Basil

Basil woke up on Monday morning with the sniffles.  I don't know why it didn't occur to me that dogs can catch something like a cold but the truth of the matter is obvious.  In honor of his first illness, here are a few pictures to remind us all of the good old days.

One of his first days at home, laying claim to his spot on the couch.

First bath, back when he was much smaller.  Today, he can rest his chin on the edge of the tub rather than having to stand on his hind legs to see over it.

The blue tongue was a good indication that Basil was into something he shouldn't have been. It ended up being blue tissue paper.

According to our instructor, that certificate of completion was the first she had ever given to a spaniel of any type on his/her first attempt at basic obedience. Trust me, we earned it.

Hero For The Day: My Wife

This Monday, for the first time, Katie rode her bicycle to work with me.  We had done a practice ride a few Saturdays ago and "it wasn't too bad" so she decided to give it a shot on an actual work day. She probably isn't going to try to ride every work day year round (like I try to do) but is considering riding two or three days a week.  The motivations are the standard reasons for bicycle commuting: saving money on gas and getting good exercise.  In fact, the last one probably pushed her over the line.  When I rode in last Monday I told her I had burned 1000 Calories that day on the bicycle, she responded "If I ride my bicycle to work, I can eat almost anything without gaining weight."

Yes, yes you can.

The return of tortillas!

This news is a few months old but the local chain grocery store started to produce tortillas in-house again!  This particular store has has four different owners over the past handful of years, some choosing to use the existing in-house tortillas machine, some not.  For those of you keeping score at home, here's the history:

Albertson's 

The only evidence that the store was an Albertson's was the trademark blue font found on many signs and grocery carts throughout the store.  Ownership of this store took place before my time here in Wichita.

Tortilla status: Unknown

Food 4 Less

This chain is not related to the warehouse-style grocery store bearing the same name.  When I moved to Wichita in 2005, they were the owners of the store and though it was out of the way, I I often shopped there just for the tortillas.

Tortilla status: Plain, jalepeno cheese, roma tomato

Homeland

While out of town visiting family over Christmas break in 2006 Food 4 Less sold out to an in-town competitor: Homeland.  There was no improvement in any aspect of the store and in some areas, quality degraded.  It didn't take long before the tortillaria in the store was closed, seemingly for  good.

Tortilla status: moth-balled

Dillon's

Less than a year after Homeland bought our Food 4 Less, Dillon's bought out Homeland.  In both of these cases, it was not just our store that was affected; all of Wichita lost both of these chains in just a short time. (For those of you REALLY keeping score at home, you will have realized that Wichita has two major grocer's: Dillon's and Wal-Mart.  There are a few other smaller players such as Target and Aldi but I'm going to guess that 70% of Wichita primarily buys their food from one of the former.)  It took a few months but Dillon's management saw the wisdom of the tortillaria and brought it back.  I stumbled across this the same day I took my GRE; it was a very happy day.

Tortilla status: Plain, whole wheat, cinnamon and sugar, salsa

My sister, the swimsuit model

Sorry Sister, but we stumbled across this photo in Land's End and have to blow the whistle on your modeling gig.  I'm sure it was good while it lasted but modeling won't pay the bills and you know that.  We put you through college for something and its time to go out there and put that Interdisciplinary Social Sciences degree to work.  

Instead of your beautiful smile and curly hair.

Three Simple Mistakes I've Made Recently

1. Using half the amount of water when making my first batch of root beer.  (The results were not good.)
2. Using twice the amount of sugar in the latest batch of ice cream I made. (Raspberry, and it tastes fine, just, you know, a little sweet.)
3. Leaving the vacuum in "hose mode" such that the vacuum wasn't sucking dirt from the carpet but dust from the air.

Giant Pool of Money

This American Life, still one of my favorite radio programs/podcasts, created an excellent story on the sub-prime meltdown/credit-crunch.  I highly recommend you take a listen, even if you don't think you're interested in all the financial mess right now.  It is at least entertaining and highly informative.

The Crow Flies at Midnight

A co-worker of mine sent out an email yesterday saying that she had free tickets to a concert here in town for the first four who were interested.  There was a catch though; "In exchange for the free tickets you will need to stick around after the concert and help load boxes of liquor onto a cart and take them to a room somewhere in the Coliseum."

??

That was all the information in the email but I imagined it continuing in several different ways:

• "After delivering the liquor to the appropriate room you will be required to drink half a case and then walk across the room without falling down."
• "Clues will be provided to locate the room.  The last person to deliver the liquor to the correct room will be kicked off the island/eliminated from the race."
• "While delivering the liquor a man will approach you and ask the time.  You will respond that you don't have a watch.  He will ask you to follow him to another room where you will meet with your handler who will provide the rest of the details for the mission.  Good luck."

Another of my co-workers responded with his own email:

"Will the cart in question have any identifying marks?  Will there be a map in the cart providing directions to the certain undisclosed room?  Once in the room will an "asset" be present to provide further instructions?  Should these four people you are looking for have any previous experience with the Mafia?"

For a stressful day at work, this email provided the comic relief we sorely needed.

More Flickr Action

Since its spring and we don't have many flowers blooming yet, I decided to do my part by posting a few of the flower pictures I've taken for Katie on Flickr.  I've also added a new channel that is just for the pictures I've taken in the past that I'm just getting around to putting on Flickr now.  the theory is that I'll be posting my favorite pictures as I take them and when there's a lull in that activity, I'll fill it with "golden oldies".  So far, this theory hasn't worked out very well as life tends to keep me from being able to do what I want.

Basil and Flickr

Check out Flickr for the latest pictures of Basil, our puppy.  These were all taken in the past few weeks and are therefore are somewhat recent.  My goal is to actually use Flickr in this way but so far haven't made it happen.  Hopefully this is a start.

GRE

I meant to write about this earlier but as soon as I was done, I wanted to purge the event from my mind.  Last Friday I took the GRE and, before I start whining, want to state that I did just fine.  My verbal scores were lower than I expected but my math was great.  This is not how I felt when I was taking the test, though.

The GRE is administered on computers and it is an adaptive test.  Based on the accuracy of your previous answers, the computer tries to give you a question that it thinks is the most difficult question you can answer.  Over a series of thirty or so questions, it narrows in on the test-takers skill level for that section of the test.  The theory sounds great and I'm sure the ETS people (the private company that creates the GRE) have done studies to show that a normal paper-based version and the computer-based version correlate well.  There were a few difficulties that I encountered when taking my test, though.

For starters, though the theory may be sound, the psychological effect on the test-taker is painful.  I spent the vast majority of the math test feeling I was failing the test.  The questions were obtuse, hard for me to reason through well, and plain old difficult for me to answer with confidence.  After seeing my score, I think the computer very quickly narrowed in on my math ability and continued to present me question after question that was just beyond the reach of what I was able to do.  It left me feeling stupid and discouraged even though I was doing great.

Secondly, because the computer needs a previous answer to figure out what question to ask next, you can't skip any questions.  Each section has a fixed number of questions to answer and even though questions may be getting harder and harder, a question left un-answered is wrong.  All of this makes pacing yourself through the test fairly difficult.  How do you decide when to take an educated guess and how do you decide to keep working on the question?  This is particularly relevant in the verbal section where a passage-based question may show up near the end of the test.  If you have five questions and five minutes left, you better help that the last question isn't based on a passage that will take two minutes to read before you can answer the question.  I finished one of my verbal sections eight minutes early (somewhere between 1/4th and 1/5th early) because I didn't know if I would have enough time for a verbal question at the end.  The inability to skip questions and come back to the hard ones is frustrating.

If, for some reason, I do have to take retake the test, I plan on trying to be more strategic about my use of time.  This is a different type of test all-together.

Best Anniversary Gift

Home Improvement and Temperment

A good friend of mine was recently replacing the tiles in this kitchen floor and made an interesting observation about the psychology of home improvement.  He noticed that he saw three distinct responses to the various challenges the project produced.

There was his wife, the optimist.  She looked at the project and it seemed fairly straight-forward: tear out the old times, put in the new ones; this should be easy.  She had never done anything like this before but the instructions in the tiling book looked made it look easy. She figured that they could get the tiling project done ahead of the five days they planned on.  When the glue for the tiles didn't hold and one whole day of labor had to be redone, she got somewhat frustrated and discouraged by the whole process.  At that point, she was not excited about having new tiles in kitchen and probably wished they hadn't started the project.  Emotionally, she was not expecting the project to ever get done.

Then there was my friend, the pessimist (at least when it comes to home improvement).  He is not the handy-man type, had also not done anything like this before and assumed that the project would be a minor form of hell.   Nothing would work right, it was unrealistic to try to get it done in one week (but they didn't really have any choice in the matter), and the whole experience would be painful.  When things didn't go well (like the glue not holding on the tiles) he was fully prepared to be discouraged and frustrated.  When things were going well like cutting tiles and placing them on the floor, he knew the positive feelings were an illusion and that trouble was just around the corner.  He was just waiting for things to fall apart.

