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.