Rating

So, I found a website that rates my blog as if it were a movie:

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
* crap (3x)
* dead (2x)
* gun (1x)

Crap? They rate me PG-13 because I used the word crap a few times? And dead? And the word gun once?

What about the two times I used the word fuck and one use of the word asshat? Doesn't that set off your little censorship flags? (and that's in only the front page. The site doesn't spider the site to find the many other uses of those words.) Clearly, this website is as accurate in rating websites as the MPAA is at rating movies. And the only good thing about it is that this website at least tells you why they are rating your website the way that they are (even though the methodology is flawed). This is unlike the MPAA which is a secret organization that does not allow it's methods to be released and, according to "This Film Is Not Yet Rated", does not actually have any standards. Just a bunch of conservatives who watch a film and arbitrarily decide on a rating.

And if you look at the ratings and the movies attached to them, the MPAA loves violence but hates sex (especially gay sex). Many terribly violent and disturbing movies get themselves an R rating but any movie that dares to even show human genitals is going to get the dreaded NC-17 rating.

Ratings for movies, TV and video games are valuable, if they use standards that are understandable or, at the very least, public. If you know how a decision was made then you can make your own decision about whether your kids should be exposed to it. But, when the process is hidden (or in the case of this website, inherently flawed) then the rating is useless. In fact, it's worse than useless, it's prejudicial and discriminatory.

Tyred

On Wednesday evening, I added air to the tires on my bike. The front tire was rated for 60-80 psi and the back was rated at 75-100 psi so I loaded them up to about 77 psi. Well within specs.

When I got up on Thursday morning, the rear tire had sprung a leak. I had a spare so I changed it out before leaving for work.

Leaving work on Friday, the rear tube had gone again. There was an 1/8" blowout. I tried patching it but the patch didn't hold. I carried my bike through town to the Golden Triangle Bike and Blade underneath the "T" Station on First Avenue. I didn't have a lot of hope that they would have the 700x38c tube that I needed because on two previous occasions when I had flats, they had nothing.

My premonition was correct as they didn't have what I needed. This would mean the long walk back to my car. I didn't get far up the trail when one of the guys rode up and offered to loan me a bike so that I could ride to REI to get a tube.

Nothing highlights the benefits of a well-tuned bicycle like riding a rental. While there was nothing inherently wrong with the bike, it's geometry was all wrong, and by the time I went out and back to REI I had a headache from the wrongness of it.

$8 for two tubes and an additional hour and a half to my day.

Dun dun duuuunnnn!!!!!!

It was. . . .
. . . . MURDER!

Root cause

Things have sucked here at the Help Desk all week. Mostly because of a string of system failures. On Monday a number of mail servers went down at the same time that our ticket generation and mainframe went down so we couldn't create tickets or change passwords. On Tuesday there were print spooler issues. Yesterday there was an issue with anti virus definitions being out of date. The heavy call volumes for all three days have completely screwed the metrics for the month so that now we are being told that scheduled breaks are canceled for the rest of June.

One of the Corporate Overlords sent a message (inappropriately, to everyone at the Help Desk) in response to this three days of crap: "Without understanding a root and/or systemic cause, going 3 days in a row with these metrics is unacceptable"

So, let me explain the "root and/or systemic cause". . . the Help Desk is staffed to just barely handle a normal call volume. To have extra staff would cost too much money when the call volume is low. Management despises having employees not being busy. But when something goes wrong and the call volume climbs, we never have the staff necessary to handle it. Have a widespread issue and we miss our metrics for the day. Have several and we miss our metrics for the month.

So really, YOU are the systemic cause in not allowing the Help Desk to be staffed sufficiently to handle things when things go wrong. Really, that's what we're here for, to fix things when they go wrong. And if you're too cheap to hire enough of us to handle the call volume, that's YOUR fault, not ours.

The Plan (finally)

Pittsburgh just opened its first real bike lane that actually goes
somewhere. Beechwood Blvd. has had a "bike lane" for many, many years but it doesn't go anywhere, just sort of a half-loop near Frick Park. And while a bike lane such as they have now through East Liberty is supposed to enhance safety, before the paint was even dry I heard of an SUV cutting off a cyclist who was riding in the lane. (And threw in an obscene gesture just for fun.)

The article at the Pop City website has something at the end of it
mentioning that "the City will hire a full-time bike-ped coordinator, who will oversee Pittsburgh's Pedestrian Improvement and Bicycling Plans, and advise officials on pedestrian and cycling needs as they relate to infrastructure projects." The thing is, this job was set out in the City's Bicycle Plan published in 1999 and the position has gone unfilled since then, even through the supposedly bicycle friendly Murphy administration.

While I am very glad that something is happening finally, there is still a long way to go to make Pittsburgh safe for bicycles and begin changing the City's transportation habits. And a seven year gap between the plan and the implementation of a key element of that plan does not give me a lot of confidence in the forward momentum.

Day One

My new Dell-Ubuntu laptop arrived yesterday afternoon (I called off work so I could be home to sign for it). I've been playing with it and am generally pleased. Here are a few things I've learned in the last 24 hours.

I hadn't realized that it had an SD card slot. I can just pull the card out of my camera and plug it in. It even prompts that it discovered a photo card and asks if I want to download everything.
I had expected that the DVD player wouldn't work right out of the box. I've installed Ogle and Gxine and will be experimenting with various formats, controls and such. Part of the plan is to have the laptop play videos for the Confluence video program. Several things I want to show I have only been able to find as AVI files.

The touchpad is nice enough but I want a mouse. I have a little travel mouse but it's too small. I want to get a more standard size unit.

The batery charging light doesn't come on when the battery is charging. Not a big deal. I just added the Power Manager icon in the system tray. The history feature is pretty neat.

I've had some strangeness with the wireless connection. Yesterday it connected to the access point upstairs without any problem. Today, it wouldn't. Instead, it wanted to connect to the one downstairs. In either case, I need to program it as a specific selection otherwise it's going to ask me for the WEP key every time I connect.

I also received a strange message when I was setting it up about a default keyring password. I gave it a password but now every time I connect at home I'm prompted to enter that password.
I'm not sure what's that's all about yet.

During lunch, I attempted to connect to Pittsburgh's free wi-fi. I could see the access point but what was supposed to happen, the signon page coming up, didn't. I select a nearby hotel access point and got their login page so it's not something inherently wrong with my wireless, Ubuntu or Firefox. But it would not surprise me if the hosts built their page with IE in mind and it just wasn't clicking with my machine. I'll have to look into that further, as well.

My PC still has that Windows button between the Fn and Alt keys. It doesn't do anything (of course). I have to look into how I can remove the logo.

I found that system76 has free Ubuntu stickers. All you have to do is send then a self-addressed stamped envelope. I sent them one so that I can get the sticker on my machine. Dell should put them on just like they pimp the "Designed for Windows" logos.

Litterbug

Yo, asshat! Yeah, I'm talking to you in the beat-up blue sedan with Ohio plates at Forbes and Peebles in Wilkinsburg at the tail end of rush hour. You pulled up to the intersection and tried to toss your empty 32oz plastic cup down the storm drain. Really, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you evil or just plain stupid?

There and back again

My intention was to get up early and head out to Meadowcroft for the World Atlatl Association event there this weekend. I didn't sleep well last night and slept in a little so I didn't get going as early as I first meant to but I was expecting to be there all day and camp out into tomorrow. The delay wouldn't matter.

It mattered even less than I first thought when, on arrival, there was a sign indicating that Meadowcroft was closed until the fall. Back home, I saw that the event had been canceled but I saw no indication as to when that happened. I don't recall seeing it in the newsletter.

Well, that's a three hours wasted of my weekend.

Detours

My intention was that after work I would get back to my car and then head off to Meadowcroft for an atlatl competition. It didn't turn out that way because, after getting my car and trying to bypass the traffic on Second Avenue, I can across a car-into-a-bike accident at the end of the Swinburne Bridge.

It had happened only moments before and I could hear several people with their cars stopped and calling on their cell phones. I decided to attend to the victim, as no one else did. She had been sitting up but laid down so I figured her spine and neck weren't too bad. She had a nasty gash on her chin and plenty of scrapes all over. I asked her where it hurt and for each place she said I noted the injury there and didn't find any signs of anything broken.

