Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

Just over one week ago, August 6th 2009, we packed the family into our van and made the four hour drive to Washington D.C.

Gareth repeatedly asked to see the White House, elephants, and pandas. How could we deny him the excitement of seeing all three? In order to streamline our trip, we decided we would pay for the vacation with our American Express card, which had no credit limit. All our expenses would go on it so that we could easily track everything we had done and could pay our expenses all in one place.

Imagine my surprise, then, when our card was denied on the second day of our visit to Washington. I called American Express customer service to find out what was going on and found that they had reduced my credit limit to below the balance on our card just two days before we left for our trip. They did this with no advance notice whatsoever! In fact, the day after we returned home, we received a letter from American Express telling us of the change they were making, effective “immediately”.

Knowing better than to place all my eggs in one basket, I brought along a second card and used it for the remainder of our stay in Washington. Gare saw the elephants and pandas at the National Zoological Park, and he made us visit the White House three times during a four day trip. But what I really remember is that a credit card issuer very nearly ruined that trip for us.

I am glad that the credit card bill of rights was successfully signed into law, but there is still room for improvement. If I had been notified 30 days in advance that a change was going to be made to my credit line, I would have known what to expect. As it was, I was caught by surprise at the worst possible time. If we were experiencing a health emergency (not unlikely) or were simply broken down on the side of the road and had to pay for repairs, we would have been stranded by the practices of, in this case, American Express.

Here’s hoping that the credit card bill of rights does not represent the final word on consumer protections from credit issuers.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

“The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” Chicken Little’s famous phrase of impending catastrophe sums up rather well the current upswing in citizen unrest mostly among our conservative population. But that isn’t the phrase that is being bandied about. No, instead, “socialist”, “Big Brother”, “Russia”, “death panel”, “rationing”, “deficit”, “choice”, and “control” are all mentioned right before somebody inevitably states or shouts “We want our country back!”

Can anyone explain to me what that even means? Who is the “we” in this case and in what state would they like the country returned to them? There are, of course, a few takes on that. One take says that the “we” are conservatives who want the country returned to them from the liberal power that has taken hold. Another is that the “we” are people uncomfortable with the changing racial topography of this country and that power needs to be returned to supposedly trustworthy caucasians. But I don’t really buy either of those. I am of the opinion that “we” represents a population that feels it no longer has any power over its own governance and that returning the country to them means that they all get to do things the way they best see fit.

Since within every “we” there are a lot of “I”, that basically boils down to anarchy since we all see the world differently. Now is a time when conservatives feel particularly powerless due to the heavily shifted balance of power in Washington, the rapid and overbearing reawakening of liberal media, and the heavy reality that their lives are not in their own control when it comes to national issues like the economic downturn. People are scared and feel helpless, and they are choosing to blame people other than themselves for all of these problems (and are right to do so in some cases). But the bottom line is that a portion of this nation is feeling victimized in a way that was once reserved only for gays, blacks, and women.

Conservative caucasians are not used to feeling victimized. They are typically full of righteous vigor and go through life pretending that absolutes abound, that black and white are the only choices while shades of gray be damned. While I would rather not start down a tangent, I will offer forth the idea that a majority of that population fervently holds to the ideal that there is no middle ground between good and evil. You are either one or the other. This is a convenient carryover from Judeo-Christian dogmata.

On top of that, we as a nation have steadily increased our sense of personal entitlement over time. We fear immigrants because they will take “our” jobs. We erupt into violence on the roads because somebody was slowing us down or in our way. We do away with reasoned debate because our opponent does not share our opinion or have our interests at heart. We will not stand for anything that impacts our convenience, our freedom, our choice, our family, and our belief that we are the most important person in our life. Oddly, we refer to the 1980’s as the “me” generation. It was so only because of the money people showered upon themselves. What we have now is worse. We have a “me” society that permeates every facet of our lives. We have a “me” country that believes it knows best in all circumstances and closes itself to the education that is an open mind and the willingness to learn from others in this world that have a longer history and greater experience.

As the saying goes, “We are number one!”

It is important to understand all of this when talking about the current climate of antagonism over health care reform. The town hall eruptions have almost nothing to do with health care, insurance, and services. They have a lot to do with a population choosing to assert power for the mere purpose of asserting power.

Why do I say this? I say it because the arguments against nationalized/socialized/tax subsidized health care make little sense. And I also say it because if these very same people were given the free market they so loudly demand, they would quickly see the role government plays in working to protect the welfare of its people.

“Choice” is a common argument. Choice of doctor, choice of treatment, choice of death. Well, okay, not that last one, because conservatives have always rallied against allowing people the choice to die (aka assisted suicide). What they fear now is that government will not give them the choice to live by denying them services at crucial times. Where would they get such an idea? From Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, actually, who pretty flat out stated that when deciding between health care for an infant, a young adult, and the elderly, the young adult should get priority since they are guaranteed to contribute to the ongoing health of the commonwealth. I have to concede that’s a very valid concern given Emanuel’s advisory position in the Obama administration. However, the guy isn’t all bad.

