The Evil Eyebrow

TRON! That is all.

We went to see They Might Be Giants last night, opened by Jonathan Coulton. This was both a fun night and an exceptionally long one.

Fun because I got to hang with friends having pizza and beer prior to the concert and enjoying the music during. Long because I was/am sick as the proverbial dog and was having difficulty not just sitting against a wall and listening to the drums in my own head.

Beyond the cold, the concert was a lot of fun. Jonathan Coulton’s music is fun and TMBG’s stuff is also wacky and wild. We were treated to two different sets of music by sock puppets. How often can you say that?

The picture above was taken after TMBG asked everyone to pull out their various video-capable electronic devices and record the song (one of the sock puppet songs). You can see all the various screens lit up.

My Mother-in-Law gave us a plate for Christmas. This plate belongs with our china pattern, Vintage Jewel. When we received it, I commented to Jenn that we should take the plate and upgrade it by getting the rest of the setting, plus one more full setting as that would get us to six total. For our dining room size and how we tend to entertain, six is a good number.

Therefore, off I went to Macy’s! Macy’s was the store of choice because it’s local and I can walk in and actually look at the china patterns to be sure I’m getting the right thing.
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(Well, one of the coolest things…)

This website, brought to my attention by the Bad Astronomer, is just way too much of a time sink. I can sit and play for hours. It is a solar system simulator which lets you play with the initial conditions with up to four different bodies!

As Phil Plait says, start with one of the default solar systems and tinker with it. It’s fun. I especially liked trying to craft odd slingshot trajectories.

Charles Stross has a nice description and discussion of the Book Publishing Contract of Doom! over at his blog today.

It struck a chord with me at this paragraph:

The fourth chunk [of the contract] is about publication dates ….The publisher is required to publish the book within 24 months of the date of acceptance of each book. There are a handful of loopholes (for lawsuits, labor disputes, or government intervention), but if they don’t publish within 24 months I can yell at them in writing: they then have six months to publish, and if they can’t manage that, I get to terminate the agreement, take my rights back, and keep the advance.

I’ve read some novels in the last decade that were written and set in a post 9-11 world. Re-reading them, they seem so quaint with their “I was written in January 2002″ attitude. Things have changed a lot since that time; things have been, charitably, in flux. Basing novels on contemporaneous events¹ can make them seem a bit dated when rereading them at a later time, and based upon the paragraph above, your novel might not even see the light of bookshelves before 2 years after acceptance, much less first draft.

Beware.

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¹: Tom Clancy’s stuff is notorious for this

I ran the Charles Harris Run for Leukemia 10k yesterday in chilly, but sunny, weather (28 degrees farenheit at race start). It was a fun race with a good course. I would do this one again.

The race starts in Tucker, GA and uses Lawrenceville Highway (US 29/SR 8) for the majority of the race course. As advertised, the course is long downhill slopes with a few uphills for a very fast route. If you race and train around Atlanta, the uphills are pretty gentle. At the end of the course, at approximately kilometer 9, the path turns right onto North Druid Hills road and then right again into a neighborhood. This is very important to realize, and I’ll tell you why:

First, a digression. I’m a big proponent of running/biking/driving a race course prior to running a race. It only makes sense! Put some eyes on the course to know what to expect and whether or not there are surprises or things that must be planned for. I did not follow this rule yesterday, for several reasons. Therefore, I had a bit of a surprise at the end of the race.

As I said, the race course is primarily on Lawrenceville Highway which is a 5-lane arterial here in the metro area, servicing traffic commutting to and from eastern DeKalb and western Gwinnett Counties. This means it has gentle hills (probably no greater than 3-4% at maximum, I’m guesstimating). As you approach North DeKalb Mall, there is a long downslope starting at about kilometer 8. If you pace a 10k like I do, this is the time to start using up the rest of the gas in the tank, so to speak, and burn the last couple kilometers as quickly as possible. So, you’re picking up the pace coming down this incline, using it for all you are worth. Then you make the right turn onto Druid Hills. There’s a bit of an uphill here, sharp but not too bad. Then you make another right turn onto Mistletoe Road, with additional uphill, and then finally onto Mt. Olive Drive where you discover that the nice gentle downhills and uphills on Lawrencville Highway were lulling you into a false sense of security!

There is one very steep, but quick, climb just as you turn onto Mt. Olive at ~9.4k. For me, this wasn’t so bad except there was an equally steep downhill on the other side which I just didn’t have the legs to take advantage of. I’m of the school that says, “If it’s a steep downhill, get that turnover going and use it,” but my legs just weren’t going to go that fast, so I ended up wasting energy and time on the downslope (which will be explained as important in a second). Finally, the last half kilometer of the race is slightly upslope leading to the finish line.

I had been (sort of) aiming at a sub-50 time for this race and my pacing through the course had led me to think I could do it. Unfortunately, I’d left everything I had out on Lawrenceville Highway and especially on the two uphills leading into Mt. Olive Drive. All I could do for the last bit was hold on and try not to slow down. Faster wasn’t in the cards.

Final time was 50:01. Two seconds out of my unstated goal.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m happy with that time. It’s a PR by something like a minute and a half; it’s an excellent time for me. I also can’t say I didn’t run a good race. I managed negative or equal splits the whole way except for one uphill mile (switching to miles now, sorry) in the middle. Who’s to say that if I hadn’t used the downhill on kilometer 8-9, I’d have put up a slower time. However, if I had my druthers, I’d have liked to have pounded those last two hills into submission and not felt like I was just holding on for the finish. It would have been nice if I could have snipped those two seconds off the total time.

Mile splits were:
8:25
8:10
8:04
8:12 (uphill section)
8:01 (also had some uphill but I was nudging into high gear)
7:35 (mostly downhill but included most of the hills listed above)
1:34 (which calculates to a 12:37 mile pace)

Compare that last bit of mileage (0.2 km) to all the rest of the splits and you’ll see what I was getting at about the hills. Going from a constant 8:00 minute pace to 12:37 means that somebody ran out of oomph.

The lesson here is two-fold! Be aware of the late hills on this course and always check out the races you’re about to undertake.

As I said, I had a good race, it was fun, and I’d do it again. It was well-supported with plenty of volunteers and safety officers.

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The full race results for 2010 can be found at Active.com which is doing its best recently to piss me off in the same way ticketmaster does; by slapping “convenience fees” of rather extreme amounts onto race registration.

If you liked xkcd’s treatment, you’ll like this one by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Jack, Jake, Whoever

Jenn and I use a credit card almost exclusively for everyday transactions. This began as an effort to win Delta Skymiles (and is well worth the bookkeeping effort) but now seems like a good idea in general, unless we go back to cash.

In the past, thieves used devices on the outside of gas pumps to get PIN numbers and information from cards. They installed tiny cameras and card skimmers to steal the information and then dip into a victim’s account. In this case, somebody had placed devices inside gas pumps. [ed. emphasis]

There’s just no way to defend against something like that.

If you use a credit card and there is a fraudulent transaction, the credit card issuer will refund you the money and go looking for the perpetrator. In my experience I’ve never had a credit card company question my declaration of fraud.

I am more leary about debit cards because of the ability of a fraudster to remove actual money from your actual account, rather than just use the card to purchase things. Again, in my own experience, I’ve had Bank of America refund us approximately $100 due to someone swiping Jenn’s debit card info, but that was not a cash withdrawl.

Scary. Not so much that I feel like I’d go bankrupt but who has the time to deal with this sort of crap?