Bquark Is a Bunny.

Spring is Coming

It is now March and daylight savings time is fast approaching. It starts on April 3 this year. For me that is the real start of cycling season. The weather here in Maryland is not particularly cold, and it is a lack of light during my non-working hours that prevents me from cycling more. I went out Sunday for the first time since late January when we had a very warm bit of weather. The tempearture was in the low 50's, and I wore sweat pants over my bike shorts, a thermal knit shirt, and my cycling windbreaker. My ears got cold, but otherwise I was fine.

When I went out to the garage, I found that my regular bike had a flat. I decided that I did not have time to fix it and still get home for dinner, so I took the old bike. The cyclecomputer on that bike needs a new battery, so I used the Gmap pedometer to calculate my milage when I got back. Here is the gmap pedometer plot of my trip, which was 15.2 miles long.

Technorati Tags: cycling

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Science Blogging Has Moved

I have decided to separate my science blogging from my personal blogging. I have a few posts at Blogpsot, but I have moved from there to Wordpress.com where you can find Cycle Quark. My brief experience so far is that Word Press has better blogging tools. Despite the cycle in the title I do not plan to post about cycling there.

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Steelers Are Heading to Denver

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Not As Easy As Pie

I attempted to make my first pumpkin pie today. I have been doing most of the cooking at home for almost a year now, but I have not done much baking. My wife was out of town and asked me to make the pie. It did not seem that hard. Yesterday, I cut up the pumpkin and roasted it for an hour at 350 degrees. When they had cooled a bit, I scooped the flesh away from the rind and ran it through our small food processor. Since the food processor is so small, it took me about 10 batches to do all of the pumpkin. I ended up with about 12 cups of pureed pumpkin.

Today, I got out the pie recipe and the blender. I put pumpkin puree, heavy cream, milk, honey, eggs, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger into the blender. It seemed to be leaking out the bottom, so I blended quickly with intention of finishing before the leak got worse. When I attempted to unlock the pitcher from the base, the bottom of the pitcher where the blades attach fell out, and all of the pie filling mixture went with it.

I cleaned up the mess with my daughter's help. I threw out the blender. The pitcher had cracked which caused the leak and also meant that the bottom was not held in properly. I headed off to the store and bought a new blender. I also had to buy more ginger, eggs, and heavy cream since I used the last of those ingredients for the last batch.

When I got home, I assembled the new blender which has a glass pitcher rather than plastic. I put in the ingredients and tried it out. It worked great. I poured the filling into two graham cracker pie crusts, and baked for an hour. They looked great, but I realized that in my haste to get the pies into the oven, I had forgotten the honey in this batch.

I much prefer apple pie over pumpkin pie, so I had my wife taste the pie to see how bad it was. Apparently, it was edible. I let my wife make the apple pie. There is no need to take chances with my Thanksgiving apple pie.

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Sunday Ride in the Country

I haven't been able to get out and ride my bike as much as I would have liked since Labor Day. Today the weather was beautiful, and there were no football games that I wanted to watch until 4:15 PM, so off I went. I was in the mood for something different, so I decided to go out New Design Road past Elmer Derr where I normally turn right.

The shoulder of the road disappears south of Elmer Derr and the speed limit is 50 mph. There are a moderate number of cars on the road even on a Sunday afternoon. I would say the traffic is right at the limit of my comfort level. After a couple of miles I turned right onto Manor Woods Road. The EASTALCO Aluminum factory is on Manor Woods, but it is one of the most nicely landscaped factories I have ever seen. You see glimpses of it thought the trees, but it is easy to forget that it is there.

When Manor Woods crosses Ballenger Creek the road markings disappear and the speed limit drops. This is one of the those country roads that I seek out for my rides. Eventually the road tees into Cap Stine Road and I turn north. It is a very pleasant rise with many beautiful views across harvested farm fields to the mountains in the west. Cap Stine becomes Mount Zion after it cross US 15.

I turn from Mount Zion onto Mount Phillips. I have not ridden Mount Phillips in months. It is a seriously hilly stretch of road, and it is a net uphill going in the direction I was taking. It starts with a brutally steep section right after you turn on from Mount Zion. It feels like the front wheel is lifting up from the road as I pedal. The downhills are great. I hit 42 mph on one of the them, but even going that fast I do not have enough speed to make up the next hill.

I made it all the way without too much difficulty. Perhaps I am getting better at this. The total ride was 21 miles in 87 minutes. I have now ridden 1775 miles this year. It appears certain that I will exceed 1800, but 2000 may be tough unless I can get in some 50+ miles rides on the next few weekends.

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The End of Zeptember

Joel Achenbach points out that today is the end of Zeptember. I am surprised that my daughter Megan did point this out to me. She is the Led Zepplin fan in the family.

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My Summer of Cycling II

I wrote a long entry last summer about how my cycling had improved over the summer. It is time for an update and things continue to change. My bike log tells part of the story. I started riding in April and immediately got out 4 to 5 days a week and was quickly doing about 50 miles a week.

I attended a meeting in Aspen, Colorado in June. Colorado appears to be the home of some very serious cyclists. As I mentioned in this entry, I was amazed when I saw people cycling over Independence Pass. I am not up to anything like that, but I did rent a bike and ride down the valley. It was almost all downhill leaving Aspen, so when I hit the 16 mile marker after an hour, I decided I had better turn around and start slogging back up the hill. It took 90 minutes to get back. There was a prediction of thunderstorms, and I saw lightening in the distance, so I pushed myself pretty hard on the way back. The bike I rented was a hybrid that leaned more toward a mountain bike than my own. It had a front shock absorber and it tended to bounce when I pedaled hard. The trail was about 2/3 paved and 1/3 packed dirt. Considering the trail, the bike, and the altitude I was impressed by my performance. When I turned in the bike, the guy who ran the bicycle shop asked me why I was breathing so hard. So much for being impressed by myself.