Choice of doctor seems like less of a concern. Every program in which I’ve participated has dictated which doctors I can and can’t see. They’ve done this by ratcheting the coverage depending on whether or not a doctor was a participant in their system and was willing to accept lower compensation in exchange for increased access to the patient base for that insurer. If every doctor accepts nationalized insurance, it would seem to me that choice would be expanded. I’ve not yet seen any indicators that the plan is to dictate which doctors you can see, nor have I seen mention regarding by which criteria such restrictions would be determined.

Choice of treatment boils down to what the reform bills contain regarding the system for approving treatments. Unfortunately, everybody has been shouting so much that we’ve not actually gotten any information about these types of details. That’s what the town hall meetings were for, but as usually happens, people who go in angry stay angry and come out angry.

The choice to participate is paramount. It is important that any national plan does not come by way of abolishing private insurance. We must always maintain the choice to get our coverage elsewhere, but we can do so without denying others the benefit of a national pool of contributors.

“Socialist” has been a favorite word since the start of the Obama campaign and has built enough steam to solve our oil dependency. Here is one of those places where we run into the problem of absolutes mentioned earlier.

There are many forms of socialism, but when we as a nation say “socialist”, we’re basically saying “communist”, which is why it is often followed by mentioning Russia. We have a good 60 years of anti-communist fervor in us, so when we hear of anything run by the state as being a “social” program, it gets bounced back as being socialist. To be fair, the proposed national health care system is a socialist form of insurance. It takes money from the production of the entire populace via taxes and then distributes that money to benefit the entire citizenry. Here are some other similarly “socialist” programs: welfare; unemployment; social security; Medicare. Suppose we throw those socialist babies out with the bathwater and eliminate those programs. Is that what people want when they say they want their country back? When I see the photos and footage of the town hall meetings, filled with a frothing older generation, I have to wonder - how many of them are benefiting right now from Medicare and are willing to admit to the hypocrisy?

I challenge everybody who is repeating the anti-socialist mantra to turn away their government checks and benefits. You obviously believe that everybody should fend for themselves, so get to it. I also challenge them all to learn about modern social democracy and how it differs from the all-out socialism they keep picturing in their heads.

Fear of the collapse of capitalism lies behind the rage against any form of social policy, which I find infuriating. A purely capitalist free market has been proven to work against the interest of consumers. There’s a reason why we have the FDA - it is to, as much as possible, protect the health of consumers against the practices of producers looking to increase profit at the risk of safety. The FDA didn’t just decide one day to exist. It was a response to real issues regarding illness and death. In an unrestrained market, lead paint gets used in kids’ toys, seat belts would never exist, you’d never be sure what meat you’d be getting in a McDonald’s hamburger, and we would have all had to just sit back and watch the nation collapse economically while the financial market continued digging its hole. Regulations of markets are a socialist construct, so please be more specific when ranting about impending socialism as we’ve had forms of it for 100 years.

“But what”, people might say, “about innovation? What motivation does anybody have to excel in a socialist system?” There they go again with absolutes. Modern socialist democracy doesn’t look to replace capitalism. It looks to complement it. In the current proposals, government is not looking to convert every hospital into a state run entity. It just wants to pay your expenses. Those hospitals are still to be independently run. Pharma companies will still benefit by improving drugs. Equipment companies will still be able to sell their gadgetry. Would one say that Blue Cross has dampened innovation just because it doled out the cash? Yes, actually. Procedures not covered by an insurer tend to not be performed, and if that procedure required a new process or product, the marketability of that product is reduced. Yet, innovation continues on.

“Big Brother” is a favorite talking point of mine because I have a long history of being staunchly against government intrusion in all facets of my life. It was my turn to be frothy when the USA PATRIOT Act was being put into place, when it became legal for the government to listen in on my calls without proper judicial review or to make me take off my shoes before boarding a plane. I was one of those guys who went on about how giving up privacy for the mirage of security was unconstitutional and an affront to my rugged individualism. Then, on December 3rd, 2001, that all went to hell. That was the day my son was born, had to be resuscitated, flown to another hospital, and treated for five weeks in a neonatal intensive care unit. That was the month that I had to make the decision between letting my son die or putting him through tracheostomy and gastrostomy surgery so that he could live into an unknown future. It was the event that showed me what asses and what saviors the state can be.  And the price of admission for this grand adventure was all of my privacy.

Mind you, not all of that privacy was violated by the state. When your child incurs over one million dollars in expenses in the first month of his life, everybody paying a piece wants your information. Add to the purely financial violation the fact that my son required massive support from doctors, therapists, home nurses, and equipment companies, all of whom must also violate your privacy in one way or another. The only place I still have privacy is in my own head, which I sometimes choose to violate by writing items like this.

