HOWTO: BE THE UNIX EXPERT

This xkcd explains the way to troubleshoot a normal computer. Here's my Unix version:

Weather - Bring It On

I'm a big fan of Jill from Juneau. It's weird that a woman like that is not purely fictional. Recently she has been grumbling, quite reasonably, about the challenges of long bike rides in the worst possible weather. I would write her an email, but like less nonfictional women she's not easy to get in touch with. So I thought I'd share my wisdom on this topic and maybe more people can get some benefit from it.

First of all, it may strike you that I am entirely unqualified to dispense advice about anything more severe than putting on a long-sleeve shirt. Don't let the fact that I live in the acme of fantastic weather, San Diego, California, fool you. I've paid my dues. I have spent several years in Alaska. Much, much worse weather-wise, I have lived in Ohio. My crowning achievement which gives me confidence to give advice to Juneau Jill took place in France.

I had camped on the lower slopes of the HC climb to Chamrousse during the 2001 Tour De France. When I woke up, it was cranking rain, serious full-blast lawn sprinkler stuff. First, to simply camp in this and pack up with all but one component, a tarp, getting wet is a job well done, but the real magic act was yet to come. That morning on my loaded trekking bike, I climbed every meter of that mountain in full driving rain.

At the top was a scary scene. Le Tour attracts many nut cases such as myself and scores of them had also ascended, unfortunately, not as well-prepared as me. They arrived on their light racing bikes in their tropical bird-colored lycra. Getting soaked on the way up didn't seem like a problem to them. I knew better. Le Tour is in July, but at these high Alpine elevations, winter can occur at anytime. On this morning, the temperature of the summit was much colder than the base, just around freezing. These guys got to the top only to find the course closed and their return route blocked. They had to stay at the top in the freezing rain dressed in scant, soaking lycra. I, however, had not even gotten especially wet on the way up. Being close to freezing was actually kind of refreshing for such a climb. Of course I had warm clothes to put on, clothes that were fastidiously kept dry. I stood up there comfortable and happy after having made the climb in the most comfortable way I think it could have been done.

How did I do it? When I was a lad in Ohio, I once asked my wise father, "Say Dad, you grew up on the island where I was born, you know, the one with the wretched weather, and you rode a bicycle. How did you Britons cope?" (Before ruining the entire place with cars.) His answer, "A rain cape." A rain cape? I still remember the first thought I had, "Well that's the gayest thing I've ever heard." Obviously, I was too cool to be caught dead in such a dorky looking garment.

Fast forward many years to early springtime in Bavaria. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Well there's a reason people there invented Mercedes: the weather sucks ass. I was bike touring through this area spending day after day in freezing rain. I was really at the limit of my weather resisting abilities. I stopped for a rest day in a town called Regensburg, literally, "Raintown", aptly named. I had planned to buy some latex dish washing gloves and some waterproof spray, which I did. But I also happened to pop into a bike shop and I asked, "What the heck do cyclists do in this kind of weather?" Answer: a rain cape. Hmm. Ok, I'm getting it by now.

Of course if you say "rain cape" in a bike shop in the USA, you'll be asked if you are speaking Klingon, but in this bike shop, they had a large selection. And a large selection of Ortlieb stuff. You see, when riding in European weather, look to the Europeans for guidance. I picked out a magnificent rain cape and pretty much instantly my fortunes changed. The rain cape is good from about -7C to 25C when it's cranking with rain. Below -7C, it's not raining and some fancy Goretex suit is going to work great. Above 25C, just get wet, it'll feel nice. Most importantly the rain cape is great for that range right around freezing. You can wear the right layers and modulate them as necessary, but they shouldn't need to get soaked from within.

The only thing the cape is not good for is very high winds (which are not direct tailwinds). In this case, I claim that a Gortex suit solution is not going to be too hot because of the breeze.

