Kyle Banerjee's Blog

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.

Share on Facebook

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.

Share on Facebook

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.

Share on Facebook

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.

Share on Facebook

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…..

Share on Facebook

I don’t send web links very often, but today I saw what has to be the best practical joke ever. In a nutshell, a guy named Amir gets his buddy Streeter to propose to his girlfriend. The thing is, though, that Streeter doesn’t know he’s going to propose.

I’ve always loved practical jokes, but it’s hard to play them anymore. The very nature of a good prank is it causes short term frustration. Unfortunately, our collective psyche has gotten so fragile that when someone gets upset, there’s a strong tendency to look for some kind malicious subtext rather than laugh and move on.

Fortunately, there still are a few people wandering around who aren’t emotionally traumatized for life by a practical joke. If you like really good pranks, just check out the video and watch a master at work. Those guys must really be good friends.

Share on Facebook

This past week, we finally sold our trusty Honda shown here with Shirley in this 12 year old photo. We’d been thinking about getting a new car for some time, but wanted to wait until we passed 200,000 miles. Once we reached that milestone, the problem was figuring out what to do. The reality is that it was a great car. It had always been insanely reliable and still got more than 40mpg — which is nice if your office is 64 miles away from home like mine. It’s hard to justify getting rid of a car like that.

However, it was literally the bottom of the line model, and driving 3 hours a day in a poorly ventilated spartan econobox on noisy highways in the summer ain’t exactly my idea of fahrvergnügen. Now we have a Subaru Outback Sport Special Edition (no photos yet). Basically, it’s an Impreza with some nice features such as all wheel drive, satellite radio, automatic climate control, and some other bells and whistles. I love it.

At the same time, Shirley and I were both sad to see the Honda go. I regret not taking a picture on the final day so you could see how good it still looked. And man, what a car. It still had the original clutch. The interior looked great and it the exterior still shone even if it had a few chips. The engine still purred. The entire time we owned it, we only paid for one repair that wasn’t scheduled maintenance — one of the CV boots cracked at 165,000 miles so we replaced that for $90. Arguably, that’s just wear and tear. We replaced the original equipment battery only last year and we were only on our second set of brake pads.

So I think it was very fitting to pull it onto the exact same lot as it had been purchased from almost exactly 12 years to the day (the Subaru dealership there was formerly a Honda dealership). I’ve never heard of anyone driving as far as we did on one clutch, one battery, or with as few problems. And while part of me wanted to hold onto it for awhile longer, I’m happy the Honda could retire gracefully with a spectacular and untarnished service record.

I don’t know what will happen to it in the end. The dealer will sell it to a wholesaler, and that particular model is preferred by kids who like to race cars because the body is light and cheap. Maybe it will get a new lease on life with a powerful engine, new transmission and suspension, and a wild paint job. Even if it just winds up running short errands in town until it stops, we’ll remember it fondly.

Share on Facebook

I’m lazy by disposition, so I like to do things the easy way. For example, every year, Shirley and I paint one side of our house. The idea is simple. If every side gets painted every 4 years, the whole house looks pretty good, and it doesn’t take much time or money to keep it looking that way. All you have to do is be willing to keep things the same color.

This year, we had a new helper shown here with me. Normally, we don’t borrow other peoples’ dogs for home improvement projects, but Bo’s owners just had a baby so we took care of him for a few days while they got things set up.

While I dealt with the bees’ nests and the painted the high places, Shirley worked on the low places. It was hot that day, so Keiko just rested in the back yard. Bo contributed to the effort by making sure we didn’t have too much leftover paint — about 1/2 hour into the job, he dragged his cable across my paint bucket and dumped it all in the yard.

As you can see, all turned out well. Now I can turn my attention to my next project (which is actually a bike ride in California this weekend). We’ll see how that goes.

Share on Facebook

People say we live in a throwaway society where things are intended to be disposable, but that’s not entirely true. Today, our car passed the 200,000 mile mark. When we bought the car in 1995, we figured we’d have to replace it in 2001 or so. As it turns out, the car still runs great, and the only unscheduled repairs we had to pay for were a leaky water pump (which was scheduled for replacement at 180,000 miles anyway) and a outboard CV boot that was starting to crack. This car has thousands of parts, and each piston and valve has probably moved up and down around a billion times. We’re still using the original clutch.

Cars aren’t the only thing that last a long time. Practically all of us regularly use appliances, tools, furniture, utensils, clothing, and a variety of other products that we’ve had for decades.

Despite the fact that we have all this stuff that lasts forever, we buy more at a furious pace. Few people actually keep cars in garages anymore because they’re filled with junk.

