Cupcakes

In betwixt memorizing reaction functions for my economics exam this Thursday and doing some spring cleaning, I managed to whip up some March Madness cupcake/cookies with Kathryn and notch a 1st place finish in the 24 Minutes of the Abandoned Building race. Not a bad weekend. Too bad Monday had to come along and ruin it all.

The Big Mo'

A couple weeks ago a friend of mine send me a link to a new Dale Earnhardt Jr. candy bar called "Big Mo'." The description of the candy bar is so over the top ridiculous that I just assumed it was fake:

"What is Big Mo’? Sure, it’s a candy bar, but it’s also everything that Dale Jr. loves—including chocolate, peanut butter and caramel. Big Mo’ is racing. The way you need it like oxygen, because it’s in your DNA and if you’re not around it, you can’t keep going. Big Mo’ is your buddies. Hanging out ‘til all hours of the night crackin’ jokes, playing pool and just kicking back and having a good time like you always do. Big Mo’ is being true to yourself. When you get right down to it, that’s the only thing that matters—doing what you love because you love it and not needing any other reason."

Imagine my surprise when Kathryn came home from the grocery store yesterday with a Big Mo' just for me! Oh, Dale Jr., you surely are the biggest 'Mo.

Bocce

On the heels of two days of long mountain bike rides, hikes, and soccer, Hayden and I decided to unwind by filling a Nalgene bottle up with wine and heading down to the local bocce ball courts (or maybe they're called "lanes?") Bocce on a cool evening is something I could really get into. I wonder what it would take to build a lane in my backyard?

Hiking around Monterey

After I returned from Taiwan I got the chance to visit my friend Lord Hayden in Monterey. He's been living on the California coast for over a year now telling me how great the hiking and biking is, so it was high time for a trek out there.

Here's a shot behind the lab Hayden works at, located right on the ocean. They pump seawater up through metal pipes to the sea critters in the lab. Apparently you can go snorkeling on your lunch breaks.

If you hike about a mile inland you can cruise around valleys of giant redwoods:

Climbing out of the valleys and up into the hills was pretty painful on my winter-atrophied legs, but once we hit the top the view was real nice:

Riding to the Airport

Madison is small enough that there is a nice bike path leading from the city out to the airport. On recent travels I've taken to using this path. It's nice to get a little fresh air both before and after all of the recycled air you breathe on a cross-country or international flight.

The downside is you never know if the weather will turn on you while you're away. After a recent trip to Monterey, I found the dry roads I left behind had been blasted by snow in my absence. It was a long ride home.

Before departure:


Upon return:

Mason & Dixon

On the return flight from Taiwan I finally had the chance to finish the Thomas Pynchon novel Mason & Dixon, a feat made possible by neglecting the assigned reading for Economics for Managers.

For those with an abundance of internet-surfing time on their hands due to the break in NCAA basketball, here are a few short excerpts I enjoyed:

Maskelyne laments his 29th birthday:
"Twenty-nine's Fell Shadow! O, inhospitably final year of any Pretense to Youth, its Dreams now, how wither'd away...tho' styl'd a Prime, yet bid'st thou Adieu to the Prime of Life!...There,- there, in the Stygian Mists of Futurity, loometh the dread Thirty,- Transition unspeakable! Prime so soon fallen, thy Virtue so easily broken, into a Number divisible, - penetrable!- by six others!'

A discussion of ladies clothing:
It is difficult, in these days of closer-fitting Attire, to imagine the enormous volumes of unoccupied Space that once lay between a Skirt's outer Envelope, and the woman's body far within. "Why, there may be anything!" Capt. Dasp as if genuinely alarmed, "stash'd in there,- contraband Tea, the fruits of Espionage, the coded fates of Nations, a moderate-sized Lover, a Bomb."
"Yet the present-day bodice," remarks Lady Lepton, "can conceal secrets only with difficulty. A single key, perhaps, or the briefest of love-notes. Indeed, 'tis but an ephemeral Surface, rising out of the Spaces that billow ambiguously below the waist, till above melting...here, into the bare decolletage, producing an effect, do you mark, of someone trying to ascend into her natural undraped State, out of a Chrysalis spun of the same invisible Silk as the Social Web, kept from emerging into her true wing'd Self,- perhaps then to fly away,- by the gravity of her gown."

Dixon senses the East India Company afoot, and traps Mason in a pun:
"Come, Sir, can you not sense here, there, just 'round the corner, the pattering feet and swift Hands of John Company, the Lanthorns of the East..." the scent of fresh Coriander, the whisper of a Sarong...?"
"Sari," corrects Mason.
"Not at all Sir,- 'twas I who was sarong."

A being from inside the hollow-earth contemplates life on the surface to Dixon:
"Perhaps some of us will try living upon thy own Surface. I am not sure that everyone can adjust from a concave space to a convex one. Here have we been sheltered, nearly everywhere we look is no Sky, but only more Earth.- How many of us, I wonder, could live the other way, the way you People do, so exposed to the Outer Darkness? Those terrible Lights, great and small? And wherever you may stand, given the Convexity, each of you is slightly pointed away from everybody else, all the time, out into that Void that most of you seldom notice. Here in the Earth Concave, everyone is pointed at everyone else,- ev'rybody's axes converge,- forc'd at least thus to acknowledge one another,- an entirely different set of rules for how to behave."