The last character in this story is a friend of theirs who was able to help for several days; his name is Josh.  Josh does not conform the the stereotype of college art major he is; he is QUITE the handy-man.  Josh helped build his own house, is very knowledgeable about all things home improvement and also can fix your car if you want.  Josh is exactly the kind of guy you want helping you out when you want to retile your kitchen.  Josh is also a realist.  He expects that there are going to be things that go wrong and his response is to fix them and move on.  When the glue didn't hold Josh was thoroughly committed to pulling up every tile that wasn't firmly attached even if it meant having to re-glue every single one.  Better to put in the time now and get things right rather than have to replace them once the grout was in place.   He didn't get discouraged by the problems (there are always going to be problems) and responded with an attitude determined to fix those problems.  The project will get done, it may just take a little longer than expected.  Don't give up or get discouraged, and don't emotionally go looking for trouble; do the job, fix the mistakes.

I think this attitude of realism is the classical American "can-do" spirit.  In this regard, I think I need to be more American when we re-start our home improvement project here in the next few weeks.

Two Weeks of Basil

A  few reflections on being a new dog owner:

• I'm guessing, and have had it confirmed by people who would know, that getting a new puppy is like being a new parent in many ways just less so.  Less responsibility, less expense, less emotion, less excitement, etc.  Though we haven't been waken up at night by Basil, we have had to re-organize our schedules a bit (mornings in particular) and when planning our days, we have to think about more than ourselves.  Granted, if we want to go out, we don't have to hire a sitter; we just put Basil in his kennel. Our lives, though, have had to change in a multitude of small ways to accommodate him and I expect our first child will have a similar impact, just more so.
• Basil definitely prefers Katie.  Basil definitely is more obedient towards me.  Good cop, bad cop.
• I find myself wishing that there was something I could do so that Basil liked me more.  I want him to be excited when I get home and snuggle up with me on the couch and rest his droopy chin and ears on my lap when he's tired.  Right now, I get overflow from his loving of Katie and I guess that will have to do.  I can't make Basil love me (in the small way is able to) and that's the way it is.  Again, this seems highly analogous to having children and only time will tell how our relationship will end up.
• Basil can get very bad gas.  We're going to try changing his food to see if that will help.
• Basil always smells like a dog and unless we do something aggressive, our house probably will too.  Hopefully once he's older we'll be able to leave him outside more and that will help.
• Basil is a social dog and despite his puppy tendencies, will still snuggle up with you to watch a movie.  He has his spot on the couch and he enjoys being there.  That cushion is his happy place and if he's scared or needs reassurance, he parks there.  He also tends to be lazy enough that he won't always fully jump up on his own (even though he is perfectly capable of doing so) or even just lay on the floor instead.

We have been blessed with a wonderful dog.  More pictures to come.

Flickr Action

I'm finally getting my act together and put a large number of photos onto my Flickr page last night.  They are unorganized and don't have any meta-data but they are up.  I plan on updating the page throughout the month, hopefully in a more consistent manner. Ideally, I'll be on top of life enough to start updating it as I shoot, quasi-real-time.  Cross your fingers

Meet Basil

Our dog-hunt has ended and we are now the proud owners of a five month old English Springer Spaniel we've named Basil C Terwilliger ("Basil" or "Mr. T" for short). I've posted a few pictures to the old, rusting Flickr stream (link on your right, my left) and that's all I've got time to say.

We'll almost.  

Basil is pretty laid back, quiet, and easy to get along with.  We got him from a family where the dad was looking for a driving buddy.  Basil wasn't it, apparently, so we were able to adopt him.  He's been a joy to have all of six hours and we're looking for many more.  Katie is going to be training him and we've got a stack of treats that I expect we're going to work through pretty quick.

Time to first indoor accident as measured from when he entered the house: less than two minutes.  

Puppy Love

Its hard to explain but the pebble that started the avalanche that is buying a house was a desire to have a dog.  Or, more specifically, Katie's desire for a cute puppy.  (I'm not anti-dog at all Katie just loves 'em more).   A few months later we are finally embarking (ha, pun!) on that adventure. We've been spending time reading up on breeds, trying to find one that will fit our lifestyle right now.  Our two top choices are a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel and a Brittany Spaniel. We've been watching Petfinder.com, watching the Kansas Humane Society website and working through organizations that rescue specific breeds.

Today, for example, we are being visited/inspected by a representative for the American Brittany Rescue.  Both Katie and I are a little nervous; we don't know what it would mean if they found us unworthy to own one of their abandoned dogs.  I guess we'll just have to get a dog elsewhere; thankfully there will be many options in a few months as spring rolls around.  We just need to be patient and wait for the dog that is right for us.

Clocks

For those of you who know me pretty well the following will not surprise you: I have been very annoyed by the fact that all of the clocks in our house showed separate times.  This past week, I took it upon myself to synchronize all of them so I don't experience "Star Trek"-like rifts in the space-time continuum when moving from room to room.

It took me about fifteen minutes and the precision of the time-setting varied from clock to clock. Some don't display seconds. Some don't allow the second hand to be set.  Some are very difficult to adjust with any certainty. 

I also discovered odd clustering of time pieces.  The kitchen has four: one on the microwave, one on the oven, one on the wall and one outdoor temperature display.  My bed stand has three: one is the emergency weather radio, one is the alarm clock, and one is an outdoor temperature display.

So how many clocks in our house?  If you ignore the time on the two computers which is set over the internet, then we have eleven.  

What about you?  How many clocks in your house?

This makes me want to quit my job and become a full-time nerd

I stumbled across some video demonstrations yesterday that, as they say, captured my imagination.  The videos show some high-level nerdery using the Wiimote to control a non-Wii computer interface.  If you have a moment and a high-speed connection, click on over to see what I'm talking about.  The video at the bottom is by far the most impressive to my eyes.

All of this stuff is possible because the Wiimote has some serious hardware inside.  First off, the connection to the Wii proper is done through a Bluetooth connection, which makes eavesdropping in on the messages being sent back and forth much easier.  For those of you who don't know, Bluetooth is a wireless communication standard that is most commonly seen in the cell phone market.  If you've seen people walking around wearing just a headset talking on their phones, you've seen Bluetooth in action.  The user's phone is squirreled away in a backpack, pocket, or briefcase, and the headset is connected to it, acting as a remote microphone and speaker.  The Wii uses the same techonology but instead of sending a phone conversation between a headset and a cell phone, it is used to send information between the Wiimote and the Wii.

The information that it is sending is where the real magic is, though.  There are two things the Wii system uses to keep track of where the Wiimote is and how it is moving.  The first is an integrated three-dimensional accelerometer.  This is a little chip that can measure how much acceleration the Wiimote is experiencing in all three dimensions (up/down, left/right, away/toward the TV screen). Using a bit of math, it is theoretically possible to know exactly where the Wiimote is in space at any time and how it is moving.

It appears, though, that some kind of practical limitation kept this sensing from being precise enough in the real world and so a second system was put in place: the IR camera.  In the very front of the Wiimote is a fairly high-resolution IR camera that watches the position of two IR LED lights tucked away in the sensor bar you place on your TV. By watching the size, position, and orientation of theses lights,  a second independent method of 3-D location is made possible. If the lights are bigger, the Wiimote is closer to the TV.  If the lights are in the upper-left of the screen and tilted, then the Wiimote is in the lower-left of the screen and also tilted.

All of this (and more) has been packed into one remote-control sized device that is actually affordable to normal people (that is, people not doing research in academia).  In my mind, this is probably the most incredible part of the whole system.  Because of this integration, the Wii is the most accessible, most-popular video game platform today.

What these videos show, though, is how much more potential there is.  Adventure-some hackers have taken the time to largely decode and understand the information being sent between the Wiimote and the Wii.  Using this information, software hase been written that allows a Bluetooth-equipped computer to connect to the Wiimote and use this information for other purposes.  This device-level software (called a "driver") is then used by other programmers who build on it and create more general software like what is demonstrated in the videos.

The incredible potential of this system truly captures my imagination.  The opportunities to do new things in new ways seems wide open right now and it makes me want to quit my job and explore these opportunities.  If I was more of a computer nerd, I might just do something like that under the guise of a graduate program.  For now, though, I'm going to sit back and continue to be amazed at how these "toys" are going to be put to use.