To date, nearly eight years after that all began, I have yet to experience a privacy violation that was not directly related to the treatment of my son. The state has not revealed our info to anyone it shouldn’t have (to my knowledge). In fact, the worst violators of privacy have been the private nursing organizations who placed people in our home that were quite happy to regularly disregard HIPAA regulations and discuss their other cases with us or discuss our matters with their friends and family. The state, by contrast, was often refreshingly impersonal when dealing with us, which is how we liked it. Big Brother cared only about two things - making sure private health insurance was tried first before deferring to state and making sure that my son required all the things we requested. For the latter, they deferred to our personal doctors. My son constitutes an immense and ongoing expense. He incurs more cost than you or I could ever hope to achieve, and yet he continues to receive coverage. In the end, I traded privacy for his security.

What is interesting to me is that all of these topics are boiling to the surface in the fight against universal health care. There is no use pretending that that isn’t the end game here. The liberal goal is that every citizen of the United States have access to health care paid for by the populace at large. But why is this a bad thing? Why are people fighting with one another over doing good for their neighbor?

Health care is not the real concern. Control and power are what is at stake here. Health care hits at the heart of the “me” by having a direct impact on every person who is part of the program, and this is an effort that has failed for liberals in the past, making it a prime toppling target now that it has risen again. I wish people had been this fervent about the liberties they lost during the Bush administration, but throughout those eight years, none of them recognized their personal stake and responded with “I’ve done nothing wrong. I have nothing to hide.” Now, they all want to hide their medical records in order to deny help to those who need it. Ask any of these people individually, and they will all espouse their compassion but will maintain that compulsory compassion is no compassion at all.

However, none of them will say that health coverage is a bad thing, because it isn’t. What they won’t admit is the health care debate is a convenient topic for asserting a will they are afraid is diminishing. They didn’t fight the bailouts like this because they feared for their bank accounts. They didn’t fight the stimulus like this because some of those jobs might go to them. But they’re fighting health care like this because they already have coverage and don’t need that lousy government help. Rejecting government only when it doesn’t benefit you ignores the fact that it might benefit others or that you simply don’t recognize the benefit.

Let the debate on this topic continue, but please, let it be debate. Let us come to it informed and with our eyes open to what drives support and opposition to it. The moment we begin to shout, we have conceded reason and are driving from guttural emotion. As it is now, the debate can be distilled thusly:

Pro: “We want to take some money from everybody and provide for the literal health of the nation.”

Con: “Screw you, you can’t have my money or my privacy, I don’t care who suffers because of it.”

Contrast that with this quote. Some of you have probably heard it before:

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.

No, that wasn’t said by Chicken Little.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

Back when I thought I’d spend the rest of my life paddling around in a kayak, my biggest frustration was that there was nothing locally geared towards bringing like-minded paddlers together to keep each other company and teach one another.

As is usual, I toyed with the idea of starting a web site to foster such a community. It was one of the few times when I decided not to take on a new web endeavor.

Now, well over a year later, somebody else has thankfully gone and done the thing I had wanted to do. The Canoe Club of Centre County held its first meeting last month and has as its mission to bring together paddlers of all skill and interest levels.

Had this been in place back then, I might not have migrated to bikes quite so quickly. While I do like being alone on my trips, I don’t want to be alone all the time. It was difficult to get out for a paddle with Brandy - in fact, I think we did that only once and that was only because my mother was along to watch Gareth while we took a quick spin around the Kettle Creek reservoir.

This is not to say there weren’t any groups. The Penn Kayak group was in full swing at that time, but most of the trips ended up being more distant than I desired or on higher classes of creek and river than I was ready for.

I sincerely hope the CCCC does well. I might even have to stop in for a meeting and see what the group is like. No, I’m not planning to buy another boat.

Yet.

I did, after all, keep my PFD, shoes, bilge pump, and watertight containers.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been tasked with translating some letters from a father to his son. Written in 1944. In Germany. It’s interesting to go through the translation and then match things up with history. I figured somebody else might be interested, so here is the first letter I’ve completed.

November 14, 1944

My dear Manfred:

We have still not received a letter from you and are therefore very worried, as you can imagine. I am consoling myself with the thought that you’ve left Westwall and that there is no post to reach us.

For two days, we listened day and night to the booms of the cannons in the west; there must, therefore, be hard artillery battles under way. If only we knew where you were currently located. Maybe we have been too quiet? Or not, who knows!?

Wolfgang left quickly yesterday evening. He had to get back to his unit. He has written down your address so he can write. I hope you will send him heartfelt greetings in the meantime, Manfred.

Mother has once again been driven to sleep just after Degerloch. Walter is with me still. That’s our life, it’s actually not fun anymore.

Last Sunday, I was sworn in for the Volkssturm. It was an impressive crowd in Spitalhof. I belong to a company lead by Mr. Muller (Bookbinder). My conductor is Mayor Neunhoffer and I drove the group this time. Tomorrow evening, we have our training and I can easily say that these evenings are always very interesting.

Hado was here this afternoon as well, he is currently on leave. He brought mother an extra four eggs, so she can bake you something for your Christmas package. That is really lovely of him.