My other tips are wearing OR Crocs Goretex gaitors. These do not overheat you, yet provide tons of protection right where you most need it. When I'm really serious, I wear them over latex overboots sold in industrial supply places (by the way, this is why I use toe clips when I'm planning on lots of rain, to avoid a big hole in the bottom of my shoe). Also fenders are great. Don't get the stupid American-looking ones that are trying to copy the aesthetic of an internal combustion engine driven two-wheeler. Get the proper European kind (I like SKS/ESGE) that fit close to the wheel and provide long coverage.

Riding in the rain can be done and done comfortably. For me in San Diego, riding in the rain is a special treat which I very much enjoy.

In Praise Of Watered Bottles

The gods of the road leave many interesting things for the two-wheeling gutter caste. A long while back, I found a fancy polycarbonate NALGENE bottle, an $8.50 value according to REI. These are spiffy vessels for putting drinking water in. They are favored by the people who are slightly cooler than the cool because to have one of these is to show that you're concerned about the environmental impact of the bottled water habits of typical yuppies. Unfortunately this path to environmental utopia is marred by reports such as this from Stuff White People Like:

Previously, the gold standard was the Nalgene bottle, however recent studies have shown the plastic can leak toxins into the water. Currently, white people on the cutting edge are really into metal bottles of water with a twist cap. It is recommended that you buy one of these as soon as possible.

I've had a lot of experience with water carrying and I've never seen the appeal of these Nalgene bottles. I used to use the normal bike waterbottle for riding, but they are delicate, stinky, plasticy, hard to clean, too small, leaky, vulnerable to UV damage, expensive, and bad at handling both physical and thermal shocks. Perhaps the Nalgene bottles are a big improvement on that, but why mess around with another type of bottle that is expensive?

I buy my water bottles now at Trader Joe's. They're only $.59 and they even put some water in them to get you started. These incredible vessels never cease to amaze me with their indestructibility. I've sent them flying into the road to get batted about by cars several times without losing any water.

I was cleaning the garage and I came across this Nalgene bottle. Given the kind of people who own this kind of bottle, it's probably free from leprosy, but because of its unknown provenance and my complete lack of enthusiasm for it, I started to carry it to the trash.

Then the enthusiasm hit me - destructive testing! I have to say that I didn't plan the test very well, I just chucked the thing into the air as high as I could (which just clears the roof of a second story structure). Then it lands on the concrete with a satisfying smack. The Nalgene bottle was filled about half full (same water I found it with). After two rounds, the top came askance and water leaked out, but I resealed it and it seemed fine. However after four landings, there was a gurgle following the impact crack of landing. Hmmm, not indestructible after all.

That itself was interesting, but then I wondered how that would compare to my Trader Joe's bottle. I then made a mistake by filling it 2/3 full which was the ultimate capacity of the Nalgene bottle. I had forgotten that the Nalgene was only half full. So the Trader Joe's bottle got a more challenging challenge. After three successful launches, I was completely unsurprised. But on the forth, I was quite surprised to see a rent in the bottom of the bottle. Hmm, so they are not indestructible either.

I think that a lot of people think that a polycarbonate bottle is going to be stronger and that is their motivation for the increased liability of it. But my test, strongly indicates to me that this is a not necessarily true. For hiking, biking, climbing, and other weight sensitive endeavors, it's worth noting that the empty 1 liter Nalgene bottle is 150g. The Trader Joe's bottle which has a maximum volume of 1.5 liters weighs 38g.

Notice I didn't say that it was a 1.5 liter bottle. Unlike the Nalgene bottle, you can flatten it when it's not in use. This makes it much less than a 1.5 liter space liability when you're trying to pack it.

Two more things to bear in mind. First having a Nalgene bottle lying around to destroy was a special occasion. Having a Trader Joe's bottle on hand for destruction, despite the fact that it was in active use, is completely mundane. But here's the most incredible part: now that these bottles have big holes in the bottom of them they are worthless, right? Well, the Nalgene one is. However, the State of California will buy back my destroyed Trader Joe's bottle for 17 cents on the dollar.