Back in the USA

Well, we're back home and in full swing to try to get our lives in order.  The flights home were on time and uneventful except for one item: we flew first class from Beijing to Chicago.  Providentially, we were upgraded from coach due to overbooking in that class.  I have flown first-class once before for a business trip but this experience was far beyond that.  The first and most significant aspect: each seat is effectively a recliner.  I took a six-hour nap in a near horizontal position and didn't have to worry about the people behind me or next to me having to wake me up so they could get by to use the restroom.  The amount of space given each seat is absolutely enormous; it is an embarrassment of room compared to our flight over.  There were other luxuries like a personal TV with multiple channels, an actual menu with choices for each multi-course meal and almost real pillows and blankets but I would forsake all of those just for the reclining seat.All good things must come to an end and our flight from Chicago to Wichita was back in economy (though the flight was on-time).

Customs in Chicago was a bit weird.  After officially entering the country we waited a good forty minutes to pick-up our luggage.  We then hauled it no more than a few hundred feet to customs agent who, after looking over our paperwork, let us pass without incident, and then dropped it off at another luggage check point.  I assume that if the customs agent didn't like our paperwork they wanted the ability to search our luggage but for virtually everybody entering the port, this seems nothing more than jumping through hoops.  Such is life.

We got back home to find a pile of mail, some bread and milk from friends who were watching the house (very, very kind of them) and an inability to get to sleep quickly.  By 2am we had both nodded off and slept in until around 10am.  I was able to stay up the whole next day but Katie wasn't feeling well and slept through a good portion of the day.  Not surprisingly, she wasn't quite ready for bed when I was and we had another not quite as late night.  Today is looking better and we're both hoping a normal bedtime will work for us tonight.

We unpacked a bit yesterday and found out, much to our surprise, that all our fragile goods survived the flight unharmed.  We had worked pretty hard in Beijing to package them securely and our efforts were rewarded.  The rest of unpacking is moving along just fine with most of the laundry almost done.

There was one unfortunate half-surprise when we got home.  I preparation for our trip I had turned off the water to the washing machine.  The valve was damaged, though, and it took a about half an hour to find the magic position where the valve was closed and didn't leak.  When I got home and turned the water back on I quickly remembered that it was broken as I couldn't find a non-leaking open position.  I spent an hour or so driving around trying to find a replacement valve.  No luck.

At the final hardware store I visited I realized with a washer or gasket I could position the valve in the full-open position and prevent it from leaking.  I got the o-rings I needed, took everything home and reassembled the valve to find my idea worked.  No leaking and we could use the washing machine.  The big catch is that turning the valve off will mostly stop the water flow but not completely; the valve is still broken and needs replacement.  

Maybe I work on that next weekend.

Even More Pictures

I've posted another batch of pictures to Flickr, the set that will go up "from the field." We fly back in about six hours (our Thursday afternoon) and, barring any flight difficulties, get into Wichita Thursday evening.

I plan on posting more commentary and pictures once back in the States; we'll see how that goes.

Until later....

More Pictures

Just posted a few more pictures to my Flickr site. There should be more photos in the near future. I just need to caption them.

Oh, and we're going to the Great Wall tomorrow.

Miscellanea

• Before heading out to one of the tourist sites for the day, my wife and I stopped into the local Subway to get some sandwiches for the road. The staff there had perfectly functional English (as far as ordering sandwiches goes) which was both surprising and wonderful.
  We finished paying for our sandwiches and thanked the gal in Chinese, using one of the few phrases we can manage at this point.
  
  Oddly, she answered back "gracias".

• There's a somewhat impromptu market across the street from where we are staying and while strolling through there Katie found some serving dinnerware that were exactly in the same style as our current dishes. Since spying these, she has been making plans to figure out how to get them back home in one piece since similar goods in the US are much more expensive.
  
  Just how similar are these items compared to what we can buy at Target back home? Well, not only do they look identical but they have the text "Target" and their logo inked onto the bottom of each item. I don't know if these are stolen, factory rejects, or knock-offs and I don't know if it really matters.

• There are a wide variety of markets here and depending on the expected clientel, the approach in bargaining with a merchant varies. A few days ago we were at a tourist hot-spot: the Pearl Market (the market sells more than pearls but is famous for said goods). The merchants there are used to dealing with foreigners who have cash to burn and mark-up their items accordingly. Katie was interested in some scrolls and we were able to negotiate the price down from 350 yuan to 250 yuan. Along the way from the opening price to the final price we were given counter offers:
  
  310- "This is 'friend' price."
  
  280- "This what locals pay."
  
  260- "This is good deal."
  
  255- "250 is unlucky Chinese number." (This was my favorite)
  
  After scowling and laughing my way through the string of counter-offers our original offer was accepted and I felt pretty good about holding steady. I knew we didn't do a fantastic job of negotiating but we were new at this. I didn't realize how horridly we had been ripped-off until our host who was there with us showed us some silk clothing she had purchased while waiting for us.
  
  Original price: 380 yuan
  
  Final price: 50 yuan (and she thinks she could have gone lower)

• One more thing on the pearl market: the merchants are VERY aggressive. As soon as the white-skinned people show up they spring out of their stalls and loudly begin their sales pitch. Irritatingly, most begin with, "Hello, friend...". I felt like a carcass being picked over with vulture-merchants all simlutaneously moving in for the kill. The worst were those the physically pulled on me or that followed us long past we had left the area of their stalls. There were several that ignored us and were busy reading newspapers, magazines, and books. I felt like I should buy something, anything, from them to reward their non-aggressiveness and teach all the others a lesson.
  
  Alternatively, I've been trying to think of a way that I could be equally annoying to the merchants and make it very clear to them that I am not interested in anything they are selling and highly disapprove of their behavior. I've decided that I need to carry a small squirt-gun and every time one of them jumps out in front of me and opens her mouth to say, "Hello, fri....", right then I'll squirt her in the face. True, this does sort of escalate matters and will probably result in a yelling match in several different languages but it would be funny for at least a few moments.
  
  Overall, I don't think the merchants would be very happy with me and would feel I had done something rude. At least, then, there would be equality between us and we could both go home unhappy.

Disposable Lifestyle

As I've written before, the car is not the primary means of transportation for most people living in Beijing. Public transportation and bicycles/scooters by far outstrip the number of cars on the road. In light of this, I find it very odd that there are NO trashy cars on the road. All of them look very nice and appear to be well maintained. This is very odd in light of the fact that almost all of the bicycles are in horrid disrepair.

Looking over a typical bike rack, about 15% appear to be newer bikes in good shape. The rest are rusting hulks that I'm surprised work at all. These bikes could all use a new chain, new gears and a thorough cleaning and lubing. Walking the streets here, though, I've seen only one bicycle repair shop. For whatever reason, cars get maintained and bicycles don't . I don't know if bicycle repairs are just beyond the means of most bike owners (which would not be the case for car owners) or if it is cheaper to just buy a new bike when the old one completely fails. You would think that if your bike was your main means of transportation that you would maintain it.

This serves to highlight an aspect of Chinese culture that seems widespread: the lack of planning/maintenance. More so than the US, a lot of life here seems to be one-use and disposable. I've always thought of China as a resource-strapped country but I was clearly wrong about this. The Chinese here may keep items in disrepair longer but, for the most part, they don't seem to take this one step further and do things like preventative maintenance (like lubing their bikes).

Another great example: there are two elevators in the apartment building in which we are staying. The two of them are never both working and this seems to be by design. In the few days we've been here, we've ridden on both; one day the left-hand one will be working, the next day its the right-hand one. I have no idea why this is; Katie guessed that maybe the electrical system isn't up to the task of running both simultaneously. Whatever the reason, it is clear that mechanically both elevators work fine, just not at the same time.

Why is this? Why, in one of the largest cities in the world, does there appear to be a profound lack of planning by its citizens. I am at a loss for a good answer.

Chinese Playgroups

One of the problems with the one-child policy in China is the ease at which that one child can become the center of the family's existence. With no siblings to compete for attention and resources, it is easy to see how a child could grow up not understanding that the world does not revolve around him or her. I was impressed to learn that many parents have developed at least one specific way to combat this: playgroups.

Every afternoon after school classes get out, a group of children gather in the apartment complex courtyard and bring a toy out to play. The goal is to provide socialization where each child is not the center of the interaction. In effect, the children all grow into a much larger family for a few hours and must learn together about things like sharing, playing nice with others, and learning how to relate in a positive way to their peers.

I think this is a great idea and am VERY impressed with whoever came up with it. I hope it will be able to serve its purpose well and that this generation of children will have some balance to their lives.

Christmas in Beijing

As you might expect in a country that doesn't have the Western cultural heritage, Christmas is a bit different than it is in the States. Oddly, Christmas isn't absent from the culture entirely, though our friends here say that this addition has occurred in the past several years or so. In all the shopping centers we've visited the past few days, Christmas carols (in English) have been playing and many of the stores have the visage of Santa Claus festooned about with the words "Merry Christmas" written beneath his head.