I have already written you that your certificate of maturity came yesterday. You can see, Manfred, what you have yet to accomplish. So, you have at least a degree. You will see it again one day. The most important thing now is that you come back, and for that we wish wholeheartedly. Everything else is incidental.

Dearest Manfred! I wish you all the best from the heart, and quite a bit of luck. Don’t make us worry, dear boy.

Sending you heartfelt greetings,

Your Father

Mother and Walter also leave you heartfelt greetings. Walter is already in bed. He still oversleeps.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

RBR is taking me to Interbike this year. Flying me out, putting me up, and letting me geek out at the nation’s biggest bike industry show.

Of course, I’ll be working while in Vegas. We’re planning to do daily show reports, photos, and possibly video interviews with various company reps. It should be a ton of fun.

So what can I do to fill my time between now and then? How about figure out which vendors I want to hit, document them here, and then forget to take the list come September? Okay, let’s do it!

Booth 4621 - Arkel Inc - Creator of the most rugged, expensive, expandable panniers I’ve ever seen.

4459 - Atoc Inc - Manufacturer of overly complex but insanely useful rack systems like the Draftmaster (which I have for Gare’s bike and for my trike).

L22 - Bikes Belong Coalition - These folks hand out money to non-profits. Want to stop here on BikeAble business.

1051 - Bionx - Electric assist for bikes. Interesting to see if they have anything new coming up.

1459 - Day 6 Bicycles - Crank forward comfort bikes with lumbar support. Basically, recumbents.

4613 - Do Wrap/SweatVac - I love my SweatVac, so visiting these guys is an attempt to get freebies.

4008 - Hase Bikes - Because I want to feel bad that we bought a Pino before they made the collapsible frame.

374 - HP Velotechnik Recumbents - Because Hase and HPV are my favorite recumbent manufacturers. My HPV Speedmachine and Street Machine Gte will attest to that. I’d have a tough time choosing between a Hase Kettwiesel and an HPV Grasshopper if the occasion arose.

1742 & 1735 - J & B Importers Inc - These are the guys behind Sun bikes/trikes. Might as well see what low end stuff is coming out for next year and discover whether or not the UAX still sorta sucks.

5231 - Keen Inc - Only reason for Keen to be here is for new cycling sandals. I’ve had my Keen Commuters for a year now and they’re still quite comfortable.

4363 - Kenda Tires/Tubes - Not personally interested, but RBR.info visitors might like some new info on Kenda gear.

1659 - Kidz Tandem - Interested from the BikeAble perspective.

6225 - KMX Karts Ltd - BMX Trike manufacturer.

2049/2053 - Magura USA - The only thing bent riders like more than disc brakes are hydraulic disc brakes.

709 - MapMyRide.com - Want to find out why they had to shit things up with all the ads. Okay, I know why, but it really makes me want to move to another service.

809 - Mirrycle Corp - Most famous mirrors in bentdom. The packaging now even states they’re for recumbents.

4575 - NuVinci - RBR sells a lot of their hubs.

4621 - Old Man Mountain - Maker of Catrike friendly hubs. Curious to see what else they have that would be bent suitable.

1425 - Planet Bike - Just want to see if they’re aware how much bent riders try to shoehorn their products onto recumbent frames and forks.

4381 - Power Grips - Hoping for something lightweight but strong.

1025 - Primal Wear - I just want to see the Stormtrooper Armor jersey up close.

5145 - Primo - Another popular bent tire manufacturer.

3425 - Schwalbe - More tires.

3929/4125/4133 - Shimano - Because we have to. How can you not want to see what Shimano has coming up?

3351 - Sigma Sport - RBR carries their computers.

4519 - SockGuy - Why not? I have a pair of SockGuy socks.

2923 - Speedplay - Manufacturers of Frog pedals, quite popular among relaxed recumbent riders.

1339 - SRAM - See Shimano.

3915 - Topeak - I’m a big fan of the Joe Blow Pro.

1339 - Truvativ - I’ll be cranky by the time we get to these guys. Ha ha.

2252 - Uvex Sports Inc - RBR carries their helmets.

I’m a little disappointed that neither Catrike nor Lazer Helmets are there this year, but I’ll survive. That’s more than enough booths to visit as it is.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

Brandy and I sat down last night to watch a movie, something we do with decreasing frequency due to the demands of a two child household that is also inhabited by an adult dependent. It’s tough to find time to squeeze in two hours for passive entertainment.

But last night, we did it. We found the time. And we used it to watch Rachel Getting Married.  At 1:53 in length, it was going to run right up until Gareth’s nurse arrived, so time was precious if we hoped to finish the movie before having our evening interrupted by yet another outside influence. With that in mind, we loaded in the Blu-Ray disc.

And waited for the progress bar.

And saw it start to play BD promos.

And discovered we couldn’t stop the promos. Or open the menus. In fact, my attempts to do so inexplicably resulted in us being dumped out to the PS3 crossbar interface. We went through this process four times before I relented and decided we were just going to have to sit through the promo.