A friend who rides seriously has been giving me tips, and he encouraged me to buy a new bike. I looked a a Trek 7300FX which is a hybrid like my bike, but it is lighter and the tires are narrower. It seemed like I could ride faster and longer on it. I could not find one in my size in town and rather than order one, I decided to wait. I spoke to several more people who are serious riders, and I decided to bite the bullet and buy a road bike. I bought a Trek 1000c which is a "comfort" road bike. The two concessions to comfort are handlebars that are adjustable and can be raised up and back toward the rider. The other is a very slightly padded seat.

The new bike is clearly faster. It is lighter and the gears seem more aggressive. Within a week I was going farther and faster. I keep exploring the area and looking for new routes to ride. The roads the radiate into and out of Frederick tend to have a lot of traffic, but some of them have broad shoulders. That roads that cross the radial ones are much more lightly traveled. I have put together a couple of different rides so I do not get bored,and my average evening ride is now 16-18 miles compared to last year's 11-12 miles rides. Mt. Phillips is very up and down and quite steep in places. I hit 42 mph going down one of the hills the other day. Opussomtown is very quiet and pleasantly rolling. It goes up and down but is not as steep.

I decided that I should try to join a group ride. The local bike club, Frederick Pedalers has a variety of rides and one looked like it would be right for me. It leaves from an elementary school well north of town at 6:00 PM. They promised to not leave anyone behind. I took a day off, so I could get ready and leave from home in time. I woke sick that day wasting a vacation day. I tried again two weeks later. I got there 15 minutes late and it was raining when I got there,so there no ride anyway. On the third try I left work at 4:30 PM, and I just made it to the ride. There were three guys there. All had nicer bikes than me, but I held up just fine. We did 32 miles in just over 2 hours. It was a wonderful ride. The roads were very quiet with very few cars. We were able to ride two abreast for much of the ride. The pace was something I can usually handle for an hour, but I was surprised that I kept it up for two whole hours. I think that the other riders were better a setting a steady pace than I am. They stayed in the middle gears more than I tend to, and they tended to coast downhill, while I like to see how fast I can go.

I will try to go on that ride every week, and despite Erin's objections I am going to have to buy bicycle shorts. My shorts kept getting caught on the seat or all bunched up the farther we rode.

What would summer be without the Tour de France? I added the next tier to my cable package in order to get OLN, which covers the Tour. My favorite day was in the Pyrenees where Hincapie managed to win a stage. To celebrate the Tour I decided to up my weekly mileage. Luckily I had just gotten my new bike. I did 98 miles the first week and 112 the second week. Both were new personal bests. It is the middle of the third week as I write and I have ridden 64 miles. Another 100 mile week looks doable.

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Holiday Traffic

It has been my experience that traffic from Germantown to Frederick on the last work day before a holiday is terrible. I frequently take back roads home rather than fight the traffic on I-270. The back roads usually take me 50-55 minutes, but I have never written down how long the ride up 270 takes.

Today was the last work day before the 4th of July, and we were sent home at 3:00 PM. I left the parking lot at 3:40 PM, and I got home at 4:35 PM for a 55 minute ride which is about the same as the back roads. The traffic was bad, but I am sure it has been worse. I suspect that if I left at 5:00 PM, it would have been a lot worse.

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Independence Pass

For some reason high energy physicists like to have meetings in the Rockie Mountains. I have attended the 2001 Snowmass workshop and several Fermilab Program Advisory Committee meetings which are held in Aspen in June. I have never before taken Independence Pass to get to Aspen or Snowmass. On the first trip the weather was bad, and I was advised that the pass is not something to drive in bad weather. For the next couple of trips, I just took the same route as before out of habit. When I arrived in Denver today, I decided that this time I would try Independence Pass.

The route involves taking I-70 to Minturn where you get off and take US-24 East. On a map it looks like it goes south but the signs say east. After you get past Leadville you turn onto Colorado 82 which goes through Independence Pass and onto Aspen and Glenwood Springs. The route does not suffer from an excess of signs. After I passed through Minturn I must have gone 10 miles before I saw a sign confirming that I was on US-24 as I wanted to be. After I passed through Leadville, I saw a sign saying the Independence Pass (CO-82) was open, so I knew I was still going the right way. The turn onto CO-82 is not well marked. There is one sign about 1/2 mile before the turn. There really are not a lot of roads out here, so I guess that the state assumes that no one will make a wrong turn.

As I approached the beginning of the serious climbing I saw a bicyclist coming toward me. As I started the serious climbing, I realized that the only way he could have got on that road was to have come over the pass. I then saw three more bicyclists coming down hill. The road is narrow and the edge drops away precipitously. I was shocked to see someone who was coming downhill passing another car. I had to almost completely stop to avoid getting hit.

At the top I got out, checked out the view, and took a few pictures. The sign said that I was at 12,095 feet. I think that is the second highest that I have been outside an airplane. I visited Mont Blanc when I was in Europe working on my thesis experiment. I do not remember exactly how high up I was but it sure was hard to breathe.

I headed down, and the drive was actually harder than on the way up. The edge of the road did not seem to drop away quite as dramatically, but the trip down was quite long and the road quite narrow. There were two places where the double yellow line dividing the opposing lanes of traffic disappeared, and the road was just barley wide enough for two cars to pass. Eventually the road leveled out, broadened, and the speed limit went up. Then, with very little warning I drove into Aspen after a drive of 209 miles.