All of this is facade, though. In my interaction with a few Chinese people here nobody knows why Christmas is celebrated or even what day the holiday is on. Those Christmas carols playing in the store, even if the shoppers do know English, any kind of comprehension is completely lost on them. (This was evidenced by a game of Christmas carol pictionary we played with some Chinese students where Frosty was portrayed as a VERY fat man and Rudolph was also also man but with a red nose). There is no "reason for the season" here except a completely commercial exercise that most don't formally celebrate. It is like the top, superficial layer of holiday has been scrapped off and spread over the culture here.

Here, Santa Claus is the main image of Christmas and very few have any reason to believe that there is something wrong with this.

Photos!

I've (finally) updated my Flickr stream with a handfull for photos from our stay here.

(One of our friends here said that she checked my photos often. This made me feel bad because my stream has been dormant for quite some time, getting close to a year. To make it up to her, my plan is to retroactively stream in some photos I've taken over this previous year. Keep your eyes peeled for that in the months to come.)

Rules of the Road

As in many countries throughout the world, traffic in Beijing is something very different than what I am used to in the USA. Calling it chaotic, dangerous, or lawless, though at least true on the surface, is missing the point. As I've been walking around the neighborhood and dealing with street crossings myself I've been trying to determine the governing principles for how traffic works here. I haven't come up with anything definitive but here's what I have seen.

Despite some of the other moving "violations", cars and buses follow the traffic lights pretty well, actually. In fact, the more I think about it, I would say they do just as good as many in Wichita which is to say that there are plenty of people running reds as the light is changing, some getting an early start, and many switching lanes in the intersection. Out on the freeway, though, the similarities dissappear quickly. Blinkers are optional (though I have seen a fair number using them, much to my surprise) and weaving through traffic at high speeds is the norm. There is not such thing as following distance and I haven't seen anybody moderating their speed for legal reasons. I have seen several police cars out on the road but I have never seen anybody being pulled over for traffic violations. Though I don't know any Beijing traffic laws, I'm guessing the situation is similar to how such matters work in the US: the written law aside, in practice the police prosecute only the gross offenders. Again, just a guess.

The much more interesting and puzzling role in traffic goes to the two-wheeled vehicles and pedestrians. There are a lot of bicycles in Beijing; not as many as I would have guessed but still way more than in any US city I have visited or even heard about. At the subway station there is a covered parking area that can hold several hundred bikes. In front of the apartment building there is a bike rack with at least another hundred parked. Bicycles are used in virtually everyway a car would be in the US. I've seen bicycles (well, tricycles technically) with large trailers hauling goods, bikes with a seat on the back for a second passenger to ride side-saddle, bikes with a street vendors cooking grill, fuel, and ingredients ready to go.

Also of GREAT interest to me are battery-powered bikes that are relatively common here. They travel fairly quickly (more quickly than most of the recreation-speed pedalers out on the road, at least), run silently and don't require any pedaling. I have desired such a bicycle of my own back home and have looked into the few brands and conversion kits that exist in the US. If it wouldn't be so expensive to ship back, I would buy one here. My guess is that one in 15 bicycles here in Beijing is battery-powered.

Lastly, there are very few scooters or motorcycles. When I visited Taiwain about a decade ago, they were the predominant form of street transportation. I don't know exactly why, but they aren't very popular up here. I would say that one in every 40 two-wheeled vehicle is a gas-powered scooter or motorcycle. Most are on the smaller side (maybe not even 50cc) though I have seen larger scooters like my own and even one full-fledged sport bike. I asked my hosts about this and their guess was the weather made travelling at high speeds in the cold air too chilling for most people.

Anyway, back to traffic. Though cars more or less follow the traffic signals, bicycles and pedestrians categorically do not. Due to the large intersections, there are actually separate lights for the pedestrians and bicycles but both are essentially ignored. Bicycles in particular seem to do whatever they please. They will move through the intersectionin whatever manner they feel is most expediant and won't hesitate to change directions, move diagonally through multiple lanes, or pool in an island in the middle of the intersection waiting for an opening. They are the true lawless on the road, most never moving more than a fast jog yet permeating the traffic of cars and buses and moving in their own way.

The pedestrians, though equally independent of the law, have a much simplier behavior: they cross the street whenever and wherever they feel like it. Pedestrians collect at the corners and once a large enough group has assembled and an opening presents itself, the group will move. The crossing can take place roughly when the signals indicate but not necessarily so. If a group has collected at a corner and a self-appointed leader begins crossing, more often than not the group will move with him or her, regardless of the traffic; there is safety in numbers. Sometimes there will be defectors who decides the "leader" has made a bad choice and will themselves wait for a better opportunity and/or another pack to cross with. There are often lone-wolf pedestrians who seem not to care for life and limb and will step out into traffic given even the slightest opening. The long and short of it is that there is nearly a steady stream of pedestrians flowing through the intersections most of the time.

Given all of this, there are two obvious questions: how is every intersection not a tangled mess all the time and how are traffic accidents not horribly common? Though I haven't reached any conlcusions I feel highly confident in, it is clear that traffic here is much more of a negotiation than a matter of law. Sometimes the bus yields to the pedestrians, sometimes the pedestrians scatter to make way for the bus. If the way seems clear, the bicycles may start and if left-turning traffic shows up in front of them, they may stop or they may work their way through it and force the cars to yield. The mystery to me is how the negotiation is communicated, how the deal is struck and who has the upper-hand at any given time. It is clear by the lack of serious accidents (I haven't seen any collisions other than pedestrains bumping into each other) that the system works fairly well, but for an outsider like me, the workings of the system are non-obvious. In fact, it is probably more dangerous for me simply because I can't communicate appropriately during these traffic negotiations.

Though all of these may seem to inefficient or unsafe I could not easily say that this is the case. It seems to work well for them and not having to wait your turn at intersections (for bicycles and pedestrians at least) IS more efficient. I guess the BIG sacrifice made is that of corporate responsiblity. In a very real sense, any problems you may have out on the road are nobody's fault but your own. There is no real assignment of blame if something goes wrong, no legitmate cries that the other party broke the rules. At the end of the day, you are the sole party responsible for getting where you need to go safely.

All that said, I still think I like law-based traffic better. At least until I figure out how to make things work for me here and each street-crossing isn't and adventure.

Everyday Adventure

Going outside feels risky.

I'm not worried about being mugged or my pocket being picked. I'm worried about the truth of my complete inability to survive on my own in Beijing being clearly seen by all the people I pass on the street everyday. I don't say a word, I try to look confident but I know I'm a sham. I'm a fish out of water praying that nobody notices my gills and fins flailing around trying to find some way to survive. I try to pretend that I know my way around, that I understand how traffic works and when it is OK and not OK to cross the street, that I can manage to get to where I need to go without incident. None of these are true.

I seek to be unobtrusive, to blend in with the crowd but this is a fantasy. I'm a tall white man in the middle of the the capital of China. I am staying in the university district so there are other non-Asians walking about but this doesn't change how I feel. Everybody stares. They're looking for the slightest sign of my ineptitude so that they can laugh or yell at me and let me know that I'm not fooling anyone.

I can't say more than "hello", "goodbye", "thank you" and count to four in Chinese. I don't know if you knew this, but these words don't get you very far in life. Yesterday, with great trepidation and anxiety, my wife and went to a Chinese restaurant on our own to have lunch. We faked our way through the process of getting seated and managed to order food from the pictures menu quite easily. Then the waitress asked a question.

My wife and I stared blankly. She repeated the question and we looked at her and shrugged. We pulled out the phrase book and leafed our way through it, her looking over our shoulders, looking at the printed Chinese translations. After a few more futile attempts, she gave up and left us. Tea and then the food we had ordered came. When it didn't seem that any rice was coming my wife suggested I ask for some. Ask for rice with the meal in China? Really? Well, we did seem to be lacking this key item so I pulled out the phrase book and used bilingual dictionary in the back to find the word for rice.

There is was. That word that she had been saying over and over again. She was asking if we wanted any rice. I flagged her down and foolishly pointed to the Chinese script in the dictionary. She gave us a frustrated smile and in short time we had two bowls of rice.

We are helpless here. Our adventure in eating out ended well, I suppose. We got food, we paid for it and we were only a minor hassle to the restaurant staff. The whole, time, though, I was on edge. How did we pay the check? Is this number on the check our total or our table number? Are they going to overcharge us? How much was each of these dishes again? All of this in what must be one of the most trivial transactions that can be made.

Living everyday in a place like this would be days and days filled with confusion, frustration, anxiety and helplessness. How do you survive in a place where you worry about not being able to buy groceries? It is humbling to have the cultural skills of a four-year-old. It is stressful to be in such a position and have the responsiblities of an adult. Only by the grace of God, could we survive in such a life.