The woman who had hit her was parroting what is probably the most common phrase uttered by drivers who have his cyclists; "I didn't see you." I had seen another cyclist rolling down Greenfield Avenue at a pretty good clip. I suspected that this woman had been not far behind him, also riding down the center of the lane like the cyclist ahead of her and as any car would. The scrapes on the driver's door and the vehicle in the middle of the intersection told me that the car had pulled right out in front of the cyclist.

"I didn't see you."

It turns out that the cyclist I had seen moments before was the husband and I said that I would go fetch him. I jumped back in the car and got turned around just as he was running his bike back up the hill. With the traffic all jammed up he knew something bad had happened and was running flat out.

All things considered, I didn't think she was seriously injured and, in any case, didn't need another person looming over her now that her husband was there so I did my part directing traffic. Mostly, I didn't want cars to be in any sort of gridlock that might keep the cops and paramedics from arriving. They arrived in a minute or two of that.

A firefighter took over traffic control (but I think I was doing a better job) and I grabbed my camera to take pictures. Of course, before I took the first picture I asked the husband if he wanted pictures for the insurance company or courts. I would be glad to email them to him. He consented and I started with the pictures.

I offered to take the bikes somewhere if he wanted but he locked them to a street sign and said he lived just up the hill but the bikes were the least of his worries. I told him that I would be glad to take even that small concern off his mind if he wanted.

So, instead of going to Meadowcroft, I ended up going home so that I could email those pictures right away.

More than rumors

Last week was the offer from Management for me to return to being the Help Desk trainer. This week, there was an email from the Site Manager hinting that raises may be in our future:

"I do not have a date as to when this will become a reality, however, we are very close."

Ever since our bonuses were taken away in April of 2003 and the salaries were frozen a month later, we were told that the situation was only temporary. The company was bought by another. The top management of that company changed. There have been a string of Site Managers and all have blown the same wind about getting bonuses back and salaries increased. Now, four years later, now that my salary has slipped against inflation to the point where I'm making what I was when I started, these are encouraging, very positive statements.

But I've heard it all before and all the sound and fury signified nothing

Today we received this email:

"I am pleased to announce that you will be seeing a bonus in your next pay check."

Sure, the statement "you will be seeing a bonus in your next paycheck" sounds pretty definitive but that paycheck is two weeks from now. I've been burned so many times before that I can't truly believe it until I see the numbers direct deposited to my account. And, even then, I have room to be skeptical. Is this bonus a one time payoff for all the crap we've been putting up with or is it the merit based quarterly bonuses we once had? Will this be a return to the $500 a quarter that we were getting four years ago?

Time will tell.

It's not like it's the end of the world

One would think that working for a major financial institution with 30,000 employees wouldwide all seeming to be calling me for their computer woes, I would have noticed something was amiss earlier in the day. Nope, missed it. When the call volume dropped to almost nothing in the afternoon I just figured the weather had gotten nice and people were cutting out early.

On a Wednesday.

It could happen.

One would think that the bicycle commute home would have tipped me off but, no. People were driving like lunatics. Jaywalkers were out in shambling droves and the parkway was at a standstill. Not unlike any other Friday.

Except it was Wednesday.

It's astonishing how your perspective can change one you're in a car. Encased in tempered glass and steel my mind was no longer occupied by the dangers of the commute and it was allowed to wander an notice things around me that I hadn't noticed before when I was concerned for my life:

Zombies.

Damn, I hate zombies. Well, it'd been almost a year since my daughter caved in the fender, so I wasn't concerned about any additional damage as clipped a few of the walking dead in Wilkinsburg. I had really wanted to get to bed early tonight because, even though I had intended to last night, it didn't quite happen. It's no fun being sleep depped when you're fighting the undead.

I got home without too much trouble and the sudden thundershower was a bonus. As I'm sure you are well aware by now, zombies often key off the sound of human activity and will begin walking towards that sound until they find someone to gnaw on. Rain, thunder and lightening kind of overwhelm that so they just sort of wander in circles or stand in place. My family had already barricaded most of the doors and windows with the pressboard from the uncompleted attic flooring project. I didn't bother checking my email and catching up on webcomics like I normally do when I get home but instead broke out the arsenal.
Of course, this isn't everything but some of the other stuff I had (like the bullwhip and the wooden stakes) really isn't useful against zombies. The two-handed sword is ok for loping off heads if you're out in the open but not really good for urban combat. And the bow, axe handle and machete was still out in the car.

Next, was to gather supplies should we have to use that car for an escape. There seems to be some debate amongst scholars about, when dealing with a zombie infestation, whether to make a run for the mountains or barricade oneself. If I were stuck downtown I would say, "Get the fuck out of there." Well, wait. If it happened during business hours, then Pittsburgh would be a smorgasbord and, yes, get out. But after 5pm, the city empties out and one could probably move about without too much trouble. Then, one of those buildings could be a veritable fortress.

But, out here in Churchill, it's the reverse of that. During the day, all the commuters are in town, working for the man and getting eaten by the undead while the only people out in the suburbs are stay-at-home moms and home-school kids. Once they are zombified, there aren't enough of them to mount an effective siege.

So, there it is. We stay. The storm masking our presence until we can secure the perimeter, douse the lights and wait it out. If things get a bit dicey it's a fast sprint to the car and off to the Laurel Highlands.

So, the final thing on the list is to choose what to do while waiting for the military to napalm downtown.
It could take a few days, so why not study up with the reference manuals. The wife hasn't seen Shaun of the Dead yet. That's a great film. I've seen it three or four times and showed it at last year's Confluence video room. And Hot Fuzz was terrific as well. I'm not sure which I liked better.

Mentioning Confluence reminds me that I have to work out the scheduling for this year's programming. I'm featuring pilot episodes of a lot of SciFi shows. I expect a larger attendance because of the nostalgia factor. And we've got a bigger hotel this year. I borrowed a projector as well but haven't tested it out yet. I was sort of putting it off so that I could test it with my new Dell Ubuntu laptop that should be coming soon.

This is, if the UPS guy hasn't had his brain eaten.

Well, might as well put the DVD in, sit back and relax.

It's going to be a long night. Again.

Programming sleep

My initial intention was to go to bed early last night because I hadn't slept well the night before. Unfortunately, I was up until 1:30 this morning watching Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society on the SciFi Channel. A coworker had given me a downloaded copy of GitS:SSS but it wouldn't play on my PC properly. About mid-way through the sound would get out of sync so that the dialogue would come two minutes ahead. I really wanted to see the rest of the movie and didn't realize that it was going to take me until 1:30AM to do it.

Damn their new "Ani-Monday" programming schedule.

I'm going to go to bed early tonight. Really.

Marvel Super Hero RPG, Game Session 2

This week's scenario (two game weeks after the bank robbery of the last session) began with my character Damon making a delivery and pickup at Warner Center. Well, not actually Warner Center just like the game is not actually taking place in Pittsburgh. Sort of a Marvel version of Pittsburgh (just as Gotham and Metropolis are DC versions of New York). Anyway, this version of Warner Center was actually a decent urban mall and several of the other characters witnessed me entering the mall. They followed me in.

As I went from the one customer to the next, I finally noticed that someone was calling "Hey, Fire-Man." Since I had revealed myself to be self immolating, I eventually figured out it was me.

"What do you want?"

"You have superpowers."

"And you don't. Bye."

The Christian Soldier (As a player, I've learned his superhero name) demonstrates his powers by causing a wind to blow through the mall, blowing up the skirt of a nearby nun. I suppose I can appreciate that so I offer to meet them upstairs in the food court in five minutes (intending to just walk out the front door instead).

But then automatic gunfire erupts somewhere in the mall. I run up the escalator, looking for action, when I find them hesitating in front of the toy store. I run by them, past the polar bear (a minimum-wage teen with her mascot costume caught on shelving), down the isle and deliver a flying tackle to the person spraying the store indiscriminately with bullets.

It turns out to be a kid with a real gun hidden inside a toy gun. At the end of another isle there is more gunfire so I run and tackle a second kid. Meanwhile, the other two (Christian Soldier and the plant guy) have pulled some people out of the store and are questioning the manager, who is ranting about some movie merchandising.

When the cops show up, they begin explaining what was going on.

Christian Soldier says, "When I saw the kids with guns, my first thought was Islamic terrorists."

When a cop finds me in the back of the store investigating the box that the guns came in, he asks if I was with them.

"With those freaks? No."

