Kyle Banerjee's Blog

American politics is rarely something to be proud of. Cynicism, divisiveness, and appeals to our worst qualities dominate.  In recent years, we have increasingly used flimsy pretexts to justify morally bankrupt behavior. As a result, our expectations of ourselves and our image abroad have suffered greatly.

Yesterday, we reminded the world of who we can be if we set our minds to it. Whenever there is an election, winners always celebrate, and the losers have long faces. But this last one was very different from the others.

I can’t remember ever sensing so much pride and joy in so many people — especially on the part of members of the defeated party. McCain’s very classy concession speech recognized that something special was achieved.

The best part about the election is that it wasn’t just about breaking the race barrier. Obama inspired millions by appealing to people with a message of hope and an image of who we can become — and who we are becoming.

Three weeks ago, I posted a picture of Shirley and me enjoying some skiing on Mary’s Peak. Well, today it was over 100 degrees, so I rode my bike up there to test my new climbing wheels and alpine gearing. I’m happy to report that the wheels and gears work great.
The cyclist is another matter. Despite having better equipment, I clocked the worst time I have in years going up and down the mountain twice. I would love to blame the heat, but I have good heat tolerance and today was no exception.I drank 8 large bottles of water (I hid water along the route so I could restock), and I felt good after the ride.

Although my speed was pitiful, my legs felt just fine afterwards so there is reason for to believe I’ll be able to get ready for the tough rides at the end of summer.

Incidentally, it was a gorgeous day and the view was exactly like this picture — minus the snow.

Oregon is known for its cool and wet weather, but this year has been nuts. Almost every time I get on my bike, the temperature drops and the sky spits on me to remind me of my role in the universe. Despite a 20% chance of rain forecast yesterday, I spent almost 4 hrs getting misted on. The day before, I enjoyed rain and temps in the 40’s as I rode into work. It’s literally been weeks since I’ve ridden without getting soaked.

This picture was taken today at my favorite place to train for climbing rides such as the Shasta Super Century and the Everest Challenge. It is within biking distance of our house and it’s short enough that I always climb it multiple times.

As you can see, conditions aren’t exactly prime for cycling. However, we did have a lot of fun skiing. I can’t believe this is how we’re spending June weekends…

I try to keep some contact with the real world, but every now and then something happens which makes me realize how insulated my environment is. Last night was one of those times.

Shirley and I went to an authentic Russian restaurant where we decided to do everything Russian style. At the next table, 4 business travelers watched flabbergasted as we washed down an excellent meal with 10 shots of vodka. This may sound like a lot, but it is very tame by Russian standards.

The travelers asked what we did for work, and when we mentioned that we were librarians, they were in shock. They made it clear that we looked like no librarians they’d ever seen, and it never occured to them that a librarian would know anything about vodka, let alone drink the stuff. They decided that they liked us and had a new opinion of the profession on that basis alone. They invited us to knock down a few shots after dinner. We accepted and had a great night with them.

I’m glad we helped our new friends see librarians in a more positive light, but I find it disconcerning that this change of heart was based on our sense of fun and an ability to put away more high octane hooch than they could. While I find it amusing that they assumed I was trying to improve the Dewey Decimal system when I mentioned that I worked with library systems, that is also a dead giveaway that they didn’t realize we actually provide a useful service.

As a profession, we celebrate the fact that we are viewed as meek, socially inept dorks by the rest of the world. We cultivate the image of the spinster with a bun in her hair. If we want to show how hip we are, we shave off a few pounds and a few years. Then we add a bit of makeup, an updated hairstyle, and a higher energy level. It’s the same idea with a little sex appeal.

Why do we play to such stereotypes? I suppose it makes people feel warm and fuzzy, but so does the image of the milkman who lost his job a long time ago. The internet has changed the way people interact with information, and we must make it clear we’ve adapted our services accordingly unless we want to relegate ourselves to irrelevance.

We can get you any book or article held by just about any library regardless of where you live whether or not it’s in digital form. We can get you electronic articles from well respected journals that would cost you a fortune to download (assuming you could find them at all). No other outfit, including Google and Amazon, can do this. I can’t help but think that if we want long term success and continued funding, we’re much better off encouraging people to focus on what we do rather than on anachronistic images.

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.

There are a zillion videos on the Internet, but there’s one in particular that I think is worth watching. In it, a popular professor from Carnegie Mellon named Randy Pausch shares some thoughts in his final lecture (76 min). There is also a condensed 10 minute version that was broadcast on Oprah, but I highly recommend the listening to the full version if you can. The reason it is his final lecture is that he will succumb to pancreatic cancer in a short time.

I learn from everyone around me, but there are a few individuals who I have always looked to as a source of inspiration. In addition, there are a handful of people who were in my life for only a short time (maybe as little as a few hours) who said something that burned itself into my brain forever. I never met Randy, but the full length lecture makes me think that if I did, he would have been one of the people that really affects how I do things.

One of the problems that most of us suffer from is that our priorities are all screwed up. We dedicate ourselves to the grind, passively let opportunities go by, and spend our time and energy on things we don’t even value to the detriment of what is most important.

Many of us don’t act like we have any sense until we’re about to lose it all. For example, when peoples’ houses are on fire, they grab the dog, a few pictures hanging on the walls, and the drawings the kids made from the fridge. No one thinks about the plasma TV or the other garbage that we value only because of its cash value or the status it confers upon us. When we’re not in crisis, we treat the true gold in our lives like crap and vice versa.

