Bike

My bike passed 300 miles today on the way to work, so now it's up to 309. The car is holding at 250 or something, I think. It's also getting colder every day. I've started wearing a long sleeve t-shirt, which is less ideal for the ride home, but still ok. Very soon I'm going to need gloves and then something to protect from the wind. My co-worker who lives just a few blocks away was going to ride in w/ me tomorrow, until his wife told him he can't w/o a helmet. (Those crazy wives.) He's been saying that he'd start riding his bike for a month or two now, and by the time he gets a helmet, it's going to be too cold do to it anymore. (I have no plans to go crazy and bike into work when it's only 40° in the mornings. 65° with a 20mph wind is plenty cold for me already!)

Gasoline

Yesterday, for the first time since about August 12th, I bought gasoline. Shannon hasn't purchased any either. I suppose the one loop hole that I am exploiting is that the new car came with a whole tank of gas. But, a month and a half w/o gasoline is pretty impressive. Shannon's car still has a bit in it, too.

The Big Bang Theory

Shannon and I watched the first episode of "The Big Bang Theory" on CBS the other night. We enjoyed it thoroughly. It's about a pair of guys who are both nerds and geeks, who happen to have a good looking girl move in across the hall, who is thoroughly non-nerd/geek. (She's a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory!) Mostly, the show is good for Leonard and Sheldon bantering back and forth about nerdy things. You should watch it! It's great. I'm thinking I need my own board where I can do QM with string theory doodles around the edges.

Bailey Cereal

This week, in my continuing effort to feed myself, I've returned to an old Brazilian favorite: Bailey Cereal. It's Brazilian in as much as it was invented in Brazil and it's ingredients are available in Brazil. It is not Brazilian in as much as it was invented by an American (Elder Bailey) and, to the best of my knowledge, no Brazilian has ever eaten it. Anyway, I'll provide the recipe.

1 cup oats (approximate) (The instant kind that require little to no cooking.)
2-3 heaping teaspoons chocolate milk mix. (You know, Nestle Quick, or reasonable facsimile.)
1 banana, sliced.
8-12 milk crackers. (for alternate, see below)
1 cup milk (approximate)

Directions: Put oats in a bowl (or, if you want to be more authentic to it's creation, in a pot, because there are no cereal bowls in Brazil). Add chocolate milk mix. Mix. Add banana slices, mixing to cover bananas with oats, to keep the slices from sticking together. Add milk, as much as is required for cereal-like consistency. Break up milk crackers with hands, or drop them into the bowl and smash them a few times with your spoon. Don't add the crackers before you're ready to eat, or they'll get too soggy.

Note: In America, there are no milk crackers. Remember, this is a foreign dish. Acceptable alternates include Nilla Wafers, or some plain cookies that Mother's makes which I am unable to identify more completely at this time. Anyway, they're more like cookies than crackers, and they're there to supply a little bit of crunch.

So that's what I've been eating lately. A kickback to my breakfasts in Brazil that I had every day for about a year.

Get the rabbit ears . . . .

As it turns out, I'm the father of something with a face, a body and a big brain! Not that it's a surprise on any one of those three. According to the doctor, Wombsly is 4.58cm from head to rump. That's a bit under 2 inches, for those of you who are metrically challenged. One perk to all our doctors visits, is that we get a lot more ultrasounds than most people. I'll leave the other picture for Shannon to put on her blog, the one where you can see that I'm also the father of something with limbs!

While on the topic, I'd like to say that ultrasounds seem to be a lot clearer than I remember them. Maybe ultrasound technology has gotten better over the years, so the pictures really are clearer. Or maybe with age, my ultrasound reading gene finally kicked in, so I can see what people were pointing at for all those years. Or maybe all the time I spent staring at electron microscope images improved my skill at finding something to look at in grainy black and white messes. You be the judge.

More football

This is another football post, but I'll bury it behind another post here in a few minutes.