Energy in Beijing

With climate change, renewable energy, and emissions control all the rage in the western media these days, China has been receiving a fair share of focus regarding its development and energy policy. The arguement that it and India are making revolves around the fact that the western world has polluted the whole globe into this mess and that it should be ones making the biggest changes in carbon emissions as it is the most developed and able to do so. The implicit corollary to this stance is that India and China should be allowed to pollute just as agressively as the the US and Europe did in the past so that they too can bring about industrial and economic development without the undo burden of trying to do so in an environmentally sound manner.

With oil prices having risen dramatically in the past decade or so and all the industrial development in China I would have expected energy costs to be at a premuim. Based on talks with my hosts, I would have to say that I am very wrong. They say that their utility bills are a negligible cost in living here in Beijing. Last night I learned that $60 (US) is sufficient to cover electricity for three months or so. (Fun fact for the day: in this apartment complex, the electricity is pre-paid. There's a little card reader next to the meter and you "charge-up" the meter with a special card loaded electricity credits.) We've been told that there is no need to worry about leaving lights on, using lots of hot water, or turning the heat up when it gets cold at night. Granted, their apartment isn't very large (I'm going to guess 500 square feet) and there are only two of them but a similar living situation in the US would not lead to such a care-free atitude when it comes to paying the power bill.

The cause of low energy costs is both mysterious and obvious. The obvious part strikes you immediately upon landing in the city: the air is very polluted nearly all the time. China has abundant coal resources and does whatever it takes to provide the power to keep the industrial wheels turning. Vendors on the street burn charcoal and coal to keep their food warm and smokestacks in the area seem to almost always been emitting...something.

The mysterious part (or maybe "perplexing" would be a better word) is that, without outside information, you would never guess that the world is growing more concerned about the need for clean energy. Something that is so pressing and important in my life back in the US doesn't seem to bear any notice here. I would guess that Beijing residents here would prefer to have cleaner air (and may downright enjoy the improvement during August when the Olympics are here) but I don't know what price (not just financial) they would be willing to pay to have clear skies. Or, more specifically, I don't know if anybody really cares right now as the rapid economic development seems to be bringing welcome improvement in lifestyle.

I don't know what the implications of this is, but I would feel safe in saying that the citizens of China are probably not the ones who will be leading the charge toward a change in energy policy. I'm also going to guess that the Chinese government is more concerned with modernization and is willing to deal with the pollution problem later. We'll see in the long-term how all of this shapes up; right now I'm not optimistic.

Made in China

I've heard it many times in many places but the reality is sinking in now that I can see it for myself: labor in China is cheap. Our hosts have a cleaning lady who comes by twice a weak to clean their apartment. They are not rich by any measure but the cost of having her come and do some of the housework is affordable, especially in light of the benefit of having those hours they would have spent cleaning now free for other pursuits. There are car washes out on the street where, in the dead of winter, several guys will clean your car for you with buckets of soapy water and rags. The garabage man is a large flat-beg truck with a guy or two who toss bags of trash onto the bed. Everywhere there are people doing manual labor in situations that you just don't see in the USA. This cheap labor is the driving force behind so many companies moving manufacturing over to China. All other factors aside, it is actually possible to assemble a large force of labors who will, by hand, do just about anything that needs doing. And they will do it at a price that is cheaper than automation anywhere else in the world can provide.

Part of the cause of the cheap labor is the large migrant work force that occupies many of the cities. These migrants are almost always from the rural areas where the opportunities for livelihood consist of farming, and, like in the USA, many of the younger people are looking for something more rewarding than tilling the soil. In China, though, the government requires you to be registered and residing in a certain city and you are not technically allowed to work outside that area. But, like the traffic laws here, the letter of the law and reality are not necessarily highly related. Many of the workers from the cities are essentially illegal immigrants working for low wages because it is better than not having any work at all back in the country. The opportunities are in the cities and even if it isn't 100% legal, they come anyway trying to make a better life. Think of this as the same problem the US has with Mexico but without the international border.

I'm sure there are many other complexities I don't understand right now and that this is not the whole story but it is one significant factor influencing the labor market in major Chinese cities. Obviously, there are jobs that will never be able to be done manually (making computer chips, for example) and until China embraces automation, companies in such lines of business will be few and far between. In the mean time, the "Made in China" label will continue to be the results of millions and millions of labors hand-working products into existance.

What Day Is It Again?

We have arrived in Beijing and travel was incident free. Well, almost.

Snow in the "mid-west" (is Kansas part of the mid-west?) kept the flight schedules volatile Saturday morning when we were trying to fly out of Wichita. There was very little snow falling there but apparently in Chicago (our connecting destination) there was trouble and our flight was delayed almost two hours. United, though, did an excellent job of making the delay bearable by not having us board the plane until we had an arrival slot in Chicago. They even went one step further by monitoring all our connecting flights and re-booking travellers on the spot before we had even left. I didn't expect this level of service from the notorious airline.

Our flight out of Chicago was not delayed and shrunk our generous three hour lay-over into less than an hour. We caught the flight and joined the mass of college students returning home for Christmas break. Seriously, all of economy-class save a dozen or so people were non-white, twenty-somethings. Speaking of economy-class, we didn't get to see the upper-deck on our 747 but the announcements mentioned passengers in "suites" and it was clear that their experience was quite different than ours. The simple fact that a full plane left very little room for us in economy to even get up and walk around made me realize that we really were travelling the modern equivalent of steerage class. Not that I'm bitter; even that next class up from us cost several thousand more per ticket.

Compared to my previous trans-Pacific flights, time passed very quickly. I spent most of my time watching the in-flight movies and playing video games on a recently received Gameboy Advance. Katie says I'm addicted but I insist I can stop any time. Just got to do this one more thing then I'll be done. I promise. For real this time.

Our flight left Saturday morning, we arrived in Beijing Sunday evening and as I write this, are enjoying Monday morning, the first full day here in China. We'll see if my body can make it through the day without jet-lag taking over.

In just one week...

...my wife and I will be in Beijing. We're going out to visit some friends for a while and are eagerly awaiting the trip. The run-up these past few weeks has been surprisingly un-stressful. We've got a suitcase full of food items that they cannot get there, chocolate chips making up large portion so far. We've each purchased our long underwear to deal with the cold (particularly if we take a trip up to Harbin, one of the major cities in the far north).

All of this planning is taking place during the already busy holiday season which is a big part of the reason I haven't been faithful in posting. We've just this past week finished getting gift for everybody and are still working on making arrangements for the time we are gone. Getting out of work has not been a big deal for us but it helps that we have been planning on the trip for most of this year.

So that's the story. Oh, and my brother and his wife should be having their first-born any day now. Lots of excite in the family right now.

I'm Famous

If you go to the home page of the iTunes Music Store and look at the list of the current top-selling songs you’ll see (at the time of this writing) that a song titled “Apologize” is at the number three spot (I’ve seen it at the number two spot in past weeks). This song is a remix done by Timbaland of a song by OneRepublic. If you check out the OneRepublic website you’ll see that one of the members of the band is one Zach Filkins. Zach and I were on the same floor our freshman year of college and I can say, unequivocally, that he is the best guitar-player I have ever seen in-person. He is classically trained, spent some time in Spain, and was the first guitar player I ever met who did more than strum chords. Since the band hasn’t released and album yet (that changes this November 20th) it is pretty amazing that their song is doing as well as it is. I’m hoping their other songs make greater use of Zach’s talents; I’m encouraged by the fact that one of the band members frequently plays cello.

This is my inch of glory for now. I’m “friends” with a guy that is a in band that is doing pretty well right now. I don’t our relationship is such that I’ll be getting any free concert tickets in the near future but its still fun to see somebody you know who wanders into the public eye. Here’s hoping the band does well and enjoys their fame, however long it lasts.

My Exciting Friday

A little over a week ago I was spending my Friday off doing work on the house. (Truth be told, this is how I have been spending a lot of my time since we purchased the house. Someday soon, it won't be the focus of my life like it is right now.) I was doing work up in the attic and got up early so I could be up there in the cool of the morning. By noon, I had been working for about six hours and with the increasing temperature, I was ready to call it a day. I noticed the mail had come so I grabbed my depleted drill battery, hit the garage door button and scooted underneath the descending door. I grabbed the mail and learned pretty quickly I had made a serious mistake.

I had just locked myself out of my house.

Well, Katie was going to be getting back from work in the next hour or so and there wasn't much I could do in the mean time so.... The best answer I could come up with was to go out to the front lawn and lay down in the nice green grass. I came to think of this as mandatory relaxation, a simple pleasure I hadn't enjoyed in a while.

After about half an hour of half-sleeping I heard a truck pull up in front of our house. I looked up and was confronted with three paramedics rushing out of an ambulance. They were moving toward me.

I sat up and greeted them. "Hi there. Can I help you?"

They stared at me kind of blankly. "Uh, yeah, we got a call about somebody needing medical help. Are you OK?"

I assured them I was and when it became apparent that somebody had mistaken me, the napping neighbor for a dead body, the paramedics were happy to get on their way. From a few of the comments they made it seemed that this sort of thing happens somewhat regularly.