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Just One Thing After Another

I had a meeting at Fermilab on Tuesday afternoon, so I planned a flight out of Washington at 6:00 PM on Monday. I know that it takes anywhere from 2 to 3 hours to get to Reagan National from my house during the morning rush, so I almost always fly out the night before. I got to the airport slightly early to avoid the afternoon rush, and when I got to the gate I discovered the flight to Chicago at five o'clock was delayed due to weather. As has happened many times to me, the weather problem was not in Chicago nor Washington. It was somewhere in between.

After a few hours of waiting United announced that my flight was canceled. However, United was prepared. They had boarding passes for a different flight ready as soon as they announced the cancellation. The wait continued.

Eventually the thunderstorms arrived in Washington and prevented the inbound planes from landing. My new flight was canceled about 9:30 PM, and I was sent home. I raced home so I could go to bed and get up at 6:00 AM to start all over again.

I left about 6:30 AM for a 9:45 AM flight. It was not early enough to be guaranteed that I could make it, but I was too tired to try to get up earlier. Traffic seem reasonable until I hit the George Washington Parkway. I got to the airport at 9:00 AM. I decided to park in the daily lot instead of economy to save time, but the daily lot for terminals B & C were full. I went to A and walked. I tried to check in at the kiosk, but it could not find my changed reservation. I checked in a the counter. Luckily, neither the ticket counter nor security was crowded so I caught my flight.

Everything went smoothly until I got to the rental car shuttle. The air conditioning was broken on the shuttle. It was in the 90's in Chicago and I was using an off airport rental car company so that was a problem.

When I got to the hotel the problems continued. They did not have a non-smoking room available. I have blogged about how shocked I was at how noticeable the smell of smoke is in hotel rooms. My key did not work and I had to go back down to the lobby to have it fixed. When I got in the room it was pretty warm. I checked the air conditioner. It was running and set to 70. I turned it down to 60 and waited. After a hour without any improvement, I called the front desk. The sent someone to check it. He reset it and said it would be better in 5 minutes. It did not improve, and when I called back I was told that the maintenance man had left for the day. I was given a fan.

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A Photo of the Physicist as a Young Man

My mom found this in her pile of old photos. It is me in 1978 during my first trip to Fermilab. The photo was taken with an Instatmatic so it is not the greatest. I do not know what is more shocking. How young I was or the fact that our experiment had only three institutions.

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Ubuntu Linux

I have installed Ubuntu Linux v5.04 on my Dell Inspiron 6000. It is dual boot with Windows XP. I had to resize my NTFS partition with a separate program, ntfsresize, to make room for Ubuntu. That was not for the faint of heart. It took quite awhile, well over an hour. Also, ntfsresize was not on the Ubuntu install CD. I had to get a system recovery CD to find it.

After the repartioning, the install went smoothly. Ubuntu supports my wireless card only partially. WEP is not supported yet by the open source acx100 driver. I have used it successfully without WEP. I mostly am using wired ethernet right now.

The default install is a little thin by my tastes. I had to add Thunderbird, gnucash, g++, smbfs, but they were available in the various repositories. The need to install smbfs was surprising. I wanted to mount some Samba shares and I was surprised that it did not work. I could browse and find the share using nautilis, but mount kept complaining that the filesystem type was not supported.

I installed RealPlayer following the direction in the Ubuntu Guide. It installed fine but when I started it nothing happened. It turns out that RealPlayer conflicts with ESS which is on by default in Ubuntu. Once I turned off ESS, I was able to use RealPlayer.

The default desktop environment is Gnome 2.10. It looks quite nice. It is uncluttered.

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No More Mickey Mouse Antenna Toppers

Someone had snuck out and put a Mickey Mouse one on my Passat when I wasn't looking. I left it on, but I always felt that there must be something better. Thanks to Megan I now have an antenna topper that I can be proud off.

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Am I a Republican?

I took the test, and here is the result. My daughter will be upset that my score is that high.

I am: 21% Republican.

"You're probably one of those people who still thinks that getting a blowjob is not an impeachable offense."

Are You A Republican?

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In the Beginning was the Thought...

A friend recommended and lent me the book, "The Great Influenza" by John Barrie. It is a much broader book than I expected with details on the beginnings of modern scientific medicine in the United States, the political climate in the US surrounding the First World War, the biology of viruses, as well as the story of the influenza pandemic of 1918.

In the prologue Barrie quotes Goethe in Faust,

'Tis writ, "In the beginning was the the Word."
I Pause, to wonder what here is inferred.
The Word I cannot set supremely high:
A new translation I will try. I read, if by spirit, I am taught,
This sense, "In the beginning was the Thought...."

Barrie then comments.

If a society does set Goethe's "Word...supremely high," if it believes that it knows the truth and that it need not question its beliefs, then that society is more likely to enforce rigid decrees, and less likely to change. If it leaves room for doubt about the truth, it is more likely to be free and open.

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Took a Fall on My Bike

It was 70 degrees today. The winds were lighter than they had been, so I decided to go out for a long bike ride. It had been rainy and a bit cool, so I had not been out since March 6.

I headed out on my usual long course. It is a bit over twenty miles and it takes me a around a significant portion of Frederick. I was about 3 miles into my ride following a bike path when I made a turn and hits some mud from the recent rains. My bike went out from under me and I fell on face. I had not fallen off my bike for 20 years. That time I was taking a turn and I hit some gravel. My bike went out from under me then too.