Randy’s lecture reminded me of the last conversation I had with a colleague who passed away after a battle with cancer a few years ago. Despite the fact that she was exhausted, in pain, and knew she literally had only a few days left, we still had a great time together and even wound up laughing. That she was able to have fun in such a situation is one of the reasons that she’s one of the people I model my own behavior from.

The fact is that we’re always on borrowed time, and we should act like it. Fortunately, it appears that Randy had this figured out long ago so he’ll be able to leave without regret even though he is a young guy. Anyway, check out his lecture. He won’t tell you anything you don’t already know deep inside, but he may remind you of a few things that are always worth keeping in mind.

One thing I’ve always wondered is when age would start catching up with me. I’ve been told for years about how my attitudes and a number of other things would change. None of these predictions has come to pass except my hair has mostly fallen out. Since I buzz my head like many other cyclists, the fact that my hair doesn’t grow is no biggie.

I’ve never felt I have generation gap with today’s college students until yesterday. Apparently, Alternative Reality Games (or ARGs) are extremely popular. The basic idea is that you plant clues in the real world which makes people seek information on websites.

For example, to advertise a session at a local conference, someone sent me a piece of paper in the mail with nothing but a library call number on it and a web address. I wasn’t expecting this mail, so I did what I do with all unsolicited mail — I just pitched it. Someone in my office saw it and asked me if I was curious. I said no because it was undoubtedly some vendor trying to draw me into a dialogue since they couldn’t sell their products the regular way. I get calls, letters, and emails from people using strange angles to promote things all the time.

Later, I learned that a lot of people that received the same mail that I did wondered what it was and investigated until they resolved what was going on. This behavior puzzles me — I imagined such constructs would appeal exclusively to extremely bored, socially inept, lonely people. Turns out these things are very popular with lots of people even though in the real world, they are often used to promote movies, music, and other products.

I just don’t get it. I don’t even get around to the important stuff, and I’m definitely not going to waste time resolving weird details that appear to have no meaning. If the new way of doing things is to hang out in ARGs rather than reality, I’ll be perfectly happy being a dinosaur.

When she suggests that she make a special trip to the store to pick up beer and onion rings while you take care of the dog.

That is all.

Reports are circulating in the technical press that the premium notebook computers will start coming with 4GB of memory standard rather than 1GB as they did at the beginning of this year.

That might sound like a good thing, but I heard no mention of disclaimers saying that 32 bit Vista or XP (i.e. the operating systems practically everyone uses) can’t access all this memory, nor will you notice much performance improvement over having a machine with 2GB inside.

If you think this problem will go away when we’re all using 64 bit operating systems, there’s a good chance the consumer market will never make that move. Trucks might need more wheels than cars, but if you mount duallies when you don’t need them, you will hurt performance and increase expenses.

Similarly, more memory can actually hurt performance if you don’t actually need it because of the resources necessary to manage it. Speed junkies would be better advised not to run programs they’re not actually using.

Now that the temps are dropping and I’ve been spending more time in cold rain, I’m finding myself ravenously hungry all the time. It’s not for lack of food. Last night, I ate almost double what I normally do (a feat I would usually consider impossible). For breakfast this morning, I couldn’t resist supplementing my normally large breakfast with a a 350 calorie Ensure-type drink.

For lunch, I found myself famished again so I decided to try a new Mexican place. I noticed a burrito called a “gordo” (literally, “fat one”) on the menu. According to the description, they combine multiple tortillas into one giant 28″ tortilla and fill it with good stuff. I asked the owner if it’s actually possible for one person to eat. When he said he’d seen people try, I couldn’t leave that challenge unanswered.

I’ve seen some big burritos, but the gordo topped them all by a considerable margin. Even if it had been cut in half, it still would have been huge. I should have asked what was in it, but there was easily a pound of beef, an equal quantity of rice and beans, somewhere between a half pint and a full pint of sour cream and guacamole, and lots of veggies. Heck, the tortillas used to wrap the gordo were formidable by themselves.

The best part about it was that it was not only huge, but it was one of the best burritos I’ve ever eaten. I could tell that all the veggies had been chopped fresh, everything had been well-prepared, and the balance of flavor was excellent. And yes, I did finish it, but it wasn’t easy and the owner actually seemed disappointed that I succeeded. I do not intend to attempt to eat another gordo. Some things only need to be done once.

Way back in January, I described how I was finishing work on a book I was writing with Terry. Anyone that knows me that will tell you I’m not a procrastinator. Neither is Terry. Nonetheless, we’ve put in lots of time on the project since then, and I just sent the index to the publisher yesterday.

Even though the chapters were theoretically done with time to spare, we wound up working with the editor improving things up to the deadline — you don’t want other people noticing easily fixable flaws since your name’s on the cover. Then, a bunch of production work needs to be done. The editor tweaks a few things, the book gets typeset, and artwork is added.

After we had the camera ready copy in hand, we worked with the editor to change the layout because some of the figures were not clear enough. The publisher has proofreaders, but we went over it with a fine toothed comb to look for small errors. Yesterday, I finally sent in the index — that can’t be written until you know exactly what page everything appears on.

By the time you’re done, you’re pretty tired of it. I remember after finishing my first book project, I swore I wouldn’t do another one because it’s so much work. Two weeks later, I approached Terry and we started this one. I would have preferred to wait, but timing is important.

I’m very happy to be done with this — now I can do something more fun on my weekends. In a bit of coincidental timing, the first royalty check from the first book came in. I used it to buy a new transmission for my bike that will make riding in the mountains much easier.

Despite the fact that I know what I’d write about if I did another book, I’m not going to do it. At least for another couple years…..