I laid back down ready to resume my doze when I heard another car pull up. I looked up and saw a police officer getting out of his car and headed my way. (Not long after he got there I saw a fire truck drive by as well. It slowed and when it was obvious their services were not needed, they continued on. I don't know why they were last; the fire station is just two blocks down the street. Maybe they were already out on call.)

The police officer came over and began what is probably a routine interrogation.

"What are you doing out here?"

"I locked myself out of my house and I'm waiting for my wife to get home."

"But why are you out here in front?"

"I was taking a nap while I waited. The grass is best out here in front."

Pause.

"Can I get your name, please?"

"Sure. Trevor Hardy."

"And why do you have a battery out here?"

"I was taking it inside to recharge it when I locked myself out."

Pause.

"I'm gonna need to see some ID, sir."

"Sorry but its in my wallet inside the house."

"So you don't have any ID on you?"

"No I was working on my house this morning and I don't normally carry my wallet with me when I do housework", I replied. I was starting to get a bit annoyed. I had been taking a nap on my own lawn and somebody had called 911 on me. Granted, we live in a neighborhood of retired people and we were kind of new to the neighborhood but I had been wearing these exact same clothes for six weeks while working on the house. How could I not be known to the neighbors? I had met many of them and knew their names. Heck, I was the one who, at eight on a Saturday morning, was outside drilling and banging away making a racket.

"Can I get your social security number?" The rebellious nature in me was starting to flare up. I'm on my own lawn. I shouldn't have to prove who I am to be on my own lawn. I can understand that they had no way of knowing who I was but it shouldn't matter. I was taking a nap on my lawn. I don't think they would have had the probable cause needed to arrest me and I was tempted to politely refuse to cooperate at this point but I knew that even if they didn't have grounds to arrest me, they could do so anyways and make the afternoon even more protracted and exciting. I also knew Katie would not be happy if she had to get me from the police station.

I grudgingly consented.

"Why haven't you called your wife?"

"I don't have a cell phone. And even if I did, I still wouldn't be carrying it with me while I was doing housework."

"Does she have a cell phone?"

"Yes."

"What's her number? We can give her a call for you." I gave the number and while he was dialing he got his handcuffs out.

What?! I was still sitting down on the lawn, doing my best to politely answer his questions. It must have been a matter of routine procedure because I couldn't understand how I could possibly be a threat. By this point a second officer had arrived on the scene (a bicycle cop). I was outnumbered two to one and I was on the ground. They could have each kicked me a half-dozen times before I could get up. Why were handcuffs necessary?

Katie didn't answer the phone but her voice-mail greeting was enough for the officers; "Katie Hardy" it said. Also, a call into the station matched my name and social security number. The officers seemed satisfied and decided to wrap it up.

The officers were never rude and didn't attempt to intimidate me (probably). They were perfunctory, suspicious, and didn't smile. I wouldn't call them friendly and I wouldn't call them hostile. I guess that's OK. I suppose this is part of being a cop and, not knowing what it is like to be a police officer, I don't have much room to complain. I wouldn't call it a positive experience and I was glad that it ended the way it did.

As a postscript of sorts, Katie was walking down to the grocery store a few days later (walking to grocery store + bringing your own bags = I love my wife and her conservation efforts) and one of our neighbors stopped her to ask about all the fuss. He didn't come right out and say it but by the end of the conversation Katie was pretty convinced he had called 911. He came over to talk to me last night and thought we had met before and I didn't have a beard then. He was confused: we had never met before and I've had this beard for about ten years. I think I agree with my wife.

Lord of the Rings

I recently re-discovered books on tape (well, CD) (well, iPod) and have been listening to a few instead of the normal slew of podcasts that occupy my ears during much of the work day. One of the more unique offereings was a 1981 dramatization of "Lord of the Rings" that the BBC did. Not having the books memorized and with the movies being more freshly implanted into my brain, I'm guessing that "dramatization" is the right word versus, say, dramatic reading. The entire trilogy is presented in thriteen discs so I feel pretty confident in saying that a sizable portion of the material was edited out and I'm guessing that not all lines the actors speak are vertabim from the original texts.

But there are actors, though, and there is radio drama. The most confusing part for me, though, is trying to reconcile the characterizations from the movie with the interpretations that these actors present over twenty years ago. For example, instead of Aragorn (Viggo Mortenson's character) being presented as a Hamlet-esque brooding and conflicted, he is portrayed much more stereotypically as the confident, heroic, steadfast masculine leader. Gimli doesn't have the low gravelly voice but instead has a much more formal and, shall I say, British.

The most confusing part of listening to this recording, though, are the hobbits. The actor voicing Merry sounds like Elijah Wood and Frodo Baggins is voiced by Ian Holmes. The same Ian Holmes who played Bilbo Baggins in the films. It took me nearly the entirety of the book to not think of Frodo as Bilbo.

When in the US...

I struck up a conversation with a co-worker the other day who I found out had immigrated from Iran when he was 18. He literally escaped the country on camel-back riding for several days (actually, the traveling was all done at night) through a sand-storm with human smugglers to make it out of Iran several years after the Islamic Revolution.

There's a lot more to the story I heard but the highlight for me was hearing how he learned English. After working all day (and most of the evening) he would come home and watch late-night TV. His favorite and most helpful show in learning English: "The Honeymooners." To this day he loves the show and can't get enough of it.

"Die Hard"

Katie and I saw "Live Free or Die Hard" last night and it is the best completely non-redeeming movie I've seen in a while. This is pure summer-blockbuster, mindless-action, entertaining (at least for guys) kind of movie. It is unrealistic, violent, humorous, not too long, and worth seeing in a simple escapist kind of way. I haven't seen any of the other movies in the series and would now like to; I'm hoping they will be just as good. There are a lot of movies out there that try to be good action movies and fail miserably. This is not one of those movies and is more on the order of the "Indiana Jones" films; just with slightly less plot.

On principle, I would never give more than four stars to an action movie. This film has earned all four in my book.

Opening Hours at Target

Shortly before a doctor's appointment this morning I stopped by Target to get a welcome-back-home-from-a-boring-business-trip gift for my wife. To my surprise, I arrived before the store opened at 8am and ended up waiting in the car for a few minutes.

I wasn't the only one there early, though. Standing at the doors of the store, waiting patiently but clearly eagerly, were three late middle-aged men. They stood there, talking in a friendly manner. I didn't think much of it until the door opened and I saw all three walking quickly into the store. I was about fifty feet behind them and could see through the glass doors that they were all walking together apparently headed to the same location. My curiousity was piqued and stepped up my pace so as not to lose them.

It wasn't until they turned into the toy section that a light went off in my head: these are collectors. I had a good friend in Boise who was a Star Wars toy collector and he also happened to work at Target. He educated me in the ways of the toy collecting culture and one of the prime strategies these guys (and they are mostly men) use in furthering their hobby is early-hours toy-aisle scouring. My friend Jason, having insider knowledge concerning delivery dates and times, was quite adept at picking up the hard-to-find items and had literally a room full of Star Wars toys.

I followed the men into the toy section and my suspicions proved correct: all three were crowding around the Matchbox Cars, rifling through the cardboard and plastic containers hanging from the display pegs looking for any vehicle they didn't have. A Target clerk was there with them, seeming to enjoy helping in the hunt as well. One of the customers seemed to have found a vehicle to add to his collection.

My only thought as I passed them was how disputes over "rare" cars were settled. They didn't seem to be in competition with each other but surely if they were fanatical enough to get up early to beat all the non-collecting customers, they took this hobby somewhat seriously. Maybe that large male clerk was there for other reasons as well; I'm betting this isn't the first time these men have speed-walked over to the toy section when the store opened.

Today, though, everything appeared peaceful and as far as hobbies go, you could do worse than Matchbox Cars.

Of Showerheads and Garage Door Openers

On Friday Katie purchased two new showersheads for the house. Both the previous units, were, uhmm, unsatisfactory. The shower in the master bathroom had a miserly flow with the water doing little more than trickling out. In contrast, the front bathroom shower gushed water; if only the water would flow through the showerhead rather than around the outside.

Armed with the two new heads, I went to work Saturday morning. The replacement in the master bath was as straightforward and it seemed it should be. The old head came off cleanly and the new one went on smoothly. This is how home improvement should be.

It was in the second bathroom that the Spectre of Simple Things Made Difficult appeared. The shower in this bathroom was a bit unique in that the pipe carrying the water to the showerhead was not inside the wall. Instead, it was screwed into the downspout and clamped to the outside of the wall to hold it in place. This shower pipe was curved at the top to allow the showerhead to face into the tub (rather than up towards the ceiling) making a sort of metal cane shape. In fact, this pipe works very well as a cane.