I duck out of the store when no one is looking. Unfortunately, the other "heroes" have also been able to extricate themselves from the situation. The hulking plant guy herds us into the elevator and we make our exit. Christian Soldier says "I'm Brad and this is Scott. We want you to join our team." Scott (now transformed out of his plant form) smacks himself in the forehead at his partner's stupidity. Brad gives me his phone number so we can keep in touch. I give them my name (Why the hell not?) and a number they can call at the messenger service to get me on the radio for a "pick up."

That evening, I get a call to meet them at a Chinese restaurant. I'm told that they are going to meet God, who has been talking in Christian Soldier's head. On the second floor in a dingy apartment is an old man in a wheelchair and hooked up on oxygen."

"Well, that's a bit anticlimactic. I was hoping for Morgan Freeman."

Not really. But the story he spills is of Nazi scientists brought to the US after the war. Secret formulas. Rogue scientists. A greater battle between the forces of Good and Evil.

"Man, I am so outta' here."

The old guy reveals that he knows who I am and ties me into this whole mess. He gives a sword to Christian Soldier (who, in the last gaming session was whining about how weak his super powers were and we recommended that he get himself a holy sword) that I recognize the style of. (The GM doesn't reveal the details but I suspect that it's a truly holy relic.) The old man again comes back to me and is really cryptic as to my purpose but I get the picture, I am going to have to help prevent the end of the world.

"No, really. I'm done here."

And I get out.

I'm going to have to get in contact with the GM before the next session to spell some things out so that he doesn't write a stupid background for my character. Also, since we were playing in Bill & Walt's Game Shop, I spent some time sifting through HeroClix figures looking for something appropriate. I found a Human Torch figure that looked cool. I also found a demon chick I figured I could pull the wings off of and attach to the back of the Torch. But the check had the cool demon feet so I thought of doing some more hacking. In the end, I decided to take a knife and file to the breasts of the chick to turn it into a guy and see how that turned out. Many fewer modifications that way. I think it turned out pretty well (except that the picture makes him seem more orange than red). I can't wait for the "reveal" when Christian Soldier discovers that the bike messenger he's been working with is actually a demon.

Jumping the gun.

I've been receiving e-mails from the Tactical Manager today sent to the "Training Group". I have apparently been added to the team. Hopefully they realize that there is a world of difference between "I'm interested" and "Yes" when they offered me the position as trainer. The Operations Manager has been interviewing new recruits which means they're probably going to be brought on board in a week or two. Management is really going to be surprised if they tell me to begin training and I don't have something in writing that there's going to be a change in my paycheck.

Second chances.

The Site Manager made the offer today and, in an encouraging sign, he spoke about money very early on. He has apparently put in a request for additional funding to give me a raise in exchange for me doing training again.

Is all forgiven? All indications say yes. Of course, I have no way of knowing how far Team Lead D's tendrils reached up the chain of command. It was certainly enough to keep management from even harboring the possibility of my being in any was associated with training for a year and a half. Now that he's been gone for less than two weeks, there's no way of knowing yet whether things have truly turned the corner. So far there is only a lot of noise and encouragement.

The Site Manager wants me to write up something of a proposal; the way that I see training at the Help Desk. That will be pretty easy. I'll just write up the way I did it the first time. Hopefully, it won't be an exercise in futility as, before I start doing any actual extra work, I will have to see the money.

Music of Erich Zann

I have finally figured out the problem with getting my iPod to be recognized by Ubuntu.

Power.

My USB hub was working well enough for Ubuntu version 6 to recognize and mount my iPod but something mysterious happened when I upgraded and the PC could not longer supply enough power to the hub for it to recognize the iPod. It was enough for every other USB device but not for the iPod. Plugging in the external power supply to the hub got it to be recognized. I deleted a few file entries that I had previously made in an attempt to solve the problem and it all came back.

Now, I can again immerse myself in the evil that is the iPod.

Icebreaker

I only just today learned how much power Team Lead D. held at the Help Desk when Team Lead R. asked to talk to me at the end of the day.

He was giving me something of a head's up concerning the possibility of the Site Manager approaching me to do training again. So, in a year and a half since I discovered that I was no longer the Trainer, one week with my arch nemesis gone and the pendulum may be swinging back.

In a year and a half, Team Lead R. never talked to me but now he's saying conciliatory things like "I never had anything bad to say about you."

In six months of being here, the Site Manager has never even hinted that I could be involved in training and even in one conversation seemed to state that the door to that path was closed at a higher level than he could open yet now those doors seem to be opening.

The question, of course, is what might be waiting on the other side. I've been burned and burned very badly so I'm not going to just step on through. Before I invest that emotional capital, I must know that I am going to compensated. I want a title and the pay that goes along with it or, at the very minimum, more pay for my greater responsibilities. That point is non-negotiable. I will not invest myself for nothing.

And I won't accept the promise to "look into it." That happened the last time to no results. There have been too many empty promises. This time I want something real. I want it in writing.

These are strange days, indeed.

Credible Threats

How many bomb threats called in actually turn out to be real? The best answer I could find to that question is somewhere around 1%, and that only related to schools where bomb threats and pipe bombs seem much more prevalent than in the general public. So what is it that got the City to take yesterday's very rare and likely non-credible call about a bomb in a Parkway tunnel so seriously as to close down two tunnels right at the peak of rush hour?

The caller had a foreign accent. Maybe.

First off. . . you're morons. The South Side, source of the hoax call, is full of foreign accents. Many of those accents are from native, second generation residents. It's an integral part of Pittsburgh neighborhoods. Giving a threat credibility only because of an accent is racist. Second, hennyone kan easily fake an accent. Dere are even vebsites dat kan help hyu. Or chust vatch enough bad action films vith schtereotypical bad guys. Third, the South Side has more bars per capita of any neighborhood in the country. That should give you a clue as to the type of calls you might get from there. Fourth, only a cut-rate amateur terrorist would phone in his bomb threat an hour before it was set to go off. Terrorists prefer to, you know, terrorize people, and while being backed up on the Parkway for an hour with the tunnel closed may be inconvenient, it doesn't quite qualify as terrifying. Fifth, any foreign terrorist who had successfully gotten into the United States would not plant his bomb in a Pittsburgh tunnel. The tunnels might seem vitally important to us but in the international list of important things worth blowing up, the Squirrel Hill Tunnel is small potatoes. Very small potatoes.

This sort of nonsense is driven by fear. Not the fear of a terrorist by the general public (though there is too much of that as well), but the fear officials have of loosing their jobs should the rare call actually turn out to be true. Or rather, if the public finds out that some idiot made a prank call and the authorities didn't treat it like the real thing. They say they err on the side of safety but they are actually erring on the side of their own continued employment. That's why the Mooninite scare in Boston was such a clusterfuck.

We need to get on with our lives, not because it defies the terrorists (a common politico catch phrase) but because there aren't actually many terrorists to begin with and the world really isn't all that different than it was before 9/11. I'm more likely to get run over by a car or slip and fall in the shower than I am to be a victim of a terrorist bombing. Hell, odds are I'll be struck by lightning before I'm caught in a bomb blast so quit wasting my time and tax money by blowing up every gym bag left at a bus stop.

Rewards

The Site Manager brought in a few bags of Snickers bars as a reward for all our hard work. The IM alerting us described it as "The sweet taste of success." How about those raises we've been waiting four years for?

That would be sweet.

Fashion Luddite

It is as if I am living in the past century, or rather the century before that. I like narrow ties, no more than 2 inches wide, yet they are pretty much impossible to find. Thankfully I have a few that I was able to pick up in second hand stores 20 years ago and, since I don't wear a tie that often, I make due. I went shopping for shorts and all I could find were cargo pants that went down to the knees. Cripes, they can't even be called "shorts" anymore. I blogged not long ago about my difficulty in finding a particular style of underwear, searching a list of retail stores in the area and finally having to order online.

My latest issue is with biking gloves. I've found the Trico Handshock 1000 Crochet gloves to serve my purposes. They have plenty of gel padding, the leather palm is durable and the crochet back is cool. A minor drawback is that I get a unique fish-net tan line on the back of my hands. Given the other goofy tan lines I earn from riding a bike, it doesn't even register as a minor inconvenience.

So, when I finally wore holes in this pair of gloves, I set out to find a replacement. The place I usually found them in Squirrel Hill didn't have them. In fact, of the half a dozen shops that I looked at in the area not one had any gloves with the crochet back. They all had nylon backs and most didn't even have the XL size I needed for those. One clerk even went so far as to say that people didn't buy them anymore because they didn't have gel padding.