I had some scrapes and bruises. I had my cell phone with me and it got pretty scratched up. My kids have been telling me that I need a new one anyway. I got up and got back on the bike. Its only damage was that my bike computer fell off. It is in a snap on bracket. I snapped it back on and it worked fine.

I was on a little side loop of my route, so I had to go the same way whether I decided to go home or keep riding. After about 0.2 of a mile I came to my decision point. I felt a little sore, but I saw no reason to stop. I continued my ride and ended up doing 22 miles.

When I got home no one noticed at first that I was muddy and scraped up. Eventually, Sarah saw my bloody knuckles and asked me what happened. Margaret did not notice until after dinner when I changed into gym shorts, and she saw my skinned knee.

Twenty miles this early in the spring is good for me, and I made after a fall. I may do thirty mile ride yet this year,

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My Gmail Experience So Far.

Gmail went to 2 GB of storage today. It was interesting to watch as the mailbox size listed on the inbox page slowly grew as the day went on. As of now I have 1855 MB of storage and I am using all of 4 MB.

I have so much space on my hard disk to store email, that the 2 GB is not really and issue for me. However, I do find that like many people I have a need to access my email from places other than home. Even if I have my laptop with me when I am away there are complications in accessing my mail. For example, I cannot use my ISP's SMTP server if I am not at home, and many networks block the use of other SMTP servers. This forces me to use a webmail client.

I have a Yahoo account and it is not bad. I use Outlook Web Access (OWA) to get to my work email, it is the most clumsy webmail client I have ever used. My ISP provides access to Horde or Neomail to get to my email that is still on the the server. They are better than OWA but that is all the praise that I would give them.

Gmail have a very slickly written web client. It is very responsive. It does not seem to have to go back to the server all of the time. It seems like it sends more info that you see most of the time and it shows you different views of that info as you request it. I have used Gmail for about two weeks. It is not as powerful as mutt, the mailer I use at home, but it closest I have found to web mail client that I can stand. I will keep testing it out. It may become my primary mailer.

Gmail would be a great alternative to my work email that uses Outlook and Exchange. I have only 500 MB of storage on the exchange server so Gmail wins there. The search function in Outlook is positively brain dead compared to Gmail so far.

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Here Come the Physicists...

I am reading "Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age" by Duncan Watts. He has section called "Here Come the Physicists..." where he discusses the role of physicists in the early breakthrough in the science of networks. I loved this quote and I had to post it. This guy really understands physicists.

"Physicists, it turns out, are almost perfectly suited to invading other people's disciplines, being not only extremely clever but also generally much less fussy than most about the problems they choose to study. Physicists tend to see themselves as lords of the academic jungle, loftily regarding their own methods as above the ken of anybody else and jealously guarding their own terrain. But their alter egos are closer to scavengers, happy to borrow ideas and techniques from anyone if they seem like they might be useful, and delighted to stomp all over someone else's problem. As irritating as this attitude can be to everybody else, the arrival of physicists into a previously non-physics area of research often presages a period of great discovery and excitement."

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Mysterious Gmail Invitation

When I got home last night my daughter, Erin, asked me if I had heard of Gmail. I told that I had and that I wished that I had an account. Well she replied that she had one. I asked here who invited her, since the only way I had heard of getting one was by receiving an invitation from someone who already had one. She said that she went to Google looking for something and there was a link on the Google front page offering Gmail accounts. We looked at that link was gone.

Nevertheless, she did have a functioning Gmail account and she had 10 invites. I showed her how to use them by inviting myself. I now have a Gmail account, but I cannot find any invites. Oh, well.

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How My Pedometer Is Changing My Life

In the movie "Supersize Me", the filmmaker goes on a pure McDonald's diet for month. He is attempting to test if McDonald's food is healthy for the average person. He also wears a pedometer to make sure he walks as little as most of us do in our modern car dominated society. This is where I first heard that a person needs to walk about 10,000 steps a day to stay fit and not gain weight. You can read about 10,000 steps here

After a very successful summer of cycling, I was struggling to find good ways exercise. I was not getting to the gym much because of my schedule, and the weather was not conducive to cycling. Picking up the point about walking in the movie, I decided to buy a pedometer and wear it all day to see if I was walking enough to stay fit.

During a normal day at work I seem to take about 5,000 steps. That includes walking to and from my car for the trips to work and back as well as lunch. It also includes many short walks up and the down the hall where my office is located to talk to my coworkers, attend meetings, get coffee, visit the water cooler, and go to the bathroom---too many trips to the water cooler. I notice on days where many of my coworkers are out of the office, I walk noticeably less.

If other things get added in during the day like a shopping trip or walk to the mailbox, I can add 1000-2000 more steps. So on most days I need to get on my NordicTrak elliptical exerciser and workout until I hit 10,000. The 10,000 steps website says that pedometers do not give accurate counts on elliptical, but my tests show that it does with my pedometer on my elliptical.

To get beyond that level I have to go and see coworkers who are located in remote parts of the office building. Luckily, we are in a big building and I do need to periodically visit people who are a noticeable distance away. Today, I had three meeting that were held down two floors and over a hall. I had to pop back to my office between the meetings, and I had a long walk to fetch the key to the conference room. I also visited each of the people who attended the meetings in the morning to go over preparations. When I got home from work tonight I had walked 9860 steps. That's the best that I have done at work so far. Shoveling snow when I got home put me over the 10,000. There will be no NordicTrak tonight for me.