While many people find all the junk we have undesirable from a conservation or aesthetic point of view, I think the bigger problem is what it does to our priorities. Most of us dedicate our lives to acquiring and keeping stuff at almost any personal cost.

As a society, we measure others by what they have rather than what they do. Whenever art, athletic achievements, or a number of other events are discussed in the popular press, attention immediately focuses on the money that changed hands rather than on the substance of what happened.

Arguably, we don’t own stuff — it owns us. Maybe a step right direction would be for all people over a certain age to get rid of something every time they acquire something.

Regardless of the problems associated with buying lots of stuff that lasts forever, I’d like to raise a glass to the people who designed and built our car. 200,000 trouble free miles is truly impressive, and it’s a testament to the fact that people can do good things if they set their minds to it.

Share on Facebook

I’ve never thought Californians are totally normal, so when I saw lots of middle aged women shouting into the air (i.e. not directing their comments towards any visible humans) during a trip to San Jose a few weeks ago, I wasn’t surprised.

It occurred to me that while most people would had regarded such behavior as nutty a few years ago, it just doesn’t carry the same stigma that it used to. Thanks to the magic of cell phones and bluetooth, you can not only talk to someone who is hundreds of miles away, you don’t even have to take your phone out of your purse or pocket to do so. The end result is that having an ordinary conversation makes you look like a raving lunatic.

I’m leery of thinking about the “good ‘ol days” but at the same time, I’m wondering what technology has done for communication. When television first came out, people were saying how it was going to spread culture and education everywhere. According to Nielsen research, the average American household has a TV on more than 7 hrs/day, and the average person spends a little over 4 1/2 hours actually watching it. This means that instead of living regular lives, people either watch actors pretending to be people who don’t even exist, or worse, they gawk at people making fools of themselves on “reality shows” that rely almost exclusively on voyeuristic appeal.

Email was also supposed to improve communication and cultural understanding. The practical effect is that there are millions of people who can’t spell, express thoughts coherently, or conduct a normal conversation so they send email to people sitting 10 feet away. I can barely read all the crazy texting jargon that’s worked its way into our language.

Theoretically, cell phones are a very useful device, but they seem to have conditioned us to prefer talking to machines rather than people who are with us. And with bluetooth, we’re now yelling into empty air.

I can’t wait for the next killer technological application…..

Share on Facebook

Last night, I decided to put together my new cordless electric lawnmower. However, my new job has me commuting 3 hours a day, and it was pretty late by the time I was done eating dinner. To give myself a chance to relax, I decided to do the job in the living room while watching a funny movie.

Banerjee boys are known for their inquisitive nature. However, sometimes they don’t totally think things through. For example, when we were growing up, one of us found a shotgun shell in the woods and accidentally detonated it in the house while trying to understand how it was put together. Another caused an explosion (also inside the house) while probing the electrical properties of nichrome. Attempts to build rockets and other flying things powered by gasoline, volatile gases, or gunpowder were instructive, but the results weren’t always pretty. I’m not printing names to protect the guilty.

In this tradition, I decided to learn more about my mower — I was interested in the sort of thing that is never printed in the manual. To make a long story short, I accidentally started it and wound up with a lawnmower running in the middle of the living room. Keiko was very calm about it, but it’s probably just as well that Shirley was out of town.

Lest you think we’re a bunch of nincompoops, Sir Isaac Newton once stuck a needle in his eye so he could explore the effect of pressure on color perception. Luckily, the resulting blindness was only temporary. Comparatively speaking, starting a lawnmower inside the house isn’t that bad……

Share on Facebook

This past weekend, I celebrated my 40th birthday. Without any exaggeration, I can say it was the best birthday I can remember. Although a few people I would have liked to see couldn’t make it to my party this weekend, most of the people I wanted to see the most were there and we had a great time.

40 is an interesting milestone. The body and mind still mostly work, and you’ve had enough time to figure out what’s important to you acquire the resources to make those things come about. I can’t think of an age I’d rather be.

Having said that, I understand why some people go through a midlife crisis. As time passes, you get past your prime and the virtually unlimited range of options you once faced narrows considerably. Hair falls out and turns gray. You realize that if you’re going to do something, you need to make it happen before the clock runs out.

All I really wanted for my birthday was some good company and for Keiko to still be well enough to enjoy it too. I got both of my wishes and more. I start a new job in just a few days, a new book that I coauthored comes out soon, and I have a lot of great rides planned for the year. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Share on Facebook

A few months ago, I wrote about a job I was thinking of applying for. Anyway, I applied and survived the interview process. I start at my new position in just over a month and a half.