Maybe If They Hadn't Hyped It I'd Be Kinder

I have mixed feelings when I recall my first bicycle. One might expect that I would have dropped cycling not long after taking it up; that first bicycle had no seat.

This segues to today's topic, the Segway. With such an introduction I hope you see where I'm going here with a review for a product I don't even need to use to know it's dumb.

Every morning a Segway whines down the alley outside my bedroom. When I ride home through the park in the afternoon, I often see a herd of tourists on Segways as it is apparently part of some sightseeing tour. I've seen them other places too with surprising frequency. Surprising because they are just so dumb.

As a nerdy guy, I can definitely appreciate the idea and I could see how it'd be fun to build such a thing and play with it. However, as a mode of transportation, it is extremely restricted. It pretty much is in the same transportation category as the unicycle.

This analysis is pretty easy for me because I know of another type of vehicle that has *all* of the advantages of the Segway plus many more and none of the disadvantages. Of course I refer to the bicycle. I've seen enough videos of people learning to ride the Segways to know that it's not quite perfectly intuitive. With a bicycle, you can at least learn when you're young and unbreakable but I've never seen a Segway for half-sized people. Accepting that both vehicles are reliant on a decent sense of balance and taking riding skill as given, we can move on to other issues.

I would be very nervous about how the Segway handles inevitably treacherous road surfaces. Clearly the thing is going to perform very poorly off road, especially in single track, but I find the worst riding surfaces are on bad pavement. If you jar one wheel on a bike, you'll probably jar the other one, but nothing perturbs your stability.

Then there is the long list of practical issues. Can a Segway carry cargo? Where? A kid? A trailer? You get the idea. Bikes are a pain to transport on buses and worse on airplanes, but it's at least possible. You can mail a bicycle relatively easily. A Segway weighs 48kg, about what my expedition bike weighs when loaded for winter trekking. I've never seen one locked up anywhere. Is that even feasible? It seems like a huge liability to leave it locked up all day somewhere.

Of course the real advantage that the Segway has is that you can arrive at your destination free from the symptoms of physical exertion, you know, like being in shape. With bicycles you have to expend a modest amount of energy while the Segway magically transports you. I should point out here that on a bicycle I have kept up with the Segway's rated top speed of 20kph for about 10 times the thing's 38km range (yes, in one day). That may be slightly extraordinary, but if the thing really only has a top speed of 20kph, I'm confident I can beat it anywhere, anytime on a bicycle without cracking a sweat. The reason that powered propulsion is not an advantage anyway, is that if you want to use your body to provide the motive power for your Segway you can not. On the other hand, if you're a lazy cyclist and want some or all of the motive power provided by your utility company, you can get an electric bike. Or a moped. Or at $5k-$6k, just buy a motorcycle.

Maybe Segway fans have something against bike seats. Certainly the seat interface is one of the main complaints about bicycles. I don't know about you, but standing board stiff while directly facing a persistent wind doesn't sound too comfortable to me. And if it did, I could just do what I do sometimes when I see the Segway tourists in the park. I just stand up on the pedals and lock my knees in an awkward-looking position, but one that is unmistakably that of a Segway pilot.

Second Time's A Charm

Monday Van and I went camping again. This time the weather was really superb, quite a proper San Deigo evening. This time I went to the Sweetwater Reservoir. This campground is relatively close to my house which is probably it's main compelling feature. Unfortunately it's a bit too accomodating for the snowbird land yachts and although I've been to much worse campgrounds, this one had a bit of that parking lot feel. There was a nice grass section that is uncharacteristic in this region and after I had set up my tent on it, I was warned by someone about the nocturnal sprinklers. Of course! I should have thought of that. Oh well. Van and I had a nice evening outside, the way evenings in this area should be. With that I could say that the mission was accomplished.