Except that the Trico glove does have gel padding. My only guess is that the crochet-back gloves are no longer fashionable. Everyone is going for the nylon fabric. It looks like I will need to go online to order what I want.

Feh.

Security Issues

I lost my building access card last week. The issue was assigned to Team Lead D. to resolve but I guess he was too busy looking at pr0n to do anything about. Once it was reassigned this week to someone else, it was taken care of in two days.

It says that it is due to expire in 2010. Damn, I hope I'm not still here for that.

On another security related note, we have a new procedure.

There is an occasional issue in the branches wherein something will go wrong and the user's Windows profiles will become corrupted. The solution is reasonably simple; someone remote accesses their machine, deletes the folder and then the user signs on.

But we got a message saying that we were no longer to do this simple procedure. We were to open a ticket. This means that this goes to a support group and, instead of the user's problem being resolved in a few minutes, it now takes several hours. When the IM went out informing us of this new procedure, I couldn't resist asking:

Geis: Is there a reason the support groups want to do all this extra work rather than allowing us to do it for them?

Team Lead R.: No.

So, here we are again with Management treating us like children and not sharing the reason's why. I've gone to them before with this when they wonder why morale is so low. It's a stupid policy or procedure. If you tell us why it is that way, we are smart enough to understand it and are more likely to accept it's stupidity as professionals. I suspect the reason for this latest nonsense is the same reason we have always had access issues. Some support group feels that they need to keep access limited for security reasons. Perhaps they want to secure the network from contractors. Perhaps they want to secure their jobs from outsourcing. In either case, it becomes a political struggle to get the access we need to do our jobs.

Later, Team Lead R. came to my desk and let me in on the big secret. Well, it wasn't a secret because it was exactly as I said. And so, to pressure support into granting access to all of us, we are sending all of the tickets to them so that eventually they'll get tired of being paged to do a simple folder deletion and allow us to do it.

Why keep it a secret? It's because Knowledge is Power and to keep us weak and subservient, the Official Management Handbook directs that we lowly employees be kept as powerless as possible. I'm sure it doesn't say that in those terms, but I've studied realpolitik too long to be deceived. Hell, even the Managers probably don't realize that is the reason they are being asked not to treat us like part of the team. The last conversation I had with the Site Manager included him using the phrase "That's the way it is." He doesn't even realize what a pawn he is in all this and probably never even wonders what secrets Corporate is keeping from him.

Such as the new online Employee Comment Form that Corporate has put up. I found out about that a week ago (ironically on the same day that the e-mail scandal went down) on one of the financial discussion groups and we here in the boonies have yet to be included in that. Clearly our opinion isn't even to be considered. Or how about the news that our company's 1st quarter profits are just about equal to the decrease in base pay for our overly-compensated CEO. Interesting way to cook the books. And what about the recent news that the CFO just got a big-ass raise. I wonder if he's going to kick that back to the CEO to cook the books further.

Ignorance is Bliss.

Old Growth

This weekend, I rode my bike on the Youghiogheny River Trail up to
Confluence (67 miles) and back. Along the way, below Ohiopyle, there was an interpretive sign that got me thinking.

The sign talked about settlers to the area and about how the "old growth forest" they found provided for their homes. The forest is coming back and while I rode on, I wondered how long it would take for it to become old growth again.

While words like "pristine" and "virgin forest" are often used to describe these ancient woodlands, the Native Americans who lived here before the coming of Europeans actively managed the woods. They did not use clear cut logging but they did regularly use fire to clear away undergrowth and shape the environment to their particular agricultural needs.

That all changed when Europeans came to the so-called New World in the early 1500s and brought disease with them. In short order, smallpox ravaged the native population, by some estimated killing off as much as 80% of the residents, so that when the Pilgrims came a century later, North America seemed a vast, empty forest.

It was said that a squirrel could travel the width of Penn's Woods without every touching the ground. It was into this land that the settlers came over the Alleghenies after the French & Indian War in the later half of the 1700s. This was the "old growth" forest, left fallow for only a few centuries, that they immediately began clear cutting. And by the end of the next century, it was pretty much gone. The turn of the 20th Century was the beginning of the end, or rather the beginning of the beginning. The lumber was gone so there was less need for the railroads to stop at some of these logging towns along the corridor. The change from steam to diesel killed the coal patch towns as the trains just rolled on through without having to stop. The spaces between began to become wild again.

A few hundred years. That's what it will take for the narrow strip of land along the Youghiogheny River to become "old growth" forest again. My eight-times-great grandchildren may enjoy something that I have never seen and what my eight-times-great grandparents had a part in destroying.

Of course, that will only happen if we can leave it alone. I fear that commercial and consumer pressures will prevent that from ever happening. How long will it be before the railroads rebound from their collapse of a century ago to reclaim the corridor in the name of commerce? Will our highway infrastructure become so overburdened that government forces will demand a new 2-lane highway along the river? Will this generation be the only one to appreciate what we lost enough to rebuild it, sandwiched between a dozen generations of shortsighted, selfish destruction?

Fallout

Sometime during the day, someone pulled down the sexist article posted in the men's rest room by the Hand Washing Committee. I suspect it is from my bringing it up in the wake of the Help Desk e-mail scandal rather than the letter I sent to the Ombudsman a few weeks ago. I would hope that it wasn't merely removed but that someone in authority went to the members of the Hand Washing Committee and let them know that their posting was inappropriate.

Lucky Seven

I found out the body count from yesterday's e-mail scandal was seven! The rest of us are going to have to work hard to make up for the loss. Well, perhaps not so hard because Team Lead D never actually took calls and I'm not sure what volume the other people who got axed were covering. Since I usually take twice as many calls as the average Help Desk analyst, I suspect I'll notice the slack I'm picking up but probably not more than that. It won't be like the hell of a failed software rollout (like this past Monday was).

I noticed that the Tactical Manager was unexpectedly upbeat today. After loosing a fifth of our staff and almost loosing the contract, sending us all out into the street, one would expect management to be a little more withdrawn. But he was pretty much the same chipper guy as usual. Perhaps he's glad to see Team Lead D gone as well. Perhaps there's a relief that he didn't loose his head in the scandal as well. Perhaps it's a mask he's put on to keep morale from flagging.

He came around at midday begging for people to volunteer for more hours to cover for the lost staff. I told him I'd have to get back to him because I'm carpooling with my daughter and will need to talk with her about it.

Geis: "You know, the irony is that I told you this would happen two months ago."

Tac Mgr: "Yes. Yes, you did. And it wasn't just inappropriate. It was appalling."

He did not elaborate and I did not ask. Rumors have it as a "worst case scenario" but I don't believe it. My worst case scenario includes Federal agents, impounded computers and feature coverage on CNN. Surely, this was bad but far from the worst that I can imagine.

Shocking developments.

I do not believe in psychic powers but I do believe that people can subconsciously absorb information about their environment. I spent most of my day reacting to something at the Help Desk that I just couldn't place. At the time, I merely thought I was tired and grumpy but, with hindsight I know know that the reptile part of my brain was recognizing the on the other side of my cubicle wall things were happening. There were managers moving about. Unscheduled meetings were being called. The environment was changing. Doom was in the air.

When afternoon came, We was finally let in on the secret. Several people at the Help Desk had been engaging in inappropriate e-mail conversations of a sexual nature. This had been going on for weeks and when the shit hit the fan it almost lost the Corporation's contract with The Bank.

At the end of the meeting when I had an opportunity to ask questions of the Corporate Overlord that was on site as damage control, the tension of my day got the better of me and I brought up my concerns over the inappropriately sexist postings of the Hand Washing Committee.

What I didn't bring up was the "I told you so" that I had warned Management two months ago about "a disturbing increase in talk reflecting homophobia, sexual harassment, bigotry, outright racism and general ignorance." I didn't mention that, when I was still the trainer, I would specifically cover the appropriate use of email and relate a true story of a Help Desk analyst who had stepped over that line and been fired within the hour.

At the end of the day, we hadn't learned much more than we already had and I asked a coworker if it had been anyone w knew. With so many new employees, I didn't know the comings and goings of most of those out on the floor and was curious if this was a lapse in training of new employees or some act of stupidity on the part of those who had been around for a while. I was shocked to learn that most of those involved were "old guard", those that should have known better. I was also astonished in the scope of the debacle, at least five and perhaps more (no wonder the contract was threatened). And finally I was surprised at the person at the top of the list:

My arch-nemesis: Team Lead D.