Once the promo ended, the trailers started. In the immortal words of Will Smith in all of his action films, “Oh HELL naw!”

Menu still wouldn’t work. Stop didn’t work. So I tried Next. That worked! It… skipped to the next trailer. I had to do this several more times to get through the trailers and finally get to the damn menu!

Once there, everything was fine, but I turned to Brandy and said, “You know who made us go through all that crap? Somebody in marketing.”

The lesson here, folks, is that you aren’t going to sell stuff by annoying your consumer. So stop annoying them.

Bonus tip for marketing folks: If your customer is already in the process of consuming your product, you don’t need to remind them how great it is. Putting an ad for Blu-Ray at the start of a Blu-Ray disc is relatively pointless. The viewer had a choice to watch a standard DVD, but chose not to - you have them, they don’t need to be beat over the head with it.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

I was having some trouble with RokBox and RokNewsRotator. On the CRBC site, we use RokBox to display inset thumbnails for expansion directly from our Section and Category pages, but since we do the inset first in the content, RokNewsRotator was stripping out the tags and leaving the image path in plain text, including it in the RNR teaser.

The solution was to strip out RokBox and everything between the RB tags first by making the following change in helper.php:

Original

function prepareContent( $text, $length=300 ) {
        // strips tags won't remove the actual jscript
        $text = preg_replace( "'<script[^>]*>.*?</script>'si", "", $text );
        $text = preg_replace( '/{.+?}/', '', $text);

Modified

function prepareContent( $text, $length=300 ) {
        // remove rokbox references
        $regex = "#{rokbox\s(.*?){/rokbox}#s";
        $text = preg_replace( $regex, "", $text );
        // strips tags won't remove the actual jscript
        $text = preg_replace( "'<script[^>]*>.*?</script>'si", "", $text );
        $text = preg_replace( '/{.+?}/', '', $text);

Works great so far!

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

In the run-up to Mother’s Day, Gareth let me know that he wanted to bake chocolate chip cookies for Mom. This sounded like a perfectly wonderful idea to me as Gareth and I had never baked together before and because I knew there would be plenty of leftover cookies for me to eat.

We went with the dough-in-a-tube variety of baking since there would be less kitchen mess and, as a result, less stress for Brandy.  Even seeing a disaster in progress will throw her off kilter until such time as the disaster is resolved.  

I busted out the cookie sheets, the tube of dough, a spoon, and some parchment paper.  I wanted this to go as easily as possible.  While the oven was preheating, I put the parchment paper out on the sheets, sliced open the dough, and got Gareth in there to help me spoon the dough out onto the trays.

During this process, he started looking up at me and gesturing, which is usually his way of telling us he needs his letter board.  I grabbed the letter board, put his hand in mine, and let him go to town.

D - O - Y - O - U - N - O - W - W - U - T - Y - O - U - R - D - O - N - G

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

Come on, really?  All we have to do is scoop out dough and plunk it on a cookie sheet.  What’s there to know?  But I had a good laugh at his moxie and we kept on with the baking.

The oven was ready, so I popped our cookies in, setting the timer for 5 minutes so I could rotate the trays mid-bake.  When the 5 minute point hit, I opened the oven only to see a cloud of smoke rapidly exit from within, clouding the kitchen and making its way to the smoke detector.

Letting the oven door slam shut, I threw on the ceiling fan and grabbed something to wave smoke away from the now blaring detector as my family wondered what the heck was going on.

After things settled down a bit, Brandy came out to the kitchen to see exactly what happened.  I professed innocence, saying I did nothing wrong, but then she asked, “Did you put parchment paper on the trays?”  Yes, yes I did.  ”That’s not parchment paper.  That’s wax paper.”

Sure enough, it was.  Turns out that if you’re using wax paper, it’s best to have the entire surface of the paper covered by whatever you’re baking on it.  It’s also best to not exceed 350 degrees when using it.  I violated both rules of wax paper use and paid the price.

Amazingly, I did spare the cookies!  But now, when my son looks at me and asks if I know what I’m doing, I’m going to seriously consider his question and make sure that I can answer it with confidence.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

To celebrate Bike To Work Week, I did just that - I biked to work from Pleasant Gap to Pine Hall Road on May 1st. It was my first bike commute in Centre County, and it will likely be my last.

Not because of the distance. No, that was a mere 11 miles. Not because of the time involved, as it required only an hour (the same time it would take using public transportation). It was all because of two words: College Avenue.

Pleasant Gap to the Nittany Mall wasn’t all that bad. The shoulder along that stretch is very wide and almost always kept clear of gravel and other obstacles, except for the occasional dead animal.

But after reaching the Nittany Mall, College Ave turns into Death Race 2000. There’s no taking the lane on this 45mph legal/60mph actual stretch of road, and the shoulders, while often generous, are so covered in gravel from the winter season that one has to stick to the line for most of the ride.

