As I type this, I’ve spent 17:30 on the phone trying to book a hotel reservation for an industry trade show. The “conference rate,” which involves pre-allocating a block of rooms in exchange for tacit endorsement of the hotel as a preferred venue, is a substantial break over the hotel’s normal mid-week rack rate. Because […]
Hotel reservations Read More »
While pondering data graphs from my cycle computer, I wondered why the axis always had very high values on them. For example, on the graph to the right is from Friday’s commute. The “speed” range is -25mph to +125mph. Even more puzzling, there is a point on the graph where I am apparently going 87
MegaPatch Tuesday greets many with Windows XP’s auto-reboot nag-o-matic. You know it by this: Clicking “Later” means “Ask again in five minutes.” Whoever designed this had the philosophy that fixing their mistake is far more important than you’re getting work done. It’s also obvious they’ve never actually needed to do a presentation for important people.
Heisenberg Uncertainty Dialogs Read More »
This was my non-biking day, and everything about the commute sucked. After dropping my bike off in Kirkland for its free “200 mile tuneup,” I found there were no parking spots available at work. I left again around 4:30 to pick up the bike. Unfortunately, the vendor hadn’t actually started the work but promised it
In 2005, I looked at the economies of bike commuting. It elicited a lot of good questions . Generally, I made a lot of simplifying assumptions, avoiding counting anything that would require a double-blind scientific study. For example, one of the biggest, immeasurable arguments is “improvement to health and exercise.” An additional cost, also immeasurable,
Costs of bike commuting Read More »
After seven years of output, the HP ink jet printer had finally stopped working. Because it was never intended to be serviced by mortals, it was time to find a new one. Choosing a model can be as difficult as you want to make it because HP has an estimated six billion models. For once,
Brian posted an article about Splenda. Not Scout’s bike Splenda, but the chemical sweetener in the yellow packets. The website he referenced cites a couple of sources, including a Sugar Industry Sponsored Web Site. As I wrote on Brian’s bog, when I read these things on the web, one of my first questions is about
There’s Water at the Bottom of the Ocean Read More »