Well, not surprised. More like Claude Rains in Casablanca saying, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in this establishment!" He has, on many occasions, said things without thinking. It was only a matter of time before he said one thing too many. I was surprised that this "conversation" had been going on for weeks and that he thought he could get away with it.

However, my joy that the one person most individually responsible for depressed morale at the Help Desk is gone so decisively must be tempered by the knowledge that we who remain are now all under the microscope. The Bank will be reading our e-mails and monitoring our web surfing, looking for any infraction they can find. Any excuse could well be used to send us all packing.

I believe it will be a long time before the Help Desk returns to anything approaching normalcy.

Bonus channels

I was flipping through channels last night and came across a hanging that I recognized. Guy Fawkes being hung in the opening of "V for Vendetta."

Cool.

Wait a minute? Did he just say "Fuck'n 'ell"? This must be HBO. Except that I don't subscribe to HBO. I wondered if, a few weeks ago when our cable was inadvertently disconnected, if the tech didn't reconnect more than we were authorized for. In mentioning this to a coworker he said that he got HBO on one of his TVs as well. Even though he multiple TVs in the house, he only gets HBO on one of them. It must be some sort of encryption issue that some cable-ready units can handle and others cannot.

And it's merely a coincidence that I mentioned a surveillance society in my blog yesterday before the movie later in the evening.

Only a coincidence.

. . . and really bad eggs.

A Pirate’s Life for Me II: Opening the Map by Jason Godesky at the ANTHROPIK network

Surveillance Weekend

I bought a pair of shoes from Mountain High Sales & Marketing at the Venture Outdoors Festival. They were display models that just happened to be my size so I was able to get a $110 pair of shoes for $20. When I was getting ready to pay, the clerk asked me for my name to write in the receipt book. I refused, confusing the clerk.

"Why do you need my name to process a cash transaction?"

She didn't know. Her supervisor didn't know. They seemed intent on getting at least some name for their records and were so bound up in the rules that had been set out for them that they would probably not allow me to buy the shoes without providing some sort of name so I eventually compromised and gave them only a first name. And a false name at that.

My primary resistance came from their having the word "marketing" so prominently in their name. I didn't want to give them my name so that they could then use it as an invitation to send me junk mail. It's the same way when any retailer asks me for my phone number. (Radio Shack was notorious for this.)

On Friday at the Bike-Pgh 5th anniversary party, they showed a film called "Contested Streets", mostly about New York traffic issues and presenting some models for reform. The examples were bike lanes in Copenhagen, Paris and London. The success of London's transportation reform is through "congestion fees". If you want to drive your car in specific congested zones, you have to have paid an additional fee for the privilege. This is enforced by thousands of cameras monitoring the streets and automatically comparing license plates against a list. Sunday's Post-Gazette had an article advocating the "congestion zone" model as a solution for congestion on the South Side.

The reservations I have with those solutions are the same as I have in giving my name and phone number out to retailers: what will be done with that information? If I had any confidence at all that the Government would only use that information for managing traffic congestion then I could be comfortable with it. But, of course, I don't trust my government. Not local police. Not the State and certainly not the Feds. Too many examples of abuse across the board for me to sacrifice more of my privacy.

Marvel Super Hero RPG, Game Session 1

After the somewhat spectacular collapse of the Northern Crown game we were playing, I was surprised that it's replacement happened so quickly. It was probably helped by the fact that all the rules and supplements are available online. Also, comic book plotlines are likely to be less linear. Hopefully this game will go better than the last.

The GM introduced some of the characters to me but I've forgotten most of the details. That's OK because my character will end up learning that information through game play. One player can transform into a plant-thing. Another has disintegration and illusion abilities. A third has gotten merged with a robot and the last has some weather powers. They had apparently been granted these powers by some sort of alien looking for worthy beings on which to bestow great powers and great responsibilities.

The GM indicated that the party (or "team" to use the genre's term) could use a Batman or Punisher-type of character. I looked through the powers and didn't see anything that really appealed to me so I pulled out Central Casting. CC is an out-of-print generic supplement that allows you to randomly create a person for use in a game. I started rolling and everything either came up boring (both parents still alive and together) or bad (people died when he was born, member of an evil cult, etc.) From there, an idea formed. The guy with weather control is something of a religious fundamentalist. The Holy Warrior, or something like that. Wears a pries collar and everything. I suspect that in real life the person playing him is a bit Born Again as well. To me, the answer is obvious, my character is a demon.

So, I developed a demon character. Not so much a Good vs. Evil kind of demon but Order vs. Chaos. A lot like the conflict between the Vorlons and the Shadows from "Babylon 5." As I recall one of the stories from, the Apocrypha, Lucifer was one of the highest ranked angels in the host of heaven. When God created man, he demanded that the angels bow down to them. Lucifer took exception to this form of servitude and formulated a rebellion. A third of Heaven joined him and they were eventually defeated and cast down into Hell. I'm casting this story in terms of the pure order, conformity and obedience of Heaven against the freedom, liberty and anarchy of Hell. Well, it's not quite that way but that interpretation will allow my demon character to not be evil and thus work with the heroes.

I'm taking most of my character cues from a number of demon webcomics; 6x9 College, Sacrilicious, Krakow, Maxwell the Demon, Elijah and Azuu, plus some Hellboy and Dogma thrown in. I'm trying not to take this too seriously.

I haven't quite figured out his true name yet. It's probably not important because he certainly wouldn't tell anyone on Earth what it was. The name on his college student ID is Damon L. Maxwell. He's going to school part time and earning a living as a bike messenger. He seems fairly typical for the urban cyclist crowd but it is just a mask. His true form is much more demonic; red skin, fangs, horns, claws, bat wings, hellfire, the traditional stuff.

So, the game begins with Damon taking a break and getting some lunch. A calzone and a Mountain Dew at a local pizza shop. Suddenly, gunshots ring out across the street. A bank robbery. One wouldn't expect a demon to leap to the rescue and, in point of fact, he doesn't. He could care less about the bank being robbed. But with gunshots and people getting hurt, well, he cares a little more about that. But the most important factor in setting him in motion is an opportunity to play the vigilante, beat people up and have some fun doing it. People don't typically care if the bad guys get what they've got coming to them.

So, he jumps on his bike to go fuck with the get-away driver. Except that someone else has beaten him to it. Spiders come out of the sewers and swarm the car (an illusion). And as the panicked driver hits the gas, Damon sees a plant-thing advancing on the bank. He puts two-and-two together and figures that superheros are involved. Let them deal with the bank, he's going after the driver.

After chasing him for a few blocks on his bike, he finally gets close enough to set fire to one of the vehicles tires. Another block and the driver abandons the vehicle, still not realizing that the guy on the bike is after him. Damon clotheslines him. Charging uses the endurance stat, which Damon has at the "monstrous" level. It's like being run down by the Hulk. Damon checks to make sure he didn't kill the guy then rifles through his pockets. He finds a fake ID and a few hundred dollars. He leaves the ID and pockets the cash.

He bikes back to the bank and eventually tracks gunfire into a neighboring building. He climbs a fire escape, goes in a window and eventually encounters a fight. A hero (the illusionist, apparently) is looking over a railing in the stairwell. On the next floor down, a huge scary cop with a huge scary dog (an illusion) is menacing the bad guy who is engaged in a wrestling match with the Holy Warrior. This goes on for a while and Damon merely shrugs at the illusionist. When it looks like the bad guy has gotten the upper hand and might get away, Damon jumps the rail onto him and wrestles with him. Grappling uses the strength stat, which Damon has at the "Remarkable" level. He can bench press a ton and probably punch through reinforced concrete, the bad guy's shoulders don't stand a chance. "Pop! Pop!" Damon leaves him in a heap, wishes the stunned heroes a good day and heads down the stairs.

Getting on his bike to ride off, he is suddenly enveloped by plant tendrils.

"Who are you?" the plant-thing asks. Damon instinctively immolates and the sulfurous flames cause the plant-guy to let go.

"You're calzone is ready," he says, transforms into a tumbleweed and rolls off, revealing that he recognizes Damon from the pizza shop.

So ends game one.

