Kyle Banerjee's Blog

This is particularly true of weather forecasting. Satellite imagery has been around for some time, but it’s only been in the past few decades that increasingly sophisticated radar and mathematical models have given us predictions that are worth listening to.

For some reason, we turn to experts who have proved incompetent at their trade. Take Punxsutawney Phil for example. He’s been predicting the weather for a long time, we wait with baited breath for what he has to say, and our faith isn’t shaken in the least when he consistently gets it totally wrong.

This year, he predicted 6 more weeks of winter. That means that spring should have kicked in somewhere about the third week of March. Normally, I’d like to be biking on weekends at this time of year. However, the snow keeps coming down — even in Monmouth where the stuff is rare in January and February. When I rode into work, it snowed on me. Last week, here is what I looked like.
Don’t be fooled by my attire. It was 23 degrees Fahrenheit out there. We got pelted with ice and snow, and today it snowed more this past week. That buried structure behind me is a shelter for skiers.

What makes us listen to nonsense like that while ignoring useful information? From the time I learned to read, there has been a constant barrage of magazines claiming you can lose weight quickly while eating anything you want. Politicians say they can bring all kinds of great services without raising taxes. People know it’s nonsense, yet if you want to go broke the best way would be to sell books explaining that if people exercise and eat sensibly for the rest of their lives they will slowly become more healthy If you don’t want to get elected, tell people that if they need to pay for what they want.

We love to believe that the outcome we’ll see is the one that seems the most improbable. That’s why we vote for the underdog, why people buy lottery tickets, and insist that the insignificant things that we like to do make a big difference, while the things we don’t like don’t matter. But in the grand scheme of things, that’s OK. Perception is probably a better indicator of reality than facts would lead you to believe.

Normally, I incorporate a little wiggle room into my plans, but sometimes it’s just fun to operate at the margins. Today has been one of those days. I had to be up by 2:00am so I could leave for an early flight to San Francisco to deliver a presentation.

If everything had happened according to schedule, I would have arrived just as things were beginning. However, BART was much slower than planned so I was still waiting for a bus miles away from my destination when festivities started. Realizing I was going to miss my presentation, I flagged down a cab and made it into the room just before it was time for me to speak.

Still energized by nearly not making it on time, I delivered the presentation which went over well. Afterwards, I washed down a very decent lunch with some nice beer and returned to the airport for the trip home. On an aside note, the buses in San Francisco suck. You wait forever, they’re jam packed, and they crawl. I really missed my bike today. I might check to see if there’s a folding bike that can be taken in the cabin of an aircraft.

Once the plane landed, I had to drive a natural gas powered car a little over 60 miles. That would not be significant except the needle was buried on Empty within 20 miles and the low fuel light came on. It was after 11:00pm, there were no natural gas stations, so I was holding my speed around 50mph, drafting off trucks when I could, and shifting to neutral in some places to save gas for the remaining 41 miles. I didn’t think I was going to make it, but I coasted into the parking lot on fumes.

The trip from the motor pool was not without excitement. 3 blocks from home, I got pulled over by 2 cop cars (bad tail light). It’s after midnight now, and I’ve been up for more than 22 hrs straight, but strangely I’m not tired.

Today’s been a good day and having that many close calls all break my way is worth a drink. Nothing less than Auchentoshan Three Wood will do to wrap things up.

For those of you who are fans of cloud computing, Google announced their new App Engine service last night. It looks pretty cool — you just develop your app, upload it to their servers, and they host it. Plus, the first 10,000 developers get to use it for free. Unfortunately, by the time I found out about it, the free accounts were gone so I was put on a wait list. It’s still worth a look.

Since most people over 40 don’t look forward to getting older, you’d think that birthdays would get less fun with time. I’m finding that’s just not the case. Last year was the best one ever — which is saying a lot. And even though I specifically decided not to have any kind of special celebration, this year has already been great.

First of all, birthday wishes have been coming in from all over the world. It always touches me how many people remember since I often don’t remember until the last minute myself. Plus, I got what I really wanted. Last March, Keiko was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given 2-3 months to live if her meds worked. I was never given the slightest hope that she’d be around this year. The cancer has definitely gotten much worse, and I often sleep with her on the floor by the back door because she has to constantly go out. However, she’s well enough to enjoy eating steak with me tonight, and that’s better than I would have dared hope for.

In addition, I got a nice and unexpected present on my way into work today. When I had a few miles left to go on my way into work and stopped for a light, a college kid who was obviously a cyclist (based on his build, clothing, etc) pulled up behind me on a decent racing bike. I shifted over and told him he might want to go ahead since he was probably faster and I didn’t want to hold him up.

He replied “I don’t know about that — kind of breezy today” (riding conditions were 39F, 10mph headwind, and light rain) and stayed where he was. He shadowed me the rest of the way in. We weren’t racing, but we did maintain a brisk pace. I’m not pretending I “beat” anyone, but the birthday gift to me was having a cruising pace that’s good enough to satisfy an in shape cyclist who’s half my age.

It’s been a good year.

Yesterday, I passed a business with a huge sign on the front indicating that the premises were protected by a guard dog.

If you’re wondering what’s unusual about that, the business specializes in alarm systems.