Sticking to the line doesn’t work too well, though, since there’s barely enough room in the lanes as it is. There are just some times when you’re pulled to a stop at a light only to have an 18 wheel truck slide in inches from your elbow that makes you think, “This was a bad idea.”

Whenever possible, I ditched College Ave, cutting through parking lots or taking back roads that weren’t going to add miles to my ride. Certainly, that helped, but the stretches where I had to be on College were enough to make my testicles ascend. Everything from Decibel Road to just past Elmwood made me feel like a very small bug being approached at high velocity by a very large wind shield.

It begs the question - why did I use that road at all? The alternatives weren’t all that attractive. I could have veered off onto Decibel Road and taken back roads to Lemont, which would have dumped me out on College Ave again anyway. Or, I could have taken Shiloh Road and followed back roads up to Park Ave, which itself is a fairly high traffic area as it is an entrance/exit point for 322.

In order to not constantly feel like I’m about to die, I would have to take College to Shiloh to Houserville, take Puddintown to Orchard to Park, ride through campus and across the IST walkway, and then take West Campus to Blue Course where I would, inevitably, have to ride College Ave to Science Park to Pine Hall Road. That would reduce my exposure to College Ave greatly, but also take me on back roads that have no shoulder at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to ride, but getting from point A to point B in this case is severely painful. It’s enough to convince me that driving isn’t so bad after all.

So what would make me feel better about making such a commute in the future?

1. Take my trike. Sure, it’s lower to the ground, but I have a far higher degree of confidence on the trike. I’m sure the lack of confidence on my Speedmachine played into my fears that day.

2. Form a multi-municipality committee to create a pathway from the outlying burbs to downtown State College. Of course, that’s what the Bellefonte Central Rail Trail was supposed to be before it was halted by property owners along the proposed route. Besides, doing this would take 20 years.

3. Choose a new, longer, less exposed route. I don’t really want to have more than an hour of travel time to get to and from work. It’s a shame I can’t use the most direct route, but I can’t.

4. Realize that I ride my bike for fun and not to make a point about saving the planet, so it’s okay to drive my bike to safe riding locations. This is the most likely solution.

Yes, I could make a public stand and decry congestion, the dangers of distracted drivers, and convince others that the more cyclists there are, the safer the streets become, but I have a very strong sense of self-preservation that makes me want to hide out until a bunch of other brave souls do the hard work and make things safer for me.

I never denied being a lazy opportunist. And yet, I feel some degree of guilt in the matter, as though taking on the label of “cyclist” brings with it a certain requisite sense of representing a population of people who pedal. But I don’t want to be a representative. I just want to be a guy out on his bike not worrying about death.

I've been busy pimping the Keystone Country MS-150 ride. This year, I'm an actual participant.

The reason I've been talking about it everywhere (except here, where I completely forgot to mention it) is that I'm raising money as part of the ride. Each participant needs to raise $250 for MS research and support, and with 3 months to go, I'm a mere $90 shy of that goal.

So if I can manage to raise $30 a month until then, I'm in. So if in this time of dire economics you can see fit to part with, say, $10 in order to compel me to ride from Hollidaysburg to State College and back again, hit up my participant page and give to the cause.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

Thanks to his speech therapist, Gareth has been using a keyboard/touchpad system to type out his thoughts for the past couple weeks.  Usually, it’s pretty typical stuff.  “Play videogames” or “when is dad coming home” or “go bookstore”.

But not today.  Today, Gareth asked something I’m sure he’s wondered about for a very long time.  He asked why he doesn’t eat with his mouth.

Brandy sat down with him and explained why it is that he doesn’t eat like everybody else.  I don’t know whether or not he was satisfied with the answer or whether or not being different has caused him any heartache, but it’s so incredibly amazing that he can finally ask us these questions.

I’m sure we have many more topics to cover - why he can’t walk, why he needs suction, why he can’t talk like us.  And we’ll answer every one of them openly and honestly.

And while it won’t always be easy to talk about these things, we at least now have the opportunity to do so.  We have about 5 years of talking to catch up on.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

Pressed for time yesterday, I acquired dinner via McDonald’s drive-thru and headed home.  Once there, I sat upon the couch, lounging too far back for civilized man, and consumed a double quarter pounder with cheese.

Inspecting the packaging, I noticed that this little sandwich packed 740 calories all on its own.

This got me to thinking about obesity in general, which led me to ruminate on why it is our bodies are so unable to properly handle the excess material we now consume.  And that led me to state: God does not exist.

Here’s how I got there!

It is quite clear that the human body is not able to recognize when there is no scarcity of food resources and is especially unable to trigger greater amounts of caloric evacuation when the body continues to ingest food while there is no exertion generally involved.

My thought is that this is because the body has not yet reprogrammed itself for our current fat, happy state.  It has been evolved over millennia with the idea that the consumption of food follows scarcity and exertion, that the body has to engage in physical work in order to acquire food.  It is also geared towards the idea that there might be a lengthy period of time between meals depending on whether or not food acquisition is successful.