Neither the hero characters nor the people who play them know that my character is a demon. They know he's a preternaturally strong bike messenger who can set fire to himself but nothing more. I'm going to impress upon the GM the importance of keeping my demonic identity a secret. One, it's more dramatic that way. Two, it will allow me to become friends with the heroes before they learn that I'm a demon, preventing them from being prejudiced against the fallen. Three, if they do get judgmental, I'll be able to call them hypocrites.

Commitment to Communication

Got an e-mail just before lunchtime today saying that because of a scheduled rollout on Sunday, those scheduled to work on Sunday through Wednesday will need to work mandatory overtime.

So, I immediately went to the office to ask:

Geis: "When was this decision made?"

Site Manager: "When?"

Geis: "Yes, when. When was this decision made, because it would be nice to have more than two days warning when there are major changes to all our schedules."

Site Manager: "Earlier in the week."

Geis: "And was there a particular reason why this information was kept from us?"

Site Manager: "It was supposed to go out earlier in the week. Is there a problem?"

Geis: "Only in the so-called 'Commitment to Communication' management keeps talking about."

I turned my back and walked away without further comment.

Consequences

The Pittsburgh City Paper had an article about a flurry of recent incidents of violence against cyclists. And, much like I blogged the other day, the first comment posted on the website was by a motorist that blamed the cyclists.

"When on the roads you are obligated to follow adult rules and suffer adult consequences. "

The incidents described had nothing to do with cyclists getting what this pinhead thinks they deserve for disobeying the rules of the road. These are cyclists being assaulted merely for being a cyclists. These are hate crimes.

In addition to countless incidents of verbal harassment, being spit upon and having Big Gulps thrown at me, I have been twice physically assaulted, my only crime being riding my bicycle or perhaps being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For one incident, I was riding the median of Ardmore Blvd. out of Wilkinsburg approaching the Parkway East overpass. It was a hot summer day and I had taken my helmet off. I was suddenly struck in the back of the head and went down. On my hands and knees trying to gather my bearings I was struck again in the back of the skull. I was able to get up and found half a dozen teens fleeing down the hill. They had seen me riding slowly up the hill and apparently thought it would be fun to cross the street to come up behind me and punch me in the back of the head.

The second incident involved me riding home through Wilkinsburg at 11:30 at night. As I approached the busway underpass and station on South Ave. when I came across two youths, one of which was carrying a baseball bat, clearly on the prowl. I attempted to ride off but the geometry of the situation would not have allowed me to avoid being overtaken. I attempted to ditch my bike but got tangled up in the pedals and fell. I ran but realized that I couldn't outrun them and so, as a last resort, I drew my pistol and turned to face them.

They backed down. Not by much, however. While they backed off allowing me to attempt to recover my bike and make my way to the police station a block away, they continued to taunt me from a distance. They apparently believed that because I hadn't shot that I would not shoot. It was about this time that I realized that there was blood all over my hand, the pistol and my shirt from lacerations on my hand sustained when the bike went down and I hit the asphalt.

They tried to outflank me, I ditched the bike and they settled on stealing my bike (which was recovered later because the fall had rendered it unridable). I put my pistol away before knocking on the fire station door and saw that it was in a half-cocked position. I had been half-way through a double-action trigger pull when my attacker, at point blank range, had gone from an aggressive to a non-aggressive posture. In that literal split second, he had saved his life by backing off. Otherwise, I would have sent a 115 grain hollowpoint crashing through the bridge of his nose at 1150 feet per second.

How is that for "adult consequences?"

If there is one thing that really pisses me off about bicycle riding it is the asshats safely cocooned inside their armored vehicles blaming cyclists for the accents they get in. I got sideswiped on Forbes Avenue by a woman in a hurry to get by me and the first words out of her mouth blamed me for "riding down the middle of the road." I was not riding down the middle of the road, I was sandwiched between this bitch and a line of parked cars when she clipped me and sent me over my handlebars. And even if I was riding down the middle of the road, I would have been well within my legal rights to do so. It was YOU who violated the law by not allowing me sufficient room. It was YOU who struck my vehicle. It was YOU who caused the accident.

And here, we're not even talking about accidents or even instances of road rage when some imagined infraction by a cyclist causes a motorist to become unnaturally irate. Were talking about active criminal assaults on bicyclists.

Really! Cyclists are having the shit beaten out of them and you are condoning this! What the fuck is wrong with you people?

To be, or not to be, helmeted.

My posting yesterday about cyclists not wearing helmets being given less space got me thinking. Something didn't quite add up, especially when the statistics presented by the wear-a-helmet supporter noted only fatalities with and without helmets. One needed to compare how many serious injures might have otherwise been fatal or how many minor injuries might have otherwise been serious without the helmet to really understand if the helmet works or not.

An article at BicycleSafe.com and the website CycleHelmets.org presents a lot of information that boils down to a helmet offering no additional protection, or rather, no statistically significant additional protection. The conclusions, I think, are still lacking in depth because there are very few effective studies that details accidents without serious injuries. But the point is really that getting struck by a car generates a lot of trauma besides any blow to the head (rendering the helmet statistically insignificant) and that the best way to avoid injury is not be struck by a car in the first place. And, in addition to safe riding practices by bicyclists, one of the better ways to avoid being hit is to have more bikes on the road. More bikes mean more bike awareness and thus safer drivers.

I'm am, however, not wholly convinced by their arguments. There can be a lot of difference between "statistically significant" and a concussion. In the Madison, Wisconsin story of the guy having his head run over by a truck, the helmet he had was statistically very significant to him. And while most of my accidents are likely not to involve a car and wearing a helmet could be that difference between a minor injury and a more serious injury, I'm not going to abandon my helmet on city streets to avoid the slightly increased risk of getting swiped by some pinhead.

They also put forward a disdain for bike trails in that they take bikes off the road, making motorists think that they own the roads and thus are less accommodating to bicycles. I can understand the theory and psychology of this but I have never been struck by a car while on a bike trail but have been struck half a dozen times by vehicles who did not "share the road." Perhaps some day, when gasoline is $10 a gallon and there are thousands of bikes on the road in Pittsburgh instead of only dozens, then wearing a helmet may become an insignificant factor. Until then, my brain needs all the protection it can get.

Blame the victim

An article in the Madison, Wisconsin "Capital Times" tells of a cyclist who, while riding a bike path and crossing at an intersection with the light, was cut off by a panel truck that didn't see him. The cyclist hit his brakes hard, went over the handlebars, and ended up having his head run over by the truck. The helmet probably saved the man's life, leaving him with only a concussion while the truck drove off.

An astonishing story, to be sure, but what was even more astonishing is in the comments on the website after the story. Very quickly, there were comments from truck drivers that blamed the cyclist. One even went so far as to say that the incident was a hoax, most likely perpetrated by the bike helmet manufacturer.

Do you drivers hate us cyclists so much that you cannot treat us like human beings? Or perhaps you are so isolated and safe, wrapped within your tons of steel with the volume up on the radio and a Starbuck's coffee in the beverage holder, that everything outside has been reduced to an abstract concept. Not actual people but cars, bicycles and faceless pedestrians.

Helmets an invitation to vehicular assault

An article in Scientific American presents a study that shows when cyclists are wearing helmets, cars approach and average of 3.35 inches closer.

Now, three inches might not seem like such a big deal but when they are starting at a little over an arm's length of clearance, those inches can disappear very quickly.

The study's author says :

"The implication, is that any protection helmets give is canceled out by other mechanisms, such as riders possibly taking more risks and/or changes in how other road users behave towards cyclists."

I'll say right out, that's bullshit. Sure, it's true when your talking about the probability of being struck but what happens when one is actually struck. An entirely different set of statistics come into play that involve the probability of head trauma with or without a helmet.

The article quotes "New York City released a report on bicycle deaths and injuries: 225 cyclists died between 1996 and 2005 on New York streets; 97 percent of them were not wearing helmets."

Here are some of the highlights of that report:

• Almost three-quarters of fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use among those bicyclists with serious injuries (3,462 between 1996 and 2003) was low (13%), but it was even lower among bicyclists killed (3%).

These numbers make it pretty clear. If you don't wear a helmet, you're going to get hurt badly.

• Nearly all bicyclist deaths (92%) occurred as a result of crashes with motor vehicles.
• Large vehicles (trucks, buses) were involved in almost one-third (32%) of fatal crashes, but they make up approximately 15% of vehicles on NYC roadways.
• Most fatal crashes (89%) occurred at or near intersections.
• Nearly all (94%) fatalities involved human error.