Thanks to my pedometer, I now look for reasons to walk places. I also find myself sitting less. No more plopping down in front of the TV. I play ping-pong with the kids. (It actually doesn't have a big effect on steps, but it is a physical activity.) I pick up around the house. (The wife hasn't noticed yet.) I seem to be developing some sort of nervous energy. It has been a couple of weeks now, so I do not know if it will be effective or if it will last, but so far I am impressed.

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Songs I Cannot Buy on iTunes

I have fallen for the charms of my iPod and iTunes. My CD collection provides the vast bulk of my songs but I have started to buy a few. However there songs that I would love to get but I cannot buy on iTunes. I know that you cannot get the Beatles, but that does not bother me. The Beatles are worth buying an CD. I want songs that I have enjoyed but never bought the album. The list of songs that have eluded me so far.

• Little Red Corvette by Prince
• Walking in Memphis by Marc Cohn
• Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves
• American Pie by Don McLean unless I buy the whole album

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Playing Softball in the Snow

My daughter wants to go out for her high school's softball team. She has not played organized softball since 3rd grade, but she had a reasonably successful field hockey season, so I thought why not. We bought a new glove, but put off buying spikes until absolutely necessary.

Tryouts start March 1, so this afternoon when I got home from work, we went out and tossed the ball around for about 15 minutes. We had a couple of inches of fresh snow last night so it was an odd experience. It was about 36 degrees out, and the sun was starting to set. Overthrown balls got covered with snow, and soon my hands got too cold so we called it quits.

I now see why Florida and California have the best college baseball teams. The first of March is not baseball season even as far south as Maryland.

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Some Progress on Sound in Fedore Core 3

I went in and used the sound card detection wizard and sound is now working. I added support for AAC format to xmms so that I can listen to the songs that I ripped in iTunes. It works but I prefer using rhythmbox these days to listen to music. I have not found AAC support yet for rhythmbox.

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The Upgrade to Fedora Core 3 Is Not Going Well

I upgraded from Fedora 1 to Fedora 3 rather than doing a clean install. I did this to save myself some work. I wanted to preserve my configurations of postfix, smb mounts, X, windows fonts, my hosts file with my local network definitions, my static IP assignment, ntp configuration.

The upgrade has not gone smoothly. Sound is no longer working. I am having problem with gnome-terminal and mutt. Surprisingly this is the biggest annoyance. I am used to mutt and when it does not work right I get annoyed. I have grown fond of gnome-terminal. It looks better than an xterm. The multiple tabs are quite convenient. The problem seems to be a curses problem. The screen does not clear correctly when changing modes, such as from message index to message display. A screen refresh usually fixes it.

I switched to KDE to see if konsole worked better. It did but I found other problems. For reasons that I do not understand Firefox's fonts looked terrible under KDE. They looked like they were not antialiased. This surprised me since I did not think that was a function of the desktop.

I tried using an xterm instead but I had font problems there. I wanted to use Bitstream Vera Sans Mono at 14 pt. I went to xfontsel so I could create a font string to put in my .Xdefaults file. Xfontsel only showed the 12 pt version even though I was using the 14 pt version in gnome-terminal and konsole without problem. After searching for other acceptable fonts the entire computer locked up, and I had to reboot. This was reproducible. I have stopped using xfontsel. I never got xterm or rxvt configured to my liking. I had used both of these for years before I started gnome-terminal.

I moved from Mandrake to Redhat 9.0 when I had a bad upgrade experience. It looks like it is time to search for something new. I have heard good things about Ubuntu.

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Riding on New Years Eve and New Years Day

It was 55 degrees on New Years Eve here, so I decided to get my bike out and go for a ride. I bundled up a little more than I needed to, and I got pretty sweaty as a result. I went about 10 miles in about an hour, which is clearly not a strong performance for me. I have not been on my bike since early September due to a problem with my neck and shoulder.

On New Years Day it was even warmer. I was a little bit sore from the previous day. I did a bit over 12 miles in just over an hour, which pleased me.

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My Annotated Top Ten Songs List

My friend Kathy had me listen to a new song called 1985. It is a catchy tune and in fact I had it stuck in my head all night. It recalls a time when MTV still played music and Springsteen was one of the biggest stars in rock. I decided that blasting Springsteen for a few hours at volumes that are not typical for me would be an appropriate way to get the tune out of my head. This then led to a surprisingly, for me, intense bout of listening to music over the next few days. Springsteen was followed by the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Clash, and finally Bob Marley. I got out my iPod and started putting together more playlists. This list is one of them.

10. Skateaway - Dire Straits: For some reason I frequently really like songs that were not the biggest hits of an artist. "Skateaway" does not appear on the Dire Straits greatest hits collection, Money for Nothing, but it is my favorite Dire Straits song. I bought Making Movies to get it, and it quite a good album.

9. Come On Eileen - Dexy's Midnight Runners: This is the one song on the list that was recorded by a "one hit wonder". It was named the #1 "one hit wonder" by VH1. I first heard it while I was spending 3 months in Geneva working on my Ph.D. thesis. When I wasn't working I either read or listened to the limited amount of English language radio I could find. "Come On Eileen" was one of the hits on the radio during that period, and it always brings back memories of late nights tending the bubble chamber. My daughter Megan also enjoys "Come On Eileen". She had it as a ringtone on her cell phone for awhile.

8. Mack the Knife - Bobby Darin: This song led me into a completely different direction from all the rest. I bought a Bobby Darin greatest hits album to get it and discovered "Beyond the Sea", "Guys and Dolls", "Down with Love", "More". These are songs I would never had listened to before I turned 40.

7. Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen: "Born to Run" came out in 1975 just after I graduated high school. It is the perfect song for a 17 year-old driving around in the summer with the windows down and the radio blasting, heading for the Jersey shore, but it has aged much better than most such songs.

6. Stuck Inside of Mobile with Those Memphis Blues Again Bob Dylan: I bought the Biograph CD box set which has a very comprehensive collection of Dylan's music. It has 53 songs on it, but it does not have "Stuck Inside of Mobile...", so I had to buy Blond on Blonder to get it.

5. Train in Vain - The Clash: The song owes its location on the list to my daughter Megan. Megan is eighteen and has surprising taste in music. In addition to people like Eminem that you might expect, she has gone through much of my collection of music listening to the Clash and Elvis Costello before going out and finding out about Led Zeppelin on her own. When I listened to the Clash I tended to focus on on "London Calling", "Lost in the Supermarket", "Spanish Bombs", and "Guns of Brixton". Megan liked "Train in Vain" and kept bugging me to skip to it. It grew on me just beating out "Somebody Got Murdered" for my favorite Clash song, and I will always associate it with Megan.

4. Lodi - Creedence Clearwater Revival: I listen to Lodi all the time, but I seem to really appreciate it when I am depressed. I can just listen to it over and over. It features the line, "Oh Lord stuck in Lodi again." What is the appeal of being stuck in some small town?

3. Allison - Linda Ronstadt or Elvis Costello: I guess I prefer the Linda Ronstadt version a bit. This one is from my early years in graduate school. It was the first Linda Ronstadt song I discovered, and led to the purchase of several of her albums over the next few years. Another Elvis Costello song named after a woman almost made the list, Veronica.

2. The Weight - The Band: I first heard this song on the soundtrack of the Big Chill. I am not quite old enough to have noticed it when it first came out. This song set me off to discover so much music that was made while I was a child. I was a teenager in the 70's and while groups like the Who and Stones who started in the 60's continue to do good work, the only true 70's artist that I still listen to is Springsteen. My search for more music like The Weight led me Bob Dylan and Creedence Clearwater Revival as well as other music by the Band.

1. Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen: Only Springsteen has two songs on this list, but what do you expect from the Boss. This song has grown on me over the years. It was not always my favorite song. In fact when the album, Born to Run, came out it was probably my third favorite song on the album after "Born to Run" and "Jungleland". The change from vinyl to CDs had an effect here. "Thunder Road" is the first song on side A of the LP while "Born to Run" is the first song on side B. In the beginning I just went straight to side B so I could hear "Born to Run". On the CD "Thunder Road" is first and there is not shortcut to "Born to Run", so I listened to it a lot more. It finally became my favorite when I started using to wake my daughters, Erin and Sarah, for school. They also enjoyed it for awhile but the constant association of getting out of bed took a toll on its appeal.

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Turkey Day

Applied my new found cooking skills to the Thanksgiving turkey. I brined the turkey this year, and I started it upside down. I really liked the upside down effect. After about two hours I checked the turkey. The bottom was browned. I checked the temperature of the thigh was already 170 degrees. I flipped it and started working on the the top. When it was done it was evenly cooked, and beautifully browned. The meat was moist and lightly seasoned. It did not taste at all salty.

I also used a trick I saw on Food Network's Thanksgiving special where Alton Brown took off the whole breast before slicing it. I made some beautiful large slices of the breast. Of course they were bigger than anyone wanted to eat.

Our other success was the apple pie. We tried Cameo apples for the first time. They held up better than many others we used. The were soft and sweet but not mushy.

As I write this, the carcass is simmering in a stock pot with carrots and onions. To be continued...

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New Director of Fermilab Named

Pier Oddone of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has named to succeed Michael Witherell as Director of Fermilab. Many details can be found here. Advice to Pier who has lived in California for quite while. Buy a good down coat. It gets a lot colder in Batavia than the Bay area.

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Belated Quote of the Day

I found this in my files when I was cleaning up. It is from the 2003 Tour de France. It is a little over the top, but Lance Armstrong performance seemed to call for an over the top comment.

"There is an expansive wellspring of heroism in each of the riders. It is in those who set the pace and those who struggle in vain to keep up. So what do we call it when one man time and time again so easily parts company from a battalion of heroes? A dance of spirit or an act of will? One thing is for sure there is a place Lance Armstrong can go where others cannot. Life and training experiences he draws upon memories both dark and golden he can replay for inspiration." --CBS Tour de France coverage

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I Watched An Eminem Video And Then Showed It to My Kids

I have been obsessively reading the blogs about the election, and I found a mention about Mosh a new video by Eminem. I watched it, and I was impressed by the animation, the lyrics, the message, but not the actual music. I am too old to appreciate rap. I bet the Clash could have done this and it would have sounded better. I showed it to my daughters whom I have tried to discourage from listening to Eminem over years, since he is rather misogynistic. It might help them deal their Bush supporting friends.

I wish this election would be over, and I mean really over. No recounts. No law suits. No ambiguity.

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Frederick High JV Field Hockey Team Wins Its First Game

Frederick High defeated bitter rival Tuscarora High (1-0) for their first win of the season. The winning goal was scored by my daughter Erin. Who would have thought we would have a field hockey player in the family.

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The All Jon Stewart Blog

I have mentioned Jon Stewart repeatedly, although I missed the whole Crossfire blowup so I guess that means that I am not obsessed. Today's Washington Post has an article on Stewart and tomorrow 60 Minutes is having a piece on him. Oh well, I guess I will have to watch 60 Minutes for the first time in about 10 years.