I know this because I ended up having to remove the whole thing as my attempts to gracefully detach the old showerhead also took nearly all the threading with it. It was in carrying the pipe around many hardware stores that I realized just how nice a cane it made. And from the funny looks I got from the friendly but ultimately unhelpful clerks, I came to understand that pipes such as these are hard to come by these days.

The hunt continues. We can buy conversion kits that contain this funny pipe but they are relatively expensive and come with other parts we don't really need. There are other alternative to replacing the pipe that we might explore if we reach a complete dead end but for now, we will keep looking.

Thankfully, this was the Spectre's only real appearance for the rest of the day. I spent the afternoon and evening installing a new garage door opener for the north garage door. It was my first time to both cut through drywall and spend any time in the attic. (While in the attic I learned we have very little insulation; both Katie and I agree that this needs to change before winter comes.) By that evening, the garage door was up and functioning. There are a few tweaks that still need to be made (like putting a rubber liner on the foot of the door so that it seals against the driveway) but it is more or less done.

It feels good when things work out. I'm thankful that this task didn't end in frustration. In addition, when I go to replace the south garage door opener, I'll have a much better idea what needs to be done and I'll spend less time scrutinizing the instruction manual. (Let the record show, though, that these instructions were pretty darn good.) In the case of both openers, I also need to made a change to the electrical outlets above each opener so that they can plug in easily. I should be an easy fix.

All in all, two for three isn't all that bad for one weekend.

Success!

Thanks to a very helpful hardware store sales assistant and the grace of God, I was able to get the dishwasher up and running last night. It took no more than four hours counting the time in the crawlspace figuring out how our plumbing is done and a trip to the hardware store. Here are the highlights (as much as home improvement can have highlights):

-Ace Hardware saved the day. As I was fumbling around in the plumbing section of the store a sales associate with some knowledge asked if I needed help. I was able to describe the task at hand and in just a few minutes he had talked me through the procedure and showed me the hardware I would need. Not only was this great service that put the competition to shame, but it saved me quite a bit of time and probably an extra trip to the hardware store.

-Pulling out the dishwasher did reveal a severely kinked copper tube. This was what we suspected was the source of our problem.

-I used a propane torch to remove the existing valve. To protect the cabinets from the torch, I got this cool flame-proof "cloth"; I have no idea what it was made of but it worked very well. It looks like a book-sized piece of aluminum foil with thick cotton glued to one side and, oddly, the cotton side faces the flame.

-The new valve is leak free and much easier to turn by hand.

-I need to get a set of drill bits. I was thinking ahead enough to buy one large bit for the hole I would need for the new hose but not so far to realize that drilling a smaller pilot hole first would be a good idea. Oh well, I made it work.

-I know how to shut-off the water to the property from the valve at the meter. There is also a master shut-off in the basement but it doesn't stop the water to our one exterior faucet.

-I have a much better understanding of the plumbing and duct-work in our house due to some quality time in the crawlspace.

Special thanks to my wife who acted as the standby fire brigade and valve installation tester/operator.

Lastly, thanks also to Michael who loaned me the propane torch and showed me how difficult it can be to light. I got us a striker so we wouldn't have to deal with all of that mess next time.

Home Improvement and Frustration

I spent all of Sunday afternoon and evening trying to get our new dishwasher installed. Three connections: electrical, drain water, and hot water. Two of the three were simple and straight-forward; it was the hot water that just wouldn't co-operate. For reasons I don't understand, the connector at the end of the line just wouldn't catch on the threads of the dishwasher. Literally hours and hours of laying on my side getting more and more wet as I try to get these two parts to connect. By hour nine I had finally gotten it all together and was ready to test it.

The copper tube behind the washer had kinked as I was pushing the washer in. I would have to take it all apart to replace the kinked line. Sigh.

It is hard for me to express the level of despondency I felt as the day wore on. Just three connections, that's all and it seemed like very little was going my way. I couldn't find the right fitting,I damaged the fitting, the stores were all closed, the joint leaked, my wrench wouldn't fit... By dinner time, I was feeling completely demoralized. It was by the grace of God that I kept at it and was able to "finish" the project that evening. (Only to find that I wasn't finished at all.)

I think I have found the magic formula for personal demotivation: establish simple and achievable expectations and then fail to meet them in every way. Expectations are so key to getting me frustrated and (eventually) in despair. When I feel that I should be able to accomplish something, especially something that I think is simple, I lose hope when I fail to make rapid progress. Ironically, it is much harder to frustrate me with complex, long, or difficult tasks because I expect there to be trials along the way. Simple things made hard are aggravating.

This is one reason I switched positions at work. In my previous position, I would be assigned a simple task, usually a minor engineering change to some part of the aircraft. I would be excited because the technical part of the task was simple and I knew I could complete it quickly. And I would. Then would come the hours of paperwork necessary to get that change approved. Frustration in a bottle.

Ignorance of the details of a task also contribute. I look at the dishwasher and I see three things I need to do. In reality, there are twelve steps but I think the other nine are hardly worth mentioning; they're simple. When these nine tasks end up taking a lot longer than I expect, I get frustrated.

I think this home-ownership thing is going to be character building because I can see "simple" things like this are going to continue to pop-up. And they will probably appear simple until the little details start taking a lot more time than I would have guessed. I think I'm going to praying a lot more now and trying to remember that I'm not the one calling the shots and this is all in God's hands. Maybe I won't even get frustrated.

Smooth Move

Thanks to the efforts of a dozen or so of our friends, our transplant from a rental to our new home went very well. Faster than I would have imagined, actually. We started at 10 am and finished up right as the pizza arrived at 1 pm. Katie and I had done a pretty good job of packing and the gals that showed up make short work of what we hadn't got to. It only took two U-Haul trips (plus about ten car loads from our helpers) to get it all done.

There's actually not much more to say than that. Much thanks to all those who helped; you made a laborious task easy.

The Big Day

My absence here for the past few weeks has a legitimate excuse this time (unlike many other multi-week breaks): my wife and I are closing on a house tomorrow morning.

The process has been very quick by nearly every standard. We will have gone from deciding to look for a house to buy to actually owning one in nearly exactly four weeks time. Two of those weeks have been between having an accepted offer on the house and inking the paperwork tomorrow. We've spent hours looking, inspecting, doing paperwork, arranging financing, and lately, packing.

The house we are purchasing we toured our first night of visits with the realtor; it was the ninth of ten we planned to visit that night. Our realtor is a former home-builder and he was impressed with it (as were we) so we decided to go back the next day to get a better look at it in the daylight. By the end of that visit, we decided to put an offer on the house and found out that evening our offer had been accepted.

The next few weeks were spent working out the details of financing, having the official home inspection done, and getting all the ducks in a row. There have been a few stressful moments, the most recent of which involved trying to get a check to clear quickly so that the necessary funds could be in the correct account, but it looks like all the detail-work is done.

We are thankful that God has provided a house for us and thankful that we are able to afford it. Now we are going to be praying that we are good stewards of the gift we have been given and don't let our lives fixate on home improvement. We want our house to be a tool to bless others and not the penultimate obsession in our lives.

Anyway, as of tomorrow, our little slice of the earth can be found right here. We'll post some pictures and maybe even some video of the new digs.

It's Here!

This evening I will walk into the downtown branch of the Wichita Public Library, plunk down one shiny quarter, and receive a two week loan on the final Harry Potter book. This is the first time I've paid to use the "hold" system at the library and I only did it because I figured, even with 100 copies in circulation, my chances of finding this insanely popular book actually on the shelves in the next few months was pretty slim.

Now I just have to find the time to read it.

Corporate IT

For the entire time I have worked at Cessna (2.5 years), I have had a wimpy computer. For whatever reason, when I started I was given a computer that was handed down to me from a administratice assitant. It was slow. Very slow. The monitor was a dark 17" CRT. Nearly all the other engineers had flat panel displays and took advantage of their "superiority" to let me know that my status on the nerd totem pole was not that impressive.

That has all changed.

Due to the system requirements of some new software we are using, our group is getting their computers upgraded and mine was the first to arrive this afternoon. Dual 20" flat panel displays. Eight times the memory I had before. Four times the processor power than that previous pokey computer. I sit at my desk and see a wide swath of computing expanse and have the power to move through it. Its great.

The only downside is the inferior upgrade procedure we have in place. I will probably be spending several hours tomorrow installing a bunch of software and drivers so that I can get back to doing my job. For whatever reason, the IT people don't feel it is their responsibility to deliver the computer in a usable state; they copy over some of the data but not all of it. I've already spent a few hours on the phone with tech support trying to get the access rights I need to re-install the software I need to do my job.

Maybe tomorrow will go more smoothly.