In an altercation between a bicyclist and a vehicle, the bicyclist will loose every time.

• Only one fatal crash with a motor vehicle occurred when a bicyclist was in a marked bike lane.

Vehicles, or rather those driving those vehicles, do not "share the road". The best way to protect bicyclists is to get them their own space. Listen to what NYC is doing:

Over the next three years DOT will install 200 miles of bicycle facilities with targets of 5 miles of Class I separated paths, 150 miles of Class II striped lanes, and 45 miles of Class III signed routes. DPR will also add 40 miles of Greenways in City parks over the next four years

150 miles of bike lanes! Pittsburgh is going to get zero in the next three years (or for the foreseeable future). The riverfront park plan will add a bunch of Class I trails along the rivers, which will be great, but out in the streets where people commute I only know of plans in Bloomfield for signs and street marking that encourage "sharing the road".

Bike to Work Week

The May 4th Wall Street Journal had an article called "Building a Better Bike Lane" which details the ways that European countries are encouraging the use of bicycles as transportation. Not just for weekend recreation but for commuting and day-to-day work. In Amsterdam, 40% of workers commute by bicycle. In Copenhagen, more than a third ride their bikes. Copenhagen is building a parking garage for bicycles with spaces for, get this, 10,000 bikes.

Their article also mentions some of the better biking cities in the US. Boulder, Colorado has 97% of it's main artery roads with bike lanes and 21% of commuters ride bikes. Davis, California is a bike city with more bikes than cars. I've been to Madison, Wisconsin and seen the situation there where you can actually ride a bike lane into a shopping mall complex.

So, how does Pittsburgh measure up?

Pittsburgh has no arterial bike lanes. There are designated "bike routes" but they consist of nothing more than "Share the Road" signs on some of the most heavily trafficked and dangerous roads in the city. What bike lanes there are don't actually take you anywhere, and are focused on parks and recreational use of bikes. The few bike trails along the rivers do offer some off-road opportunities and there are more bike racks downtown than there used to be but they don't reach out far enough to really be commuting corridors. The Port Authority has a number of bus routes with bike racks but there is a 1-in-3 chance that any particular bus on that route won't actually have a rack.

With almost no biking infrastructure, it's not surprising that less than .03% of commutes in Pittsburgh is by bicycle. That's not three percent, that's three-hundredths of one percent. Between 25 and 100 people commute by bicycle compared to the 270,000 who come into town by car.

There is some slight progress towards making Pittsburgh a more bike-friendly city. Dan Onorato's grand scheme for the riverfront park system will be nice and I'll certainly use it for my commute but to make anywhere else in the city bicycle friendly where the car is already king will take some hard decisions that I doubt will be made. Bike lanes anywhere would need to be carved out of existing driving lanes or parking and I can pretty much guarantee that will never happen. Bike racks on city streets have been a hard sell. Even when offered for free, businesses have resisted them as cluttering up their sidewalks.

I've been run off the road too many times to be anything but cynical. People won't commute by bike unless the infrastructure improves and the infrastructure will not be significantly improved while ridership is so low.

aaaaaaaaand, we're back.

Our Internet and cable TV have been down for two days. We called Comcast and they said they might be out by Monday. It turns out, they were able to come out this morning and check things out.

What I hadn't noticed was that there was a piece of cut coaxial cable and a big crescent wrench lying in the ivy at the bottom of the pole. The tech climbed the ladder and said we had been disconnected.

His explanation is that auditors have been traveling about disconnecting people who shouldn't have cable (like those that haven't paid their bills) and have been making a number of mistakes.

Terrific. You've got one set of employees going around disconnecting people and another group going around fixing their mistakes. Sound like a scam to me.

So, after two days, I have some 500 emails waiting for me, 350 of which are spam.

Quiet again

As I predicted, once my blog about the Virginia Tech shootings slid into my archives, the high hit traffic on my blog returned to normal. My request for comments has revealed that even most of the 8 or 10 hits I get every day probably aren't from people who actually read my blog.

Behold, the scientific process proving that pretty much no one in the world cares what I have to say.

Camping on the Passage

My weekend ride and recent news has led me to again think about camping along the Great Allegheny Passage and how there needs to be more opportunities.

Dan Onorato is making a push for completing the trail to Pittsburgh in 2008. Even so, there is likely to be zero campsites for the northern 29 miles of the trail. Bikers won't have a problem covering that distance but anyone hiking will either need to find a hotel or have a long day.

>From the camp at Dravo Cemetery to the Cedar Creek Trekker Campground is 13 miles. That's a more typical hiking day. It's then 10 miles to Round Bottom and then 10 miles to what will be called the Stewart's Crossing Campground at Connellsville. The question I have is will this be a free camp or will you have to pay for the privilege to pitch a tent? Since this is being developed by the Connellsville Redevelopment Authority, the Connellsville Historical Society, the Cultural Trust Foundation, the Yough River Trail Council (YRTC) and the Regional Trail Corporation (RTC) I'm thinking it will be free (although one is likely to have to pay something for the privilege of sleeping inside the caboose being moved to the site).

It's another 17 miles to the Kentuck Campground at Ohiopyle. Camping is free but Reservations are required. Another 10 miles to the Youghiogheny Dam Outflow where there is a $3 to camp in the hiker/bike area.

And here's where it starts getting unpleasant again. The Husky Haven Campground at Rockwood is due to open up 19 miles away. The cost for camping is due to be $15.00 per night per campsite plus $5.00 per person. Then, its going to be 28 miles to Frostburg where the Trail Inn is developing a campground. No idea on what pitching a tent there may cost.

Finally, Frostburg to Cumberland is 15 miles and then another 4 miles to the first hiker/biker site on the C&O Canal. (Which is really noisy, as is the second campsite. Going to the North Branch camp adds nearly 10 miles out of Cumberland.) Once on the C&O there are some 34 campsite for 184 miles. That an average of one camp every 5.4 miles.

The way I see it, The Allegheny Highlands Trail between Cumberland and Confluence is unfriendly to hikers especially. There are long distances between places to camp and the places that do exist are going to charge you to pitch your tent.

I know there's a lot of talk about trail town development and I'm all for supporting communities along the trail. But personally, when I'm hiking, biking or camping, I don't want to stay in a Bed & Breakfast. Part of my idea of being outdoors is that nature is a cheap date. I don't feel bad throwing $3 at DCNR to pitch a tent at Confluence and support the cause but $20 straight into the pockets of the guys at Husky Haven seems a bit steep to rent a patch of grass for the night. I think the AHT needs more free campsites. And the trail especially needs a campsite in that long stretch between Rockwood and Frostburg. It would not surprise me to see hikers setting up pirate camps in some empty patch beside the trail somewhere between Sand Patch and Deal.

For myself, I'll continue riding the entire AHT trail in one day and
camping once I get down on the C&O.

Trail hoppin'

Even though I bicycle commute all winter long, today was the first chance of the season to get back out on the Great Allegheny Passage. Normally, I would consider this a very late start because I've been riding from here to DC over Memorial Day weekend, coming up in only a few weeks. But this year, my wife has decided to go to Marcon that weekend, which is in Ohio, and thus would not be able to pick me up at the end of my ride in DC. That ride has been put off while other plans are made. That will also allow me more opportunity to do long rides and get in shape.

Anyway, back to the trail today. I started as I normally do in Little Boston a little later than I should have liked. I left the trail at Smithton to climb the hill to the Olive Branch Cemetery and it's historical marker commemorating the Darr Mine disaster of 1907 wherein 239 miners died in an underground explosion. That kind of death toll is almost staggering but pales in comparison to the 3000 miners that lost their lives in that December industry wide.

The marker was stage one of a multi-stage geocache which eventually brought me back down to the trail and the location of the Darr Mine itself just outside of Van Meter. Dirt has been piled up in front of the entrance but the mine hasn't been sealed. While I was there, a groundhog came scurrying down the hillside and ran straight into the entrance so the mine is still in use.

On the way back on the north end of Van Meter, a pair of ATVs crossed the
trail. There are mine tailings and the moonscapes are popular places for
dirtbikes and ATVs. Unfortunately, these rednecks also ride their machines
on the trail, causing significant damage. And it's nearly impossible to get
law enforcement on-site to do anything about it. I have heard that the
Maryland section of the trail had a part-time officer out of Frostburg who would patrol the trail on his bike. His presence had a significant effect on ATV use of the trail. There was talk of eliminating that position and a move by trail users to prevent that from happening. What is really needed is more cops on bikes patrolling the trail, especially those places where ATVs are causing problems. Especially on weekends. Their even occasional presence would go a long way towards controlling damage to the trail.