So how does this negate the existence of God?  Pretty easily, actually.  If God had created us so perfectly, then wouldn’t our bodies have started off with the ability to adjust caloric retention in the face of increased consumption?  Adam & Eve were, after all, “born” in paradise where they wanted for nothing.  Adam didn’t have to lift a finger to get some grub.  Heck, the animals walked right up to him and, apparently, apples were plentiful.  But of course, he liked them apples and got kicked out at which point God made him horrifically mortal.

So for the time they were in paradise, Adam & Eve, supposedly, were not fatties even though hunting and gathering wasn’t really a concern shared in Genesis.  Besides, a perfect creator is perfectly capable of building a creature that doesn’t just suddenly get chubby every time he sits around too long.  Unless he’s looking to punish that creature for being a schlub.

Anyway, out of paradise, stuff changes.  Eve has to have labor pains and everybody goes mortal.  But only sort of mortal.  They still get to live hundreds of years, so God has essentially changed the DNA of his creations in order to rough them up a bit.  And then he does it again when he decides even that hundreds of years is way too much.

But, so far, no mention of letting them get fat.  If obesity isn’t a punishment from God, then why would he have created us in a way that would lend itself to our eventual fattening?  Does God get fat?  I mean, really, he just sits around all day listening to people, probably eating Kentucky Fried (mashed potatoes and gravy are as close to the Rapture as one can get).

And I just kept thinking about this.  The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being must have purposefully created us to get fat!  What a jerk!  Somewhere in his grand design, he said, “Man, if these cats ever get lazy, I’m gonna make it so they just balloon up and spawn a plus size clothing market.”  Otherwise, why not engineer us so that we always stay thin?

After the rush of sodium and grease worked its way through my system, I stopped thinking about this topic, but when faced with the choice between the idea that our bodies have not yet evolved to take into account an abundant food supply and a sedentary existence versus the idea that an invisible guy made us to get fat in order to punish our success in being lazy, I decided to go with the one that at least seemed plausible.

And since I ruled out the involvement of a deity, well, I just threw the baby out with the bathwater and concluded (as I always do) that it’s easier to believe he doesn’t exist at all than to believe he’s a putz.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

About a week ago, Brandy and I took a look at a house for sale that had a very appealing location.  We’re passing on it because the house needs far too much work.

But during the showing, I was talking with the realtor and mentioned some of the challenges we would face in the house because we have a son in a wheelchair.

As soon as I said “our son is in a wheelchair”, he interrupted me to say, “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

This happens frequently, and I get it - people just don’t know how to react to that info.  So I’m here to help.  Here’s a quick guide towards an appropriate reaction:

- If “in a wheelchair” is said in the middle of a sentence and is said matter-of-factly, that means the speaker is cool with it and does not need your empathy. Don’t interrupt, and don’t evoke pity.

- If “in a wheelchair” is at the end of a sentence and is said with some emotion while being followed by a dramatic pause, go ahead with the sorry.  The speaker is looking for it.

- If “in a wheelchair” is yelled while the speaker is pounding on your car window, it means you parked too close to the van accessible space and the driver can’t get the wheelchair ramp down and get his son out of the car because you park like an idiot.  No sorry required, just move your ass.

That should cover most of the scenarios in which one would have to deal with a sudden revelation of disability.  If you encounter any others and find yourself at a loss for an appropriate response, please feel free to consult me for further guidance.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

Come on.  It’s 2009. I can’t believe I actually found this on a web site.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

Somebody recently asked me if I was insane because I’m doing too much webmaster stuff.  I’m co-webmaster of the site at work.  I’m webmaster for RBR.  I’ve got all my own sites (this, Prebble Family, BikeAble, A Bike For Gareth). And now I’m working on the CRBC web site.

Well, if you take a look around at all those things, you’ll find that most are suffering from inattention.

The RBR site, for which I am now being paid, gets regular updates. I try to post new blog entries there once a week if not more frequently, and there are usually product updates to post as the 2009 prices roll in.

The Prebble Family site is a ghost town. Nothing is getting posted there these days. Part of that, I’m sure, is that at the end of a day playing and fighting with the kids, the last thing on my mind is writing about the kids. This is a bit of a disservice to the family, since good things are happening all the time (like Gareth’s continued use of his IntelliKeys system), but I just never think to update the blog.

A Bike For Gareth is only as active as my rides with Gareth, so that blog essentially goes offline for entire seasons. Eventually, I will collapse that site altogether and roll the informational pieces into BikeAble.

And as for BikeAble, the site that has not seen a content update since last May, I have ideas for lots of stories that never get written. I even have a guy in California interested in coming on board. For right now, though, that site continues to suffer my unwillingness to sit down and write structured articles.

The CRBC site is a new project. Fortunately, I’m just the technologist for that one. I’m helping them get set up with a CMS, set down the rules and structure, but once it’s up and running, other folks will be responsible for content. So that’s an easy one.