I decided to use my North Face Tent since I was fairly certain that it would not be raining. (That's right, my expensive Expedition 25 from TNF is completely pervious to water! It went from being waterproof to being useless in less than 6 months, and although I'm still alive, TNF refuses to honor the lifetime warranty.) In the middle of the night, I started to notice that my throat was beginning to hurt. I thought that maybe the fumes of the tent stored for so long were not so healthy. The next day I woke up and my throat still hurt. This was a bit mysterious, since the previous and only other time my throat felt this way was when I had suffered arsenic poisoning by drinking water out of a new vessel designed to carry water. I actually didn't know this at the time and complaining to the manufacturer didn't help, but eventuatlly the manufacturer sent a recall notice admitting that arsenic poisoning was possible.

Once I got back to work, I was thinking about how my throat really felt exactly like that time I had arsenic poisoning and I was trying to figure out what was going on. So I naturally turn to wikipedia and I found this in the main page on arsenic:

"Although the use of CCA [chromated copper arsenate] lumber was banned in many areas after studies showed that arsenic could leach out of the wood into the surrounding soil (from playground equipment, for instance), a risk is also presented by the burning of older CCA timber. The direct or indirect ingestion of wood ash from burnt CCA lumber has caused fatalities in animals and serious poisonings in humans; the lethal human dose is approximately 20 grams of ash. Scrap CCA lumber from construction and demolition sites may be inadvertently used in commercial and domestic fires. Protocols for safe disposal of CCA lumber do not exist evenly throughout the world; there is also concern in some quarters about the widespread landfill disposal of such timber."

Ah ha. Very interesting since the wood I was burning in my campfire was from demolition debris. I am very careful not to ever burn anything with paint or glues on it and I certainly would not burn obviously pressure-treated wood with its greenish tint. The wood I was burning, however, was dimensional lumber made from some very fine old growth pine tree, probably Douglas fir. The reason to not just reuse the wood was that it was riddled with termite bores. I had wondered if perhaps the wood had been the problem. I was thinking that after many iterations of "tenting", where the entire house this wood was a part of was covered and pumped full of poison, the wood could have become toxic. If it is arsenic, the good news here is that if it doesn't kill you, it seems that the body clears it away pretty quickly. So that's probably not going to kill me.

Then on the freeway on the way home from work, I looked up from my book and, since I was near the front of the bus, I looked out the front window to see a box about the size of lawn tractor sitting in the freeway. The bus driver was just able to miss it. I had a flashback to an incident on that same freeway where I was driving and suddenly came upon a box the size of a queen-sized bed.

I've really had enough of freakish potentially-fatal events getting a replay!

I Like Locally Grown Produce, Not Films

It's that time of year where I want to receive a marketing email promoting the San Diego Latino Film Festival, but try as I might to get on their mailing lists, I can not. Fortunately, they couldn't keep this event a secret from me. Here are my thoughts about the three films I've seen so far.

El Ciudad En Celo

If you ask me about the plot of this movie in about a year, I won't have a clue. If you ask me if I'd want to see it again I'd probably say yes. It was the typical complicated love triangle, or let's just say polygon in this case, but done in a light-hearted way so as not to be as depressing as real life. It is entertainment after all.

There were about a dozen tango friends in the theater with me, and for us there was hardly enough tango. In the film, when they finally cleared away the tables for some presumably authentic dancing, I doubt I was the only one who cringed to hear American jazz, fine as it may be.

For me the movie pretty much relied on my nostalgia for being in Buenos Aires. Their Spanish is the easiest for me to understand by far. I realized that with my bicycle and a couple of months of free time I was able to scour that city pretty thoroughly. Little details that reminded me of that time pretty much made the whole movie worthwhile. If you've ever been to Buenos Aires, this film will amplify your memories of it, good or bad. Your mileage may vary.