I noticed that there are two new bike/canoe rental places just outside of Boston. People are gearing up to get in on a piece of the action now that the trail is complete between McKeesport and DC. I just read an article that they are building a campsite in Connellsville. This will include a caboose to have people out of the elements.

Some other random observations:

Most people do no wear helmets when riding bikes on the trail. This includes children who, by law, should be wearing helmets.

Of those who do wear helmets, a significant number wear them incorrectly, typically way back on their heads. One woman I saw had her helmet on backwards.

There was one man riding without a shirt. I was immediately reminded of a silverback Mountain Gorilla. That was one hairy guy.

One step forward. . .

The past two weeks have been filled with Ubuntu pain and joy. First, the pain. . .

After trying to update my laptop to try to get my wireless network card to work, I began having issues with the system freezing. It would go through the startup and then end with a blank screen and a non-flashing cursor right before the login prompt should have come up. Multiple reboots would get the system to finally come up. Shutting down, however, would hang and the Ubuntu splash screen and not shut down. It was a vicious cycle.

The first suggestion I attempted was an upgrade from 6.06 to 7.04. That didn't work. I tried going back to the original 6.06 version but the hanging issue got worse. I thought perhaps it was an old BIOS and download an update but it would only work with Windows. I couldn't get my 98 disks to install (not bootable) so I installed 95. That wouldn't run the BIOS upgrade and I couldn't get it to upgrade to 98. I don't have any 2000 disks so I tried an FDISK /MBR to really clear out everything on the disk and try Ubuntu again. The boot problem was worse than ever. Not only would it not boot, even after multiple attempts, it took multiple attempts to book from the live CD.

So, something in the laptop is truly screwed up. I've read some things about Ubuntu messing with an EPROM on old IBM laptops like mine but couldn't find enough to tell me how to fix it. I've thought of buying a new drive to make sure there's nothing there.

One step forward. Two steps back.

Then, Dell announced that by the end of the month they would be offering a number of their models with Ubuntu pre-installed. I'm not quite ready to give up on my IBM T20 yet, but if I can get a new machine with Ubuntu all ready to go, maybe it will be worth the investment.

Dude, I'm gettin' a Dell.

On the plus side, in the meantime I've also been working with my swappable drive on my tower. I yank the Win98 drive and slide in the Ubuntu drive. I've upgraded to 7.04. Partitioned the drive better. Tweaked it so that I get full 1440x900 resolution on my flat panel display. Installed Google Earth (still runs pretty slow, though). Added wallpapers. Migrated my Buddy List from Trillian into GAIM. Installed Thunderbird (but haven't migrated my accounts yet). Migrated my Firefox bookmarks. And I am now writing this blog from that Ubuntu machine.

The next real step is to get a Windows emulator running so that I can run several apps that I really want to have that are designed for the Windows environment (such as National Geographic Topo). I also need to tweak some things to get all the buttons on my Logitech MX510 mouse to work.

New from the Hand Washing Committee

For many months now, the Hand Washing Committee has had a top-10 sign posted on the inside of the men's restroom door warning us of all the nasty things that shall befall us should we not wash our hands. The dispensers ran out of soap recently and the water was cold so there were plenty of signs posted on the mirrors to the cleaning staff to "take care of the situation."

A new sign showed up on the door this morning. It says "The Dirt on Women at Work. A woman's workplace surface holds more germs than a man's, with their computer mice and keyboards housing four times more bacteria and their desk drawers holding seven times more germs than men's."

The handwritten prefix to this message is "Looks like someone else needs to talk about washing their hands."

Now, were this posted in a more public space instead of just in the men's room, this would clearly be considered sexual harassment. As it is, it's probably going to be considered merely sexist. I'm sure the Hand Washing Committee looks at it as good clean fun.

Are these people really that stupid that they think someone won't point the inappropriateness of this out to upper management?

Someone like me.

Really bad sports metaphor

Illinois Congressman John Shimkus (R) used the following metaphor to describe the Iraq spending bill.

"Imagine my beloved St. Louis Cardinals are playing the much despised Chicago Cubs. The Cardinals are up by five finishing the top of the ninth. Is this a cause for celebration? Is this a cause for victory? No. Unbelievable as it may seem, the Cubbies score five runs in the bottom of the ninth to throw the game into extra innings. There the score remains until 1:00 a.m., five innings later. However at the top of the 15th the Cardinals fail to field a batter. The entire team has left the stadium.

It seems that they are more worried about next day's 1:00 p.m. game at home than finishing the game at hand. Who wins? We know, it's the team that stays on the field. Arbitrary deadlines and a date certain accept defeat before the conclusion of the contest. It is our national security interest to continue to take the field and support a moderate Arab state. Leaving prior assures a loss for us and victory for our opponents which will lead to another extremist Islamic state."

A bottom of the ninth turnaround? You've gotta be kidding me. Let me spin this analogy, congressman. . . .

My hometeam, the American Patriots are going up against the Iraqi Martyrs. The Patriots beat the Iraqi team soundly in the last game they played and come in thinking this will be a cake walk. The first couple of innings look to be another shutout but after that, the Martyrs change their tactics. It's like playing a completely different team. A team that plays dirty. A Patriot thinks he's safely sliding into home but gets cleat-sliced by the catcher and is out of the game. A Patriot heading into second gets nailed in the head by a throw and he's out of the game. The ninth inning comes with the game tied and the go into extra innings. The Patriots are getting beat up, loosing players. Sure, they are scoring runs but at a heavy cost. The Martyrs are loosing players as well but new players come out of the stands to take up the bat.

As the game drags into many extra innings, the crowd has changed. What at first were cheering throngs have now turned universally, not against the team who are doing their best in an impossible situation, but against the coach who has failed to see that the game is lost. The coach said this would be easy but the team is being murdered out there. And, wait a minute, weren't we told we were going to be playing in Afghanistan against the Osama Bombers?

And there's the coach, continuing to. . .

You know what? I'm going to stop this right now because the sports metaphor is just too absurd.

Wake up, asshat! This isn't a game. It's a war and it's lost. It was lost a long time ago. Hell, it never should have been started in the first place. If you think going into "extra innings" will somehow generate victory, you are just fucking delusional.

(Not) The Great Yinzer Smokeout

I have absolutely no sympathy for the smoking population, especially since they have leveraged yet another injunction against enforcement of Allegheny County's indoor smoking ban. They cry about their rights being infringed. I'm all for individual rights. . . that is until they start infringing on the rights of others. In this case, my right to not breathe that garbage you're blowing in my face.
I consider it an assault.

Smokers are pigs.

While I imagine there may be some smokers out there who are considerate and responsible (it is statistically possible), I have never seen such a person. I have never witnessed a smoker go out of his way to deposit his butt in an appropriate garbage receptacle. If it's more that one or two steps to a garbage can, the butt goes on the sidewalk or in the street. Particularly "considerate" are those that flick them into bushes in an attempt to conceal their litter. My own father, a long time smoker, didn't seem to have any problem flicking his butts into the yard of the house I had just bought on his first visit.

Take a walk downtown and you will see smokers clustered around the
entrances to their workplaces, happily standing in front of numerous "No Smoking" signs to fill the entryway with pollution.

Some smokers extinguish their cigarettes in the conveniently placed
receptacles before entering a building, but many just drop the half-smoked cigarettes just before going through door. Almost all take one last long drag before going through, exhaling once the enter the building or filling the revolving door. The same sort of things happens at bus stops.

Smokers seem to have little problem trapping their children inside their cars while they smoke. Sometimes, they crack a window but I know from experience, that doesn't do shit. I would go so far as to say that parents who smoke inside their homes are committing an act of child abuse. I grew up in that environment and thought it was normal to be sick all winter long until I got out to college and started breathing clean air. After that, I only ever got sick when I went home for a holiday.

The smokers cry about freedom but they are not free. I see guys downtown picking up half-smoked cigarettes from the gutter to feed their addiction. This is not freedom, it's slavery.

And these slaves to their own addictions have held the rest of us in bondage for far too long with dire warnings of economic collapse should they not be allowed to inflict their so-called rights on their employees and customers.

Deflated

Someone stole the pump off my bike today while it was parked outside the office.