjm at 4:59 PM | Comments (0)

I don't think I get to count this

I’ve mentioned my tendency to pick up loose change when I’m running or cycling, and add it up once a year.

This morning, I found two pennies and a nickel in the course of the run, which is almost exactly the average daily gross. I also found someone’s debit card on the sidewalk.

I was across the street from the relevant bank, so I left it by the (still locked) door rather than adding it to my annual tally. But even if I could count it, how would I determine the found-money value of a debit card?

Now Playing: Add It Up from Violent Femmes by Violent Femmes

Technorati Tags: ATM, banks, coins, debit card

Posted by pjm at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)

My vote is not for sale

I used to see announcements for the Jesse Owens Award and sometimes wonder, “Who votes on these things?”

As of this year, the answer is apparently, “Me, for one.” But I’ve already sent my ballot back, so any lobbying you may wish to do will be ineffective. I may or may not remember to explain who I voted for, and why, when the awards are announced. Or sooner, if I have time.

I maintain that a shrinking population of full-time track writers (or, if I’m feeling cynical, “real” track writers) is the cause of this, but it may be that what little work I do has more to do with it. I suspect that the set of U.S. track writers present at all four of the USATF Indoor Championships, World Indoor Championships, U.S. Olympic Trials and Olympic Games is pretty small.

Technorati Tags: athletics, awards, jesse owens, track and field, usatf, world championships

Posted by pjm at 6:24 PM | Comments (0)

Speed perspective

In case anyone was too impressed by my 13 mph clocking the other day, I should point out that the second issue of Spikes magazine, which arrived in my mailbox recently, says Usain Bolt topped out over 27 mph in his 100m gold medal run.

Now Playing: I’m A Mountain from I’m a Mountain by Sarah Harmer

Posted by pjm at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

Let's talk about role models

Before the results started rolling in and my clerking role picked up, I had time to watch part of the freshman girls’ race at today’s cross-country meet. Actually, I didn’t watch much of the race. Instead, I watched the guy in his car, stopped by the Public Safety officer until the race passed by.

He was flipping the bird to each and every runner going by. That’s about sixty 9th-grade girls. And this was not some college student; this guy had to be at least ten years older than me (and about fifty pounds heavier, while we’re at it.) I noticed that not only was he pretty emphatic, at some point he rolled down his window to better communicate his point.

I also noticed he never had his hands out of the car while the public safety officer was looking his way (which was, admittedly, seldom).

I sort of wanted to say something to him, but I couldn’t figure out what. “Way to demonstrate patience and maturity, man”?

Technorati Tags: driving, failure, incompetence

Posted by pjm at 9:47 PM | Comments (0)

Clocked

Everyone’s seen one of those automatic speed-display radar trailers town police departments put out from time to time, right? It’s a little stand with an enclosed radar gun pointing up the road, a sign displaying the speed limit and a marked display showing “your speed” in lights.

Yesterday I was running down the left side of a town road by one of these (on the right) and realized there was an “8” showing on the display. It flickered to “7” and I realized it was showing my speed. I was on the opposite shoulder, though, so who knows how accurate a reading it was getting.

I’ve seen this once before, and that time I threw in a surge and got the sign up to 10. This one was on a downhill. When I realized what was up, I couldn’t resist. I checked traffic, crossed the road and headed back up the hill. When I spotted another break in cars approaching the sign, I turned around and started building to a full stride.

I managed to get the display up to 13 before I backed off. That was pretty close to flat-out, on-my-toes sprinting; 13 MPH is a tick faster than 70-second 400m pace, about a 4:40 mile. (I’ve no idea what the real precision of the radar is. Runners don’t generally talk about pace in those units, though I know one runner who ranks his races by meters per second.) I’ve never run a whole mile at 13 MPH, but I have done 10 miles at a pace that a radar-gun sign would probably round up to 10 MPH.

Now Playing: All Of A Sudden (It’s Too Late) from English Settlement by XTC

Technorati Tags: pace, radar, rounding

Posted by pjm at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)

Don't use that address

I can’t think of a better way to broadcast this information.

If you’re in the habit of sending me email at my old University address (firstname.lastname@university.edu), stop. That address is going away before the end of the month, according to multiple helpful robo-mailings from the University IT department. (It’s been determined that, as an alumni, I am no longer eligible. I retain an address on the CS department servers, but I’ve never used that extensively and don’t plan to start.)