El Clavel Negro

This movie was certainly the kind of thing that I find fascinating. When I was riding my bicycle around Bs.As. the sights I sought out were the landmarks of El Proceso, the Argentine civil liberties nightmare of the late seventies. I'm just fascinated by this kind of thing. It seems that it's so easy for people to forget how seriously wrong things can go and I appreciate movies like this for their ability to remind. This movie is about the mess in Chile in the 70s, but it seems that the point is that it could be anytime, anywhere.

This movie had some affiliation with Amnesty International and I think their message got through well. Their message seems to be, don't bury your hand in the sand and face up to the really bad stuff going on in the world. Life can be depressing enough; it's little wonder that people don't want to think about the events of the Chilean political mess and current events which bear an eerie resemblance to them.

The movie's plot was based on a true story and revolved around the charismatic yet enigmatic Swedish ambassador who did not turn his back on refugees. It seems that at great personal risk, he was responsible for saving hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives.

The film was well made and the acting was excellent. The leading actor was superb as the ambassador. The only complaint I had about the movie is that it was bizarrely in English most of the time. I tried to imagine that Swedish diplomats just resign themselves to always speaking English, but there was not a single conversation in Swedish even among Swedes in the embassy. And there were many situations where Spanish would have been spoken in real life, yet it wasn't in the movie. If you don't like reading subtitles, you understand English well, and enjoy well-made Latin American films, this one might be ideal.

Quien Mato A La Llamita Blanca

This Bolivian movie really deserves a lot of credit. In less than two hours, I learned more about Bolivian culture, history, politics, society, and geography than I ever thought I could know. However, this was no dry documentary. The plot followed the adventures and misadventures of a young indigenous couple who turn to a life of crime. This provided ample opportunity for car chases, gun fights, drunken mayhem, etc. as the main characters zoomed around the country.

I think maybe the main characters were metaphors of Bolivia. On one hand, they were relatively good as criminals and were pretty fastidious in their profession. They were criminals, but they took pride in being criminals that say they're criminals as opposed to the rest of the society who they felt were criminals who wouldn't own up to it. For example, the two policemen who pursued them seemed not too much less criminal. Fitting the Bolivian metaphor, the main characters kept making self-defeating decisions. If "shooting oneself in the foot" translated well into Spanish, I'd have expected to see that gag.

Although the movie was light-hearted and outright hilarious in places, it had an undercurrent of seriousness that was probably designed as a bit of an exposé of the country. One of the ways the film achieved this effect was with the brilliantly creative narration technique. The film actually had an on-screen narrator who would talk about the story and even more about political, social, regional context. What was hilarious about this is that his voice-over would begin to narrate as a complex and action packed scene pulled back to end, but then the camera would swing a bit and focus on an extra and then start to zoom in. This extra had been in the shot the whole time, but at this point, the viewer realizes that it's the narrator. For example, the main characters are dancing in a local festival with the entire village out partying. After the scene is over, the camera focuses on one of the dozens of brightly-dressed indigenous women dancing in their idiosyncratic bowler hats and you realize that it's the narrator and he's giving the narration while actually in the scene dancing with these women. It's a brilliant effect that will probably be imitated, but probably should not be.

If you're interested in Bolivia at all, this movie is surely one of the most entertaining ways to learn all about it.

It Actually Is Not Personal - They Just Suck

I got some feedback about my recent real estate-oriented essays that felt that I was a bit too harsh or maybe just too strident in my reproach of real estate agents. It's true, I did leave it sounding a bit unfair, but unfair it is not. I'll try to make it sound a bit more reasoned and then I'll try to drop the real estate topic for a little while. The fact that it's huge mainstream media news right now probably means I should move on to more interesting topics.

Real estate agents a.k.a. REALTORS® (note that is a trademarked word), are they feckless creeps? Yes. They are. Here is why.

1. They have a dreadful conflict of interest. The book Freakonomics does a fine job of reviewing the ways that RE agents are *not* on your team. They are on their own team and that is generally at odds with your team's objectives. An extra $10k might be a lot of money for you, but it is only $350 to them. On a $200k house (imagine a market far away from Southern California), they stand to make $7000 anyway. Why would they want to do hard work by going the extra mile for just $350? And it turns out, empirical evidence shows that they do *not* go that extra mile.