From the article:

After playing a clip of Bush hitting Kerry on taxes by saying "the rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason, to stick you with the tab," Stewart said, "Let me get this straight: Don't tax the rich because they'll get out if it? So your policy is, tax the hardworking people, because they're dumb-asses and they'll never figure it out?"

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Light Bulb Joke

How many Bush officials does it take to change a lightbulb?

None. "There's nothing wrong with that light bulb. It has served us honorably. When you say it's burned out, you're giving encouragement to the forces of darkness. Once we install a light bulb, we never, ever change it. Real men don't need artificial light." - from Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune.

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Quote of the Day

Incompetence and hubris in the defense of liberty are not virtues.

-Marshall Wittman in his new blog

Guess who he is talking about?

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CERN Hits the Big 5-0

The European accelerator laboratory CERN is celebrating its 50th birthday. As a particle physicist I expect to hear about something like this, but I have been surprised at how many different ways it has cropped up.

I attended a meeting of the US government's advisory panel on high energy physics (HEPAP) last week, and the panel sang "Happy Birthday" after one of CERN's managers gave a presentation on the status of the LHC. This week at Fermilab there was a large birthday cake to celebrate the event. Even Slashdot noticed it.

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Daily Show Viewers Are Better Informed

This article from Business-Journal.Com reports on a poll done by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center that finds that viewers of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart are more informed that non-viewers, viewers of other late night talk shows, and even viewers of network news, cable news, or newspapers.

Young people who watched The Daily Show scored 48% correct on the campaign knowledge test while young people who did not watch any late-night comedy scored 39% correct. Meanwhile, young people who watched four of more days of network news scored 40% correct, equally frequent cable news viewers 48% correct and newspaper readers 46% correct.

I regularly watch the Daily Show because it is quite funny. In 2000 when they named their coverage Indecision 2000 and then it took a month to figure out the winner, I was hooked.

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Dinner and the Steelers

I am a fan of Alton Brown and his television show, Good Eats. Alton likes to cook fairly simple straightforward but flavorful food, and he always discusses the science behind cooking. As a scientist this appeals to me. I have watched the show for over a year now and recently tried to use some of his tricks. This summer I brined pork chops before grilling them. They are quite good, flavorful and moist, even when fully cooked.

My wife has recently returned to work and without any discussion I jumped in and took over the cooking. I have cooked everyday that I was in town since she started work. I figured it was better to jump in and contribute in the way I chose rather than wait and being asked to something less appealing.

In addition to the brined pork chops, I have learned to blanch vegetables, and we have had fresh green beans at least once a week this summer. I have marinade a London Broil before grilling, and it was a real improvement. I have made quesadillas which my friends have called Mexican grilled cheese, but I did have chicken in it, which had been seasoned with cumin and lime. I am working on meatloaf. I have the flavor right, but I need to work on the texture.

Today while watching the Steelers lose to the Ravens, I have been making a brisket braised in red wine with garlic roasted potatoes, glazed carrots, and rolls. The garlic roasted potatoes recipe is from Cooking for Engineers, which has a similar sensibility to Good Eats.

Dinner was well received by the family, but cleanup was a chore. Everyone else was busy tonight, and I had clean up by myself.

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I Will Never Understand Washington DC Traffic

I commute from Frederick, Maryland to Germantown, Maryland along I-270. The traffic varies from a non-issue to a complete nightmare. This week I have been bracing for the worst. When school ends traffic always seems to get worse, but I do not understand why, since I never see school buses on I-270. This Monday I got on I-270 where it starts in Frederick as merger of US-15 and a ramp from I-70. This is a bottleneck on most mornings as four lanes of traffic merge down to two, but this Monday it was smooth sailing. I drove easily to the exit just before Germantown, exit 16, where traffic came to a standstill. I got off there and discovered a new problem. I needed to make a left turn at the first light after I exited, but there was so much traffic that I could not get across the three lanes to the left turn lane. I ended up going to the next light and turning right on a side street where I could make a U-turn.

There is nothing more frustrating that making good time on the commute and then hit traffic just a mile away from my destination. I get excited about the possibility of getting in early and having a relaxing start to the day and then just when it seems likely I am back in a frenzied rat race.

On Tuesday it was the same thing except traffic came to a standstill a mile from the exit I took on Monday. I had the same problem with the left turn. On Wednesday the backup was farther from my exit but not quite as severe. I was able to make the left turn.

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Won What?

An article on PhysicsWeb carries the headline "German lab wins linear collider contest". If you actually read the article you see that only the technology developed at DESY for its proposed collider, TELSA, was selected. The actual site is far from decided.

There is lots more material on this at the Fermilab Today web page and at Interactions.org a website run by the world's particle physics labs.

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My Summer of Cycling

I know that blog entries are supposed to be short, but this one did not seem to warrant mentioning until I perceived how far I had come with my cycling this summer. I have been cycling on and off since graduate school. I am not yet serious enough to wear bicycle shorts, but I certainly bike more and harder than anyone in my family. Erin should be able to keep up with me, but she simply does not seem to enjoy riding. When we go out I cannot get her to go fast even when we go downhill. I think it is less that she cannot do it and more that she does not want to.

After the start of daylight savings time, I started to go out for a ride most evenings. I was riding about five to six miles in the evening, frequently accompanied by the kids. We rode around neighborhood and avoided crossing any large streets. The neighborhood is like many modern neighborhoods. One or two roads lead into the neighborhood from the large thoroughfares. It is full of short streets and cul-de-sacs. It is pretty hard to go for a long ride unless you go around in circles. Eventually I found a route that was about eight miles long and did not cross any heavily trafficked streets.