The timing on this is rather curious. Just before I applied, my boss asked me how I felt about where I am now. I told him that my current position was the best job I’ve ever had in terms of fun, responsibilities, and pay, that last year was the best year ever, that I liked my colleagues, and that I was optimistic that things would get even better.

Upon hearing I’d accepted the new position, one of my coworkers asked me if I’m one of those people who quits when he’s at the top of his game. It’s an interesting thought — I left my last position just weeks before I was expected to be awarded tenure and things had been good there too. To take the job at the university, I had to leave the best job and the best boss I had known up to that time.

I don’t really see leaving a job as quitting. To get better at anything, you have to work outside your comfort zone. This means that you can’t settle for just doing what you’re good at. Besides, a certain level of turnover is healthy for organizations. I was at the State Library for 5 years — enough in my opinion for them to get the best out of me. Now they have an opportunity to bring in someone new who will have very different ideas that I do. More likely than not, this new person will do some things I didn’t even think of.

While I’m sad to go — particularly since I’ve been working on some really interesting projects — I know that accepting the offer was the right thing to do. The State Library was good to me, and I hope they feel I was good for them. However, I have a sense that this new job is where I really belong, at least for awhile.

Share on Facebook

Lately, there’s been an enormous amount of news coverage about a guy named James Kim. He was driving home with his family and got stuck in deep snow on a remote mountain road. They waited for help in the car, but when no one found them after a few days, James went out looking for help dressed only in a jacket and tennis shoes. His family was rescued shortly afterwards, but he got lost and died of hypothermia.

I think reporting personal tragedies in the media is generally in poor taste. My general position is that news outlets should not profit off peoples’ misery or pander to voyeurism. Pointing a camera in someone’s face when they are in despair does both of these things.

However, there’s more to it than that. It occurred to me that when Brezhnev died, there was a surprising outpouring of grief in the Soviet Union. It’s easy to dismiss the coverage as communist propaganda, but having talked to people who where there, I think the sentiment was real.

The funny thing is that Brezhnev was not well loved. He was unremarkable as a leader and as an individual. Yet people who had never met him and didn’t even like him were crying. Since the vast majority of people who were upset to learn of James’ fate never knew him, I’m thinking a similar dynamic must be in play now.

I can only come up with two explanations for this strange behavior. The first is that humans are empathetic creatures. That’s why people become deliriously happy after seeing an athlete or musician overcome with emotion after delivering the performance of a lifetime, and why people fall to pieces after seeing someone grieving at a funeral. Feelings are contagious.

Empathy alone can’t explain the whole story. For one thing, it doesn’t explain why people get weepy at sad movies. Why should people get upset about something that didn’t even really happen to an actor pretending to be someone who doesn’t exist?

Which gets me to the second reason. I think that even when a stranger dies, it puts people in touch with how they feel about being deprived of life. In effect, they mourn their own mortality. Likewise, for other sad or happy events, people naturally reflect on how that same event would affect them. Whatever the case, I feel bad for James and the Kim family.

Share on Facebook

The old adage of “beware of what you wish for” has finally come to bite me in the butt. Like everyone else, I have my idea of the ideal job, and that ideal job isn’t quite the one I have now.

Don’t get me wrong. I have a great job and I am treated well. The work environment is excellent, I like my coworkers, and I think my boss is outstanding. I’m not just saying to be a kiss up on the off chance the managers read the rubbish that I post. I really believe it, and it makes my job ten times more fun.

There’s a job I’ve been thinking about for years. It didn’t exist, but I was sure it would someday. Well, today an announcement for that job came out. This opportunity won’t come again for a long time and it’s the chance to do exactly what I’ve always wanted to. I believe I would be a competitive candidate.

The problem is that experience has taught me that status, responsibilities, and pay have practically nothing to do with how much I like a job — it’s all about how the place is run and who I work with. I fully expect the new environment would be pretty decent, but I can’t imagine it being as good as what I have.

However, I think it is good for people to do different things. I also think it is good for organizations to take on new people even though the ones that are currently there are fine. I’ve always believed that regular turnover promotes exchange of ideas and prevents intellectual inbreeding.

At the same time, the idea of applying for this job offends my sense of loyalty. The State Library took a risk on me years ago, and they’ve always been good to me. On the other hand, I’ve always promised both them and myself that I wouldn’t stagnate. This might be my best chance at preventing that.

Whatever the case, I have a couple weeks to decide. Normally, I make up my mind very quickly, but I could really use some time for this.

Share on Facebook