Hall of Fame

This past weekend Katie and I went down to Oklahoma to be present for a unique ceremony; Katie's father was being inducted into his high school football hall of fame. I know it meant a lot to him that we were able to make it and though I'm still learning about "football culture" and was a bit over my head, I was gald we were able to make it. Now I have a father-in-law who is a (high school football) Hall of Fame Inductee. That's pretty cool.

Fillings

I knew this was going to be a different visit to the dental office when the good doctor told his assist, “Can you go get the diagonal bit for me?” Actually I knew since my check-up a month ago that this day would come: my first filing. Despite my diligent efforts to keep my teeth clean (brushing several times a day, flossing nearly daily), a fancy gadget during my last visit identified two teeth in need of filing. It ruined my day.

So there I was, getting my first fillings. Before we got into it, I asked the dentist what I could do to prevent cavities. The answers were, unfortunately, not very helpful. He explained the difficulties in cleaning the molar surfaces (where these cavities were) and said there wasn’t a lot more that could be done more than diligent brushing. Unlike some other dentists I’ve had in the past, he wasn’t super excited about the electronic toothbrushes (Sonicare or Oral B) but said they do help. Sigh.

The procedure got off to a great start. The fancy gadget used to test my teeth for cavities tested negative on one tooth this time which meant fewer fillings (and a chance to redeem myself). Though I have never had a painful dental experience, I think I inherited our cultures fear of dental work that morning and was apprehensive. I had nothing to fear. A topical anesthetic masked any pain associated with the injection that numbed up half my mouth. When my mouth was sufficiently immune to any prodding and poking, the dreaded drill came out. For the next fifteen or so minutes (longer than it took for the anesthesia to do its magic) I had four hands in my mouth, each with a tool. The dentist and assist hardly communicated at all; it seemed a very routine procedure (no surprises = a good thing).

In about 45 minutes or so, it was all done. The assistant said the filing sets up immediately so I could eat right away. Well, almost right away; until the anesthesia wore off, there was no way I was going to be able to chew straight, much less taste my food. I ended up having to wait nearly three more hours before I felt comfortable eating without risk of biting my lips, cheek, or tongue. No residual pain, no difficulty chewing. Now all I have to do is stay on top of the brushing and hope we won’t have to do that again any time soon.

Fun New Word of the Day

"Bridezilla."

I heard an interview with a gal in the midst of planning her own wedding use this term. Her definition was simple: if you use the phrase "Its my wedding!" to make sure you get what you want then you are a bridezilla.

I wish I would have known this term these past few years when it seemed I was going five or six weddings per year; it would have come in handy.

(By the way, the interview was on my favorite personal finance radio show, American Public Media's Marketplace Money.)

I'm Fat

There’s no two ways about it; I’m fat. By any measure I can think of, any website I check, any “authority” I can dream up, I’m overweight. I’ve even gone as far as to ask my male friends who are roughly my height how much they weight and invariably it is at least 20 lbs less than I do.

In Idaho I biked to and from work nearly everyday. This definitely helped me stay relatively fit but even then, I always had a layer of squish around my waist and I never weighed less than 185 lbs. I think people thought of my as “healthy” and maybe I was but compared to my roommates who could out-run, out-climb, and out-bike me; I never felt it. I also didn’t compare favorably with my immediate family in this department; I am easily the least athletic and most pudgy of my siblings.

In early fall of 2005 I had a back injury that eliminated virtually all activity in my life. Though I had been bicycling to work, I was forced to quit and spent most evenings after work laying down trying to mitigate the pain. Through physical therapy and a few steroid injections, I gradually regained some degree of activity in my lifestyle but didn’t jump back into it quickly. I had grown used to do doing nothing but lying around and any benefit from years of bicycle commuting was quickly being erased. By the end of the summer in 2006, I had finished up with physical therapy and was probably back to 80%. I still couldn’t bike to work, though, and didn’t lead an active lifestyle outside of the back exercises I continued to do at home.

It wasn’t until a chance meeting with a scale late that fall showing me at 214lbs that I decided I needed to do something about this. I brought this topic up with my wife and, due to her own fight with familial weight problems, agreed that we needed to do something about it. We read books. We started exercising together. We became more careful in what we ate. And we lost weight. Not in the cataclysmic volumes that the books said but we both noticed that we left healthier and weighed less.

Then Christmas came and though we didn’t gain any weight, we didn’t loose any either. Due to a lot of factors, we reached a plateau of sorts and both of us have felt that we are still a good ways from where we need to be. After talking this over again and trying to figure out the best thing to do, we’ve decided to take things up a notch. We’ve developed an exercise schedule that is more active and we’re trying to find ways to measure the level of activity during exercise. We’ve decided to attempt a super disciplined approach to what we eat by weighing and cataloging ALL that passes through our mouths. We’re hoping that by measuring more carefully the food we eat and our level of activity we will be able to more clearly see where the faults in our lifestyle lie.

The catch in all of this is that it will require a high degree of discipline, one that we aren’t used to enacting in this area of our lives. Some would say that this regimented approach is simply setting ourselves up for failure and that most people aren’t able effectively stick with a program like this. Those people are probably right. My wife and I have discussed this at length and agree this will not be easy. But then again, for us, leading a healthy lifestyle never has been. If it was easy, we wouldn’t need to do this.

So this is where we start, again. This week has been a practice week of sorts where we are on our new exercise routine and beginning to weight and measure our food portions. Next week, we begin it for real.

If you believe in luck, then wish us luck.

Bicycling to Work

For the first time since my back injury, I bicycled into work today. Well, that's not quite true. This past Sunday I did a trial run in the evening to get a feel for how long it would take. That trip was 97 minutes round-trip with a few minutes break in the middle at work. The route I took was non-ideal (despite some of it being officially a bike path) and so today I tried a different, more residential route. You can see the two routes here. My time bicycling to work today: 39 minutes. I don't think I'll be able to bicycle everyday but the success from today makes me think this should be a pretty vialbe form of exercise.

The main difficulty will be the fact that Cessna's eastside gym (the Cessna Activity Center) doesn't open until 8am and there really isn't a good way to get between it and the office. Result: I'm giving myself "washcloth showers" in the handicap stall before work. When I bicycled out to the west-side facility, the gyn was right across the street and was open by 6:30am when I arrived. Those were the days.

Bad Day

My scooter was blown over by the wind during the work day and dented a car parked next to it. I left a note for the owner but haven't heard back from him or her.

I went to the dentist this morning and found out I have two small cavities that will need filling. These are the first cavities I've had. Despite my recent efforts to be very diligent in flossing and brushing, I still lost. Apparently I'm doing something wrong.

Sigh.

I wish today had gone differently.

God Cancelled Church Today

This morning, in the middle of church, the tornado sirens went off. One of the church security guys quickly ducked out out of the service to verify (somehow) and came back in to report that, yes, the National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for our county. The pastor told everybody to round up their kids from children's church upstairs while they figured out the best course of action. Again, by means I know not of, they were able to ascertain that there were no active tornados in our county and decided it would be best if everybody went home as a preventative measure. I overheard the pastor say that if our church had a basement, we probably would just go down there and continue as normal.

I was talking with the sound guy about this while we were waiting for more information to be gathered and he wished the National Weather Service wasn't so cautious. If he was running the show, he said he would only active the sirens when an actual tornado was seen rather than just when there is rotation in the clouds (as was the case this morning). His point was simple: the high number of "false alarms" encourages people to disregard the sirens when they do sound.

His point is a good one and my complaint regarding the system is similar: our finest level of resolution for warnings is an entire county. There could be a very deadly tornado dozens of miles from me and the sirens will still go off. In fact, the National Weather Service could be virtually certain that there is no danger to all of Wichita but if there is danger to some part of the county, the sirens will sound.

For better or for worse, most people respond to the sirens by first turning on the TV or radio rather than seeking shelter immediately. In a city that deals with dangerous weather frequently, ALL of the "serious" local TV stations have invested a great deal of money in their weather forecasting equipment, sets, and staff. You can be sure that if the sirens have sounded in Wichita, every one of these stations will be carrying a very in-depth and seemingly interminable analysis. It won't take but a few seconds to figure out what course of action is appropriate.

Lastly, one of the things I brought to our marriage was a Midland weather radio which has been serving us well these past few days. Every hazardous weather watch and warning issues by the National Weather Service sets this thing into loud beeping mode followed by automatically tuning in to the continuous National Weather Service weather channel where the cause of the alarm is explained. The radio is great; even if a tornado came late at night, we would be immediately awaken. On days like today, though, when National Weather Service is issuing warning after warning, it can be quite annoying.

The other advantage of having this radio is that we are never in need of the latest weather forecast, current weather conditions, or weather almanac entry for the day. We have "Misty", our friendly speech-impediment prone, computer synthesized voice who is vigilant in keeping us up-to-date and tirelessly, hour after hour, provides the latest in weather related news. Even during slow weather days, we sometimes tune into Misty to hear her mispronounce words; our favorite is "cloudy".