Big Ten football (which I will call the Big 11 from here on out) is one of the better con-jobs out there. Somehow they've convinced the world that because they play each other competitively, they must all be good. I site OSU and Michigan being 2 of the top 3 teams in the nation after their game last year, and then getting clobbered in their bowl games. The top 10 teams from the Big 11 this year are OSU and Wisconsin. Look at their non-conference schedule. The Citadel? UNLV? Youngstown State? Akron? Michigan (whose problems this year have been well documented) beat Penn State in one of the most boring games ever. And Michigan State let Notre Dame score. Twice. But I guess that's what college football is all about. Play well for a decade or two, then find some other schools that were also good, and play each other in your own little club forever, while telling the rest of the world that you're still the best.

Football

Much to Shannon's disappointment, today was a Saturday in September and that means college football.

- BYU looked pretty decent today, for three main reasons. First, they were only -1 on turnovers. While that isn't great, it means you at least haven't killed yourself so badly that you stand no chance. (-2 per game coming in.) Second, 8 penalties for 65 yards. It's a bit sad that this is an improvement, but it was. (Averaging 10 flag for 83 yards) Third, it's AFA, so they didn't throw the ball 40 times. As long as we can play teams that won't throw deep repeatedly, we'll always stand a chance.

- Against Oregon St., AFA, and UNLV, the UofU scored 19 points. Total. Against UCLA (the "11th best" team in the country at the time) they put up 44. Stats haven't been updated with todays games yet, but based on those three outings, Utah would be tied for 118th in scoring offense with Florida International. They would be ahead of only San Jose State and Notre Dame.

- In a related topic, BYU has the inside track on the MWC championship right now, but really, there doesn't seem to be a single team that isn't capable of winning against anyone on a given night. The U can destroy UCLA and then get wiped out by MWC doormat UNLV. AFA handed both Utah and TCU losses, but lost to BYU. What are the odds of every single team ending 4-4 in conference?

Bridge to Terabithia

It's actually too bad this book isn't bad, because I could have made a really good "Bridge to Terriblithia" joke. However, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson is actually an excellent book. It's a Newbery Medal winner and deservedly so. It's a children's book, it's easy to read and it's only about 125 pages, so it's easy to sit down and plow through in a day or two, and well worth your time if you never have (like me).

I knew that they had made a movie of this recently, but didn't realize that there was also a made for TV version made back in 1985. With both of them, particularly the new movie, I find myself wondering how on earth they could have made the movie, and imagining that the movie wouldn't be nearly as good as the book. The book isn't really about Terabithia, or any imaginary CGI adventures.

Instead, it's just a story about a poor kid on the east coast, and a year of his life. It's not terribly grand, or important in the big scheme of things, but it's still a great story.

Sympathy weight

We made the big announcement on the blog a week ago or more, and then I haven't said a word about it since. Just the other day I was reading something in a church manual about journal writing and it encouraged us to focus on good things. Not that you can't mention bad things, but if you write them down, you'll just focus on those forever. So, why haven't I said anything about the pregnancy? Well, let's see if you can figure that out on your own.

In a semi-related note, lots of people gain sympathy weight when their wives are pregnant. Well, in a new form of that, I'm loosing sympathy weight! Shannon's body has decided to try to store all it's food outside the stomach, rather than inside, so in the last month she's lost 10+ pounds. To show my support, I've also dropped 3 or 4 pounds in the last month. It's probably a result of me being suddenly forced to cook for myself again.

Goin' Down

Here's a musical selection for you all. The sound isn't real great, but it's the best I could find on youtube. Pretty much everyone needs more Micky in their lives.

PIN weirdness

Shannon and I recently got new debit cards in the mail from the bank. All you have to do is call the number, and you're good to go. They even explicitly state that your PIN will not change (note: you shouldn't say "PIN Number" because that means "Personal Identification Number Number" which would be dumb.) That would have been great, had it been true. Instead, we activated our cards, and found that they didn't work. And it's not like the bank was going to send us a new PIN, because we weren't supposed to need one. So, that's fixed by going to the bank, complaining, and waiting a week before you can shop again.

