Keith's Complete Waste of Time » Having fun

I’m again doing something stupid for charity

keith — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 06:47:32 +0000

Hi-ho all,

( EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR FOLKS WHO HATE TO READ STUFF: I’m riding against diabetes again; please donate! )

As many of you know, last spring I bought a ludicrously expensive bicycle in order to guilt myself into riding it and getting exercise so that I would lose weight and not die. And, figuring that I needed all the motivation possible, I signed up for and did a 25 mile bike ride up in Napa for diabetes (1). I sent out this request for donations because that’s what you do, and many of you were quite generous.

I’ve mentioned that my father was diagnosed with diabetes a few years ago, and it took a year or so for them to figure it out and then get him onto some drugs & diet to get it under control, and later my mother was all “I was afraid I was going to lose him”, and I was thinking, well, two things — number one, maybe you should have told me a bit earlier so that I could, you know, maybe actually have a conversation with him or something, and number two, great, if he did die you’d just want to come live with me and I fear you would drive me crazy, so perhaps a way to fix both of these items would be to get this whole diabetes thing under control and then #1, father wouldn’t be dead, and so #2, you could continue to live with him and not with me, and I would be less crazy. Win-win, basically.

So, I signed up for this “Tour de Cure” (2) ride up in Yountville last spring, and my sister-in-law Maureen also signed up, because she’s all fit and everything and wanted to mock me while we biked thru beautiful Napa Valley and I figured “Good; she can call 911 on the cell phone when I enter cardiac arrest around mile 15 or so.” We got up really early on a Sunday morning, and had waffles at the hotel***, and then we drove up to the actual starting point, and got our little numbers to pin on our clothes, and when I got to the actual start of the race I was all like, “Ok. A bunch of people chipped in a bunch of money, and here I am on a bright Sunday morning awake much earlier than I ordinarily would be, about to ride much further than I’ve ridden in the past 20 or so years of my life”, and as we’re leaving everyone is cheering us on with “You are curing diabetes!” and other encouraging things, and then 25 miles later, as I’m biking uphill to the end ( into the wind, I’ll add ) they’re still chanting “You are curing diabetes” and “You’re riding for the cure” (4) and mostly all I can think is that I hope the feeling eventually returns in my legs, but at least we will have put this whole diabetes thing behind us.” (5)

So, flash forward 11 months, and Imagine my surprise when I find out that diabetes remains uncured. Sure, there’s been some advances in the past year, but apparently after all that effort by myself and Maureen and all that money that everyone chipped in wasn’t quite enough. I’m sure that somehow it’s my fault (6), because people kept shouting at me that I was curing diabetes, but mostly I was thinking “I’m just riding a bike, and poorly at that.” and also that curing diabetes should seem more science-y, perhaps with test tubes and pipettes and stuff.

Thus, when they gave me the opportunity to participate this year (7), in the same ride, my first thought was that I’d need to do something better than last year, since apparently I can’t cure diabetes merely by riding my bike twenty-five miles and asking many of my friends to donate money. So, this year, I signed up to ride FIFTY miles, because if twenty-five isn’t going to do it, well, let’s go the extra mile (8), and doing the one hundred mile ride just seemed like it would kill me. (9) Heck, the fifty miles are probably going to kill me, because I haven’t really been on my bike at all for the past 6 months or so, especially since it’s been raining so much this spring. So I’ve essentially got about 2 weeks to get ready for this ride. Maureen is coming again, and so she’ll be available to call emergency services, if needed.

And so, my friends, I’m again asking you if you can contribute to my bike ride campaign. I’m not going to claim that you’re going to cure diabetes, but maybe if we get a nice pile of cash together we can figure out something small, but important, and if enough folks do that, folks with diabetes will live long and full lives and their wives won’t go live with their adult children in California. If you’d like to contribute, click on the link below.

Click here for my Tour de Cure Personal Page for donations & news & stuff. If you’d like to donate, they and I would hugely appreciate it. If you’d rather send me a check or hand me cash, just reply and I’ll make it happen. I’m told these donations are tax deductible, if that’s useful to you. (10)

1 – Well, not “for” diabetes; technically they’re against it and raising money for research and stuff like that.

2 – Which by the way means ( I think ) “The Cure Tour” if you translate it into English, which doesn’t sound anywhere near as cool

3 – Because waffles are great. And I liked the waffle maker thingy they had so much I went and ordered one on Amazon. It totally rocks.

4 – They had quite the cheer squad, which must have been there for 5 hours or so because they were still chanting for the folks coming in much later in the day.

5 – Yes, I know this entire paragraph is just two really long run on sentences. Just imagine I’m speaking them and it makes more sense.

6 – It’s because you were too sarcastic, Keith. You are the reason diabetes wasn’t cured.

7 – They must not know that it was Keith’s fault this whole thing didn’t work out. Nobody tell them; Keith really wants to do it again. It was pretty.

8 – Or, extra twenty-five miles, in this case

9 – My friend Mark points out that If I just think of it as three 16 mile rides, separated by rest stops, it’s not as scary. (11)

10 – Someone said that I should offer “prizes” for folks who donate, so here goes: I will read the name of every donor on my stupid tv show, unless you don’t want to admit that you know me, in which case it will cost you an extra $10. :)

11 – Of course, a sixteen mile ride also sounds scary. And three of them in one day? Wicked scary.

Logical Conclusions

keith — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:05:40 +0000

So, if Republicans are correct and lowering tax rates always leads (in the long term) to the government taking in more revenues than it would have at the higher tax rate, isn’t the logical conclusion that the tax rate should be 0 and that would lead to the government taking in the most possible tax revenue.