On Memorial Day I went for a ride after our block party. The weather was a little bit threatening, but I kept riding. When I was about three miles away, a downpour started. I went straight home instead our my usual circuitous route, but I was drenched within 5 minutes of riding through that rain. I had a huge dirt streak up my back, where dirty water splashed up from my rear wheel.

In June I started a biking log on a spreadsheet which I later transfered to the web. It shows the progress that I made over the course of the summer. At the start of the summer I was doing maybe 25 miles a week. I now do 40 to 60 a week, and the week when I was able to ride everyday I almost made 90 miles. My longest individual rides have gone from 13 miles to more than 22 miles.

In July, there was the Tour de France. I started following the Tour when I spent a summer in Geneva, Switzerland in 1984. It was two years before Greg Lemond won his first Tour, but he came in third that year. By the time Lemond had won his three Tours I was hooked. I looked forward to it every July, even when no American was in contention. Next year I am ordering the second tier of digital cable just so I can get Outdoor Life Network and real coverage.

I had a bad run of luck during the middle of July. I broke a spoke on my bike. My bike is 7 years old now so I guess I have to expect some repairs are going to be needed. The day I picked up the bike after it was fixed, I strained my back. Those two incidents kept me off my bike for about 10 days.

After watching Tour coverage on July 25, I was eager to go for a ride, but the weather looked threatening. I still remembered how miserable my Memorial Day ride was but in a interview Lance Armstrong spoke about how the Tour is won on cold rainy days six months before the Tour starts when he goes out rides all day. I went for it and got in a 15 mile ride that day. It drizzled most of the way, but I did not get caught in a downpour. It a good thing too since I was up to 7 miles away from home at times.

I had to break out of my little neighborhood, so I could ride farther. If I turn right as I leave my leave my street, I go on a four lane road where people routinely exceed the 25 mph speed limit, so I had not been eager to try that. Eventually, I decided that I had to try it. Luckily the road does not have heavy traffic and people can go around me without much trouble. The road goes downhill at first and even I can hit 30 mph, so I get to speed also. The road then goes back up to about the same elevation and I get to climb it, but that is not the real problem. At the top of the hill I have to turn right or left. Going right is a two lane road with no shoulder. To the left is a two lane road with an overpass over one highway then an underpass under I-70, but the shoulder is about 4 feet wide so I go left. Once I got past the underpass, I found some wonderful roads with wide 8 foot shoulders and I was able to take 10, 12 or 15 mile rides.

I had my best week of riding after the ride in the drizzle and the discovery of the new way to get out of the neighborhood. I was inspired. I even tried a little time trial for myself. It was a short ride and I went as fast as I could. I averaged 15 mph, which is surprising close to how fast I go on most of my rides, 12-14 mph. As my children so sweetly remind, "You're not going to make the the Tour de France, Dad". I ended up going 88 miles that week. I was lucky that I was able to ride everyday.

The Tour de France prompted a nice article in the New York Times about the proper fit of a bike. It explained how a seat should be high and hard, and that only a third of your weight goes on the seat. One third is supported by the pedals and one third by your handlebars. I got out my wrenches and started raising my seat. I have always tried to keep it high, but I was not yet at the limit of my seat post or my legs. The article had a nice explanation of how you will rock back and forth if the seat is too high. I also had to raise my handlebars. Those are now at their limit.

On my first ride of the next week I broke another spoke. When I broke the first one the bike mechanic told me that once you break one you can expect to break another soon. I guess I have found a mechanic that I can trust. I went for a new wheel this time, but I was sorely tempted to buy a new bike. My bike is something of mountain bike/road bike hybrid. It has wide tires, but they not very knobby. It does not have suspension like a mountain bike. I bought it, because I had badly wrecked the rim on my old road bike when I hit a pothole. The bike salesman said that I was two heavy for 1 inch tires. I weighed about 250 pounds then. My current bike has worked well for me, but it feels like a bit of truck when I want to go fast. Since I now weigh only 204 pounds, it seems like a faster bike might be possible. An emergency root canal made my decision for me. Just a new wheel please.

I could not live without riding for week while my bike was in the shop getting a new wheel. Margaret had bought a new bike in June. It was an inexpensive 6 speed city cruiser. It is a cheaper bike than mine, and it rides like it. It is also smaller than mine, but I did not have any choice. Margaret had bought a man's bike, since women's bikes do not fit her. I raised the seat as high as it would go, and off I went. My rides were shorter that week, and I really appreciated my own bike when I got it back. However, one good thing did come out of the experience. Ever since I started riding regularly again in 1997, I have been reluctant to pedal while standing. I have trick knee that occasionally goes out on me, and I was worried that it might happen on the bike. I had limited myself to standing for one crank of the pedals and then I sat down again. On Margaret's bike I found that most climbing was too difficult. I stood up and pedaled, and it worked. My knee did not give out. Even back on my own bike I will stand on the tougher climbs now.

After a few days back on my bike after the new wheel was installed, I could clearly tell that my gears were not properly adjusted. I had tried to adjust Margaret's rear derailleur when I was riding it. It would not go into the highest gear well. I had trouble getting to sit on my bike stand, so I gave up. Now I had a serious problem. I had to move the cable to take up some slack. Once I did that I was able to adjust it using the adjustment screws on the derailleur. My ride today went very smoothly so I guess it worked. I also adjusted Margaret's bike. It stayed in the stand today for some reason.

I still want to go on a long ride this summer. Something around 30 miles would be nice. I have been looking for trails around the area, and the Capital Crescent Trail looks good. Depending on where I get on it, it will be 25-30 miles down into Washington D.C and back out.

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