Unfortunately, the site at work is the one that most discourages me while at the same time being the one I have to devote my entire day to managing. My day job drives me to work on sites for other people so I can work on sites that are intended to be engaging. What a shame.

Speaking of, got to get back to it. But at least I managed to update this site in the meantime.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

I learned a valuable lesson today.  When heading out for a bike ride during a Winter thaw, take a trike.

I started at Spring Creek and hit the bike path that heads out along 322, thinking that the warm weather that so effectively melted the ice and snow around our home would have done wonders for the bike paths.  For the most part, it did.  But there were still a number of patches that were pure ice.

Since I try not to be stupid, I actually did dismount to walk past sketchy areas.  There just happened to be one area that didn’t look bad enough to worry about.  As luck would have it, that was the area where my tires slid out from under me and sent me sliding on my posterior into the grass and muck to the side of the path.

Nothing hurt other than my pride.  My underseat steering took most of the fall and required a quick adjustment.  I did try to continue on, but the path got progressively worse from that point.

So I gave it up and rode back to Spring Creek park.

And next time, I’ll take my trike.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

Had an enjoyable birthday over the weekend.  Got some good gifts - new Carrie Fisher book, Tomb Raider: Underworld, MiB Blu-Ray, Sarah Silverman Program Season 1.  Got some bad gifts - several hundred dollars charged against my Visa debit card by someone who stole my card info.

What’s sort of sad is that the only thing that tipped off my bank is that a credit card company in Israel faxed my bank looking for authorization for a charge.  Whoever has my number tried to get a virtual Visa at WWWCard.  WWWCard thought it was fishy and sent the fax.  

With that, I sat down with a rep at the bank and went through my weekend transactions.  Two meals and groceries were valid, but multiple charges for $124, $170, $90, and $55.55 at Home Depot in Bend, OR were invalid.

The tip-off was instant - almost all the invalid charges had 0 cents.  Who buys anything anywhere and doesn’t have a few cents tacked on for tax or shipping or psychological pricing (9.99 isn’t 10)?

For now, we’ve nuked the initial $124 charge, had me sign the legal docs, and shredded my debit card.  I’ll see tomorrow whether or not all the other fraudulent charges go through.  If they do, I’ll have a whole lot more paperwork to fill.

That’s it for me, though.  No more using debit cards online.  This is the second time in a year that I’ve had to replace my debit card, and it’s a pain.

Interesting note: they used my cell phone number as part of the transaction and got it wrong by one digit.  I’m pretty sure that the only place I’ve ever used that number for orders has been Nashbar (at least, that’s what my e-mail history would suggest).  I have to wonder if they’ve been compromised.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

While I’m waiting for that Millennium Falcon pool to come out (and for the weather to be warm enough to use it), I guess I’ll just have to spend Spring with the boys flying some Star Wars kites.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

An old Rob Hubbard tune just came up on my Zune - Crazy Comets - and it reminded me of the old (1986) Thrust Concert demo on the C=64 as they used Hubbard’s song in it.

That prompted me to search for info on Thrust Concert, which ultimately took me to Press Play On Tape.  I’m gonna have to check this out later.

Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.

We’re in furniture renewal mode these days. A new sofa and love seat were delivered this afternoon. Since they clash with our current living room furnishings, we’ve also purchased a new TV stand and end tables.

This means that it was time to clear some items out of the basement to make room for our old sofa. Mostly, I dumped three chairs that I had acquired from Target a year ago.  My goal at the time was to populate the room with enough chairs to enjoy killer games of Amplitude, but my largely anti-social nature kept such gatherings from ever happening.

Those chairs are on their way out, having been sold to a co-worker.  But I still craved a gaming chair.  My desk chair is not comfortable enough for long periods of time, and I’ve never been a fan of gaming from a couch (no idea why).  So it was time to find some new furniture.  I looked around at several local stores and did research online before ultimately purchasing the horrifically named X-Rocker Pedestal Wireless chair.  

Recliners are just too big, and typical game rockers are just too low.  This one looked like it would hit my Goldilocks sweet spot.  I didn’t really care about the wireless sound, but the swivel action, the recline, and the arms were all enticing features.  And Wal-Mart had a ton of them.

Got it home, busted it out, and had it put together in just a few minutes.  Taking it for a test drive with an episode of Doctor Who and a game of Viking proved it to be a very comfortable seat for my 209lb 5′8″ mass.  The only thing I didn’t like was that my head actually rested too far back, driving my line of sight to the top of my projector screen instead of holding it to the middle.  Backing off on the recline or getting a pillow will easily fix that.

The sound was something I had prepared to dismiss out of hand, but I actually do enjoy having it on.  A nice feature of the Xbox 360 is that it will simultaneously output digital and analog audio, so I was able to pump digital to my surround system while outputting analog to the chair, giving me a nice bit of added sound detail right in my earholes.

Now all I need to do is figure out how I can attach my Ace Combat flight stick to the chair arms, though for the sake of authenticity, I guess I should be figuring out how to mount the joystick between my legs.  I don’t think I could get used to that lack of symmetry.