Now for another interesting PIN note. About 2 years ago, we got new cards and with them new PINs. My PIN changed from a number that I had picked and could remember, to something randomly assigned that I never liked much. And so I spent 2 years wanting a new number, yet not bothering to spend the time at the bank to change it. To make matters worse, here I was getting a whole new PIN, so even my randomly assigned PIN, which I'd at least gotten used to, wasn't going to work anymore. Well, as it turns out, when my new PIN arrived, it was the old PIN! I don't know if it was done on purpose, or if I just got randomly lucky, but the bank changed my PIN back to the old one that I'd been missing for the last two years! What are the odds of that? Exactly 1 in 10,000. Unless they did it on purpose, then the odds were unity. (Unity means 1)

(Maybe some day I'll make a whole post on the difference between 1 and unity. Yeah, I know I said they were the same thing, but they're really not. Unity is actually more specific. I'd tell you more, but that would be ruining a possible future post!)

Biking vs Car Update

Last week I went to a doctors appointment with Shannon. That means I drove to work, drove back to the doctors, back to work and then back home. So that's 20+ miles of driving in one day. Enough to cancel out two and a half days of biking. Add in the Saturday errands and the car is catching up. As of this morning,

Car: 217 miles
Bike: 227 miles

I hope to get a good week in to build back the cushion.

Un-book review

I like to review books I've read. And I haven't done that for a while. So I'd like to review the book which is to blame. The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose.

Now, if you're like me, you're thinking that there's no conceivable way to write such a book, because anything that could possibly be considered a "complete guide to the laws of the universe" would have to be about 1,000 pages long. As it turns out, it's 1,136. Yes, one thousand one hundred thirty-six pages. And it's not light reading. So after about 200 pages, I had to give up, because it's boring. Nerd books that I like to read have a few inherent problems.

First, they all feel the need to start with a discussion of math, and to go back to the beginning of math. As a result, I've got at least half a dozen books that all start with the very same first two chapters. One is on Pythagoras and mathematical proof, the other is on Euclid.
The next chapter then catches us up on other important mathematicians, such as Euler (rhymes with 'boiler') and Gauss and Godel.

The second problem the nerd books have relates to the level of information. In physics, there are 4 levels of mastery of material, which directly correspond to physics course work. First, you read about it or hear about it. You've read it, so you feel like you know it. But you don't. Second, you work the problems. Certainly you know it now, because you've done the math! These two levels are reached by introductory classes, which could be taken in high school, or early on in college. But it turns out that you never really understand it just because you did the math. You don't really understand it until you derive it. Some of those derivations happen in the advanced undergraduate courses, while others wait for graduate school. Once you can derive something for yourself, you really feel like you've mastered it. But you haven't. Each of these three levels can be moved up one notch by the last step, which is teaching the previous step. Then you've really learned it. Teaching people to work the problems puts you on the same level (roughly) as doing the derivations. And teaching the derivations is something that is generally left to graduate students and then professors.

Anyway, back the to book. The problem with nerd books is that they're usually stuck at level 1: talking about it. Because no one wants to do homework for a book they're reading in their spare time. Except Roger Penrose doesn't know that. So he has homework problems in his book. So to really get everything out of his book, you'd have to read it at the kitchen table with pencil and paper in hand. And it turns out, I don't want to. I want to read a book at 11pm as I'm laying in bed.

So once I'd reached chapters about 'hypercomplex numbers' and 'calculus on manifolds' I knew I was done. Penrose is just going too deep for what I want, particularly considering he's still got 800 pages of stuff building on the hypercomplex numbers and the calculus on manifolds.

Late Anniversary

I'm still good about thinking of stuff to blog about, but I sometimes need more encouragement to actually do the blogging. Anyway, 9/11 was two days ago, but I just thought I'd point out that I've now been at my job for 1 whole year. It's pretty easy to remember my start date. Things are still good at work, and these days I've been here longer than more than half the company!

Car vs. Bike

An update for you on my continuing goal to ride my bike more than I drive my car.

Car: 136
Bike: 208

I also went over 15 hours of total bike riding time this morning on the way in.

The Mother and Father of All Excuses

I still haven't been posting much. But I'll stop giving excuses . . . right after this one. The picture below is about 3 weeks old, but I've put an arrow on the important part.


Shannon's constant emptying of her stomach (or "yacking" as last night's ER doctor says) has kept us pretty busy these days.