A little research should reveal a similarly-structured, functioning work address for me (change the domain name to commonmediainc.com), but there’s also the gmail address, which doesn’t go through company servers.

Posted by pjm at 9:51 AM | Comments (0)

I might explain the context behind this someday

“Thank you for your well-thought out and professionally presented proposal. This is one of the best proposals I’ve seen for technical implementation.”

Posted by pjm at 2:30 PM | Comments (1)

Facebook policy

I was reading Clive Thompson’s NY Times article about ambient awareness the other week (have I mentioned that I’ve been a Clive Thompson fan for years now?) and realized something. No, I’m not signing up for Twitter. But I need a policy for connections on online social networks.

The problem is that my network has several centers. Many/most college students, the audience Facebook was built for, have two principal social centers: their college, and their friends from high school. Adults who’ve been out of the bubble for a few years have a lot more. I’ve participated in several networks, face to face and online, from insular and closed to wide-open and public. Some of my friends overlap networks. And in some contexts, it’s not enough for me to connect to someone just because we’ve shared a context in the past; I may still hardly know you.

Also, different networks get different rules. Flickr, for example, realizes that not all connections are bi-directional, so there’s a lot more room to express nuance. Facebook, on the other hand, has stopped pushing people to explain the links in their network. And LinkedIn exists purely for the network. So, for those latter two, I need to think about whose links I accept or request.

On LinkedIn, for example, I’m going to ask myself: have I worked with this person? Have we been introduced and talked more than a minute or so? If I know them online, how? If we’re members of the same public forum, but haven’t necessarily interacted as individuals, do I know what they do, or even understand what they do? Would I “talk shop” with them, asking them questions or answering theirs? If so, sure, I’ll make that link.

On Facebook, it’s a little more constrained, because the size of the network is not the point of Facebook the way it is on LinkedIn. Some links (family, former teammates, etc.) are obvious. When they grey areas come up, though, in general, if I’ve run with a person, they’re in. If I’ve had one-on-one conversations with them, sure. If I’ve only met them online? Mutual membership in a larger group isn’t really enough here, I think; but if we could sit down on a park bench and play a game of Scrabble, or meet for a run, without significant awkwardness, that’s enough. (And when we ask questions like that, things get significantly simpler.)

Now Playing: I Wanna Be Ignored by Ezra Furman & The Harpoons

Posted by pjm at 9:27 AM | Comments (1)

Writing for programming

Two years ago, TAing a software engineering course and attempting to explain to Computer Science majoring undergraduates that yes, you still had to know how to write well even if you were a programmer, I really wish I’d been armed with my current experience.

In the past twelve months, while supposedly employed as a programmer of some sort, I’ve written over a hundred pages of RFPs, proposals, and functional specifications. I’m willing to bet I’ve written more words of copy than of code.

Just in the last week I’ve done about fifteen pages of proposals (of which about one page could be easily copied from one to the next, and even that took some editing). Looking at the six-page proposal on my screen this afternoon (which isn’t even done yet; there’s probably two more pages in it) I said out loud, “I can’t believe I used to sweat blood over three-page papers in college.”

In the discussion following that, we agreed that the projects we’ve documented most thoroughly before we started coding were the ones which have been most successful. So take that, writing-avoidant undergraduates!

Now Playing: Chewing Gum Weekend from Between 10th And 11th by The Charlatans

Posted by pjm at 8:29 PM | Comments (0)

Following the fun

We talked about working at things you love a few years ago.

Off and on over the last nine months or so, we’ve been doing some developing work for a lawyer who had an idea he thought might be worth exploring.

He’s getting close to having a complete system, and he’s been showing it around to people in hopes of sparking some interest and getting things started. I don’t know much about this end of what’s going on, so I’ve mostly stayed out of the conversation.

Today, one of his messages included, in passing, the paragraph

Exciting stuff. Beats practicing law.

So now you know why I never considered going to law school. (And the Kenworth of my Dreams is looking more and more like a bad bet, these days. Anyone interested in a business venture in a cargo schooner? How many shipping containers do you think we could get in one?)

Now Playing: Los Angeles Looks Prettier on TV by Greg Koons

Posted by pjm at 1:52 PM | Comments (0)