2. They take way too much money from the transaction. Bring me a RE agent who has sold a *median-priced* home in San Diego ($566,700 in 2005) and let him/her look me in the eye and tell me they *earned* every penny of $19,834 (!). And the buying agent, who also makes as much, would do well to not get too close in case I vomit on them in the middle of their lie. Imagine that your sewer backs up one day and you call a plumber and he tells you that a long section of pipe in your front yard has collapsed and 30 feet of sewer pipe needs to be replaced. Do you think, even if you took the highest bidder, that this would cost anywhere near $19k? Not a chance. Between that and selling a house, which job would you rather not do? So look at what you're getting and think about that. One more thought experiment- what would help to sell your house more? An in ground pool or a real estate agent; the former is much cheaper!

3. They are largely useless in performing useful services. This mostly pertains to the selling agents. If I stood to make $19k from just selling someone's house, damn, I'd make a crusade out of it. But RE agents can't even put together a coherent web page of a property. I have done this myself, yet the RE agent who is probably going to be the most expensive service worker you'll ever hire, can't accomplish this. The MLS as a web page does not count. For $20k, I want them to buy a domain or three and host a flawless website with dozens of professional quality photos and video walk-throughs narrated by Robin frickin Leach. I want detailed floor plans and text about all flattering aspects of the house. Just look at a typical MLS listing and it's pretty much disgraceful for its dearth of all but the most rudimentary information. For $20k, I want a Pulitzer prize winning work of prose fiction designed to make a potential buyer visualize the perfect life which can only be realized by living in this house.

4. They perform many useless services. Driving me around in a Cadillac to look at houses? I'm sorry, but I wouldn't take a $10 cab to go buy groceries; why would I take a few $5k cab rides to go buy a house? It doesn't make sense. The big post in the yard, is that strictly necessary or is that actually the homeowner fronting billboard space for the RE agent's business? Looking up things on the MLS used to be a critical "service" provided by agents, but in reality this practice was actually the withholding of information.

While I sincerely want this profession to die in the blaze of ingloriousness it so richly deserves, I'm not advocating death camps for these people. I'll settle for a radical reform of the profession. Buying a house is a complicated matter and having an advocate is not categorically a terrible idea. But they must actually be on your team. Perhaps the banks could pay them just like my credit union pays for a service that will help you find and buy a used car. There is no commission and these people really are only motivated to give you a good experience so that you're encouraged to not avoid it in the future - more business for the banks financing loans. I would suggest a flat fee or even better, an hourly rate with itemized billing. If you put a REALTOR® crucifix in my yard and want to charge me 100 times more than a team of gardeners who would make the yard into an immaculate garden that would impress a Buddhist monk, then that should probably be printed right up front on the invoice where people can laugh openly at it.

RE agents should be integrating information, not still guarding Balkanized databases. The fact that some bigger real estate outfits are doing a good job in this area (Zillow, Redfin) gives me hope that this is changing. All house listings should be free and available to everyone instantly. That's the modern reality unless some very powerful trade lobby (like the N.A.R.) is damming up that information flow.

Finally, RE agents need to professionally sell the place. I'm astonished by the poor quality of photos that plague the MLS. It seems that only the builders hire professionals to take their photos. And why be skimpy with photos. Photograph *everything*. Why waste my time making me go look at a house that could have been culled from contention by more easily obtainable information? And I mentioned dedicated websites showing a degree of professionalism. If it were my house for sale, I would not want my marketing message drowned amongst the dross of the REALTOR'S® stupid web site with it's ads for various agents, loan products, the parent company, etc.

If real estate salesmen started acting in their clients' best interests and started actually doing a professional quality job at marketing and/or providing advice or analysis, I'd be much less likely to spend my time thinking of ways to eradicate this profession.

Ok, let us not mention this topic again for a long while.