Although I wonder who would be paying those taxes if the tax rate actually was 0%.

My Woot Bag of Crap!

keith — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 07:02:06 +0000

So, after a couple years of trying really hard to get a mythical Woot Bag of Crap, and cursing every time the stupid server of theirs would go down the instant the bag of crap came up for purchase, I’d given up hope. But, a few weeks back there was a Woot off, and I was sitting in my office, and I saw that the current item ( a wireless mouse ) was sold out, so I hit refresh to see what the next item was, and HOLY SHIT IT’S THE BAG OF CRAP. ORDER! ORDER! ORDER!

Except I was pretty sure I’d missed it again, since I did manage to enter in my CVC code for my credit card, and hit the confirmation button, but then the page timed out, so I was dejected.

Except about 15 minutes later I saw that a bag of crap had appeared in my “Order summary”. Woo!

Here, without further ado, is the unboxing. Starting with the box…

Since it was only 5 lbs, and about 12″ along the largest side, I was pretty sure that it didn’t have a 60″ plasma display inside.

As expected, none of those items are large plasma televisions. Instead, they’re

1. A 10 function remote with a display. Apparently I need a Windows machine to set it up.2.

2. A Disney “Pirates of the Caribbean” phone / game holder, with a carabiner on the back side.

3. A wired “Netbook” mouse, with a cord in a little retractable holder.

4. A wireless mouse, in some kind of OEM packaging, so it might be Bluetooth or something else.

Overall, not a bad haul for $8.

My Peggy 2 clock idea

keith — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:31:07 +0000

I’m a bit of a clock guy, and I’ve got a bunch in my house and in my office. I’ve got bunches of regular analog clocks. I’ve got my grandparent’s mantle clock that they were given for their wedding in the early 1930s, which we wind with a key and which chimes on the hour in my living room. In my office I have one of those “rolling ball” clocks as well as a ping-pong clock from Adafruit.

One thing that some clocks show better than others is the passage of time — and sometimes it’s the passage of time that is most interesting to display instead of the exact digital instant that is now.

Here’s the idea: The front of the peggy is treated like a “pie”, except it’s square. It shows the fraction of the last and next 12 hours which are day versus night ( calculated from the wall clock time and the longitude and latitude which are configured by the user ) In essence, the “light” and “dark” parts of the current day rotate clockwise, and at a glance you can see how much of the day

As time passes, this display will “rotate” in a clockwise direction, with the current “time” being at what would be 12 o-clock on a conventional clock. So, this is a small version of the peggy, with white being “lit” LEDs and black being unlit, and a blue border around the 25×25 pixel field.

would indicate roughly noon, on a day near the summer solstice, and this

would be shortly after sunset, again on a day near the solstice.

Here’s a time around noon on a day in late fall, when the day is about 10 hours long.

Here’s dawn on March 21st, the spring equinox ( when the day and night are each 12 hours long )

During the year, as the seasons change, the amount of light and dark will change and along with it the fraction of the clock which is lit up. Near the winter solstice, only about 1/4 of the leds will ever be on, while in the summer 3/4 of them may be lit.

Other ideas that might be possible ( depending on how much memory code to do the above took to implement )

- The actual time could probably be drawn, either near the top or bottom of the display, using digits roughly 5 x 5 in size.

- the brightness of the leds could vary, so that near the time the sun was most directly overhead the leds were full brightness, and the dimmed as the time got closer to sunset, then slowly brightened again the next day

- perhaps other astronomical stuff — phase of the moon, or the tides — could also be included, although anything terribly complicated probably won’t fit in the memory available

-Keith

I rode 25 miles and didn’t die!

keith — Sat, 15 May 2010 21:48:56 +0000

As some of you know, because I emailed you and asked you to donate to the American Diabetes Association for my ride in the Napa Tour de Cure. My friend, Mark, had organized a team, and because I had the same kind of bike as he has he asked me if I’d like to join in. He promised the ride would be pretty and flat.

My friends totally came thru and donate a bunch more money than I even expected, and I’m both proud and extremely humbled by the generosity of people I know.

The bike ride itself was up in Yountville, CA, just north of Napa, on the morning of May 5th. Loretta’s sister Maureen went up with me and also did the ride. We went up the night before because we needed to be at the start between 9am and 10am, and actually got onto the road about 9:45am, and rolled back over the finish line about 2 hours later, just before noon. I was a bit tired, and my feet were a bit tingly, but nowhere near as worn out as I’d expected. It was, as promised, mostly flat and quite pretty. Much of the ride was on nearly deserted roads, with only a few mile segment on a pretty busy highway.

I taped a short movie at the start of the ride, so you can see me in all my glory, and I also taped about the last 15 minutes of the ride because I wanted to show what it was like. Sadly, the camera does jerk around a fair amount because of the bumpiness of the road.

So, we went and saw Jonathan Coulton last weekend…

keith — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:56:12 +0000

up in San Francisco, at the Great American Music Hall. It’s probably been a number of years since I last went to a concert — heck, maybe the last real one was Voice Farm, which would have been in the mid 1990s. Jonathan was great ( and, the two opening acts were also good — a music/comedy team called Paul and Storm and a dude named Kid Beyond, who was musical in a way that I can’t describe. ) I taped a couple bits of the concert on my Flip Video HD camera, because apparently it’s cool to do so with Jonathan and the openers. This is the first song of his that I can recall hearing, and I rather like it since (at times) it seems to pretty adequately describe my life. I suspect you can vaguely hear me singing along.