Mason writes his own epitaph:
He wish'd but for a middling Life,
Forever in betwixt
The claims of Lust and Duty,
So intricately mix'd,-
To reach some happy Medium,
Fleet as a golden Beam,
Uncharted as St. Brendan's Isle
Fugitive as a Dream.

Alas, 'twas not so much the Years,
As Day by thieving Day,-
With Debts incurr'd, and Interest Due,
That Dreams were sold to pay,-
Until at last, but one remain'd,
Too modest to have Worth,
That yet he holds within his heart,
As he is held, in Earth.


I reckon that's enough of that. Time to get some sleep.

An Evening in Taiwan

A couple nights ago I had a four-course shrimp dinner with one of the companies that manufactures products for Planet Bike. What's a four-course shrimp dinner? Salty shrimp, butter garlic shrimp, spicy shrimp, and shrimp boiled in sake. The shrimp boiled in sake is served last and you drink the sake like soup as you eat the shrimp, which might be why I had a bit of a headache the following day.



Unless of course the headache was due to visiting the Taiwan Beer factory directly after dinner. My aunt and uncle happened to be in Taipei visiting my cousin (a mechanical engineer who has long stints in Taiwan) and they met up with my Taiwanese friends and me for beer by the gallon.

Among the many secrets of western culture passed on to the Taiwanese that night was how to pee on the ceiling (just pinch it).

Taipei In Haikus and Pictures

Twenty-four hour flight
Fat man flowing into my seat
Taiwan beer helps

In the factory
Inspecting work conditions
No children were found

Taipei Show day one
Lord Hayden in banner form
Brings great joy to me


My Taiwanese friend
On top rung of ladder
Much like Icarus

View from hotel room
Like being outside without
Smelling Taipei air


Night market food stalls
Your fried foods smell so tasty
Will you poison me?


Lighting fireworks from roof of convention center into freeway traffic...


Planet Bike booth...


High Life is better when it's from Milwaukee...

Unloading Containers

All of the products we sell arrive from Taiwan and China on 40 foot shipping containers. These are the same shipping containers that occasionally contain (dead) Chinese immigrants hoping to sneak into the country. Four weeks in a metal box cannot be a good thing. Luckily, the only thing that has ever showed up in our containers is bicycle accessories.

Because we're a small company and only have one full time warehouse guy, the four of us in the office pitch in and unload boxes whenever a container shows up. It probably does me good to exercise my pencil arms, but when we get a shipment of locks (45 pound boxes) the aforementioned pencil arms get real tired. Anyhow, here's the riveting procedure:

Boxes get loaded onto pallets:

Pallets get moved close to the appropriate bay in the warehouse:


Boxes get thrown up to the bay and stacked:

A Few More...

Here are a few more pictures from the Thunder Leap just because it's Friday.

The Brick Testament

I present to you The Brick Testament: the Bible as told by Legos. Just choose a chapter and click on the arrows above the pictures to enjoy the story. My favorite sections are under Old, the Bible lovingly retold through Legos. Just pick a chapter Testament- The Law, which include such Bible lessons as "When to Marry Your Sister-in-Law," and "When to Stone Your Whole Family."

Official

It's official. In the words of Lord Hayden, "It was fun to watch the old feller do his thing."

What Got You Here and the Zombie Survival Guide

Last weekend I had to read the book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There for a managerial communications class I am taking as part of the MBA program. I have to admit, when my copy arrived from Amazon.com I immediately judged the book by its cover. The exclamatory claims and raves, including “How successful people become even more successful!” and “Marshall’s proven improvement process rocks!” immediately conjured up images of every self-help dust jacket I had ever seen- Lose weight fast! Improve the way you look and feel! Earn more money! Improve your sex life!

I feared the book would advocate manipulation and duplicity to climb over coworkers and grab the top spot in an organization. I was wrong, sort of. Boiled down to its most basic ingredient, WGYHWGYT preaches respect for others. It does this by highlighting the most common ways we disrespect our coworkers: not giving our full attention, adding our two cents to every idea, not sharing information, overestimating our contributions to projects, failing to express gratitude, etc.

It’s a good message and the book is worth skimming to find out what a jerk you’ve been without realizing it, but I still have one major beef. All of the anecdotes about executives changing their behavior as a result of coaching from the author indicate that the people made the changes so they could rise higher in their organization or strengthen their business. With maybe one exception, none of them wanted to change just because they realized they were being assholes and disrespecting their coworkers.

On a more fun note, a friend lent me the Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks (son of Mel Brooks). From the dustjacket:

The Zombie Survival Guide is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now. Fully illustrated and exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain.

Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack

1. Organize before they rise!
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head: cut off theirs.
4. Blades don’t need reloading.
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.

Retirement

The word on the street is this guy is retiring. Say it ain't so!

Thunder Leap Pics

I had my doubts, but Sketch Brah and Ruckus came through with a phenomenal Thunder Leap course. As pictured on the schematic below, contestants began riding the tiny bike in the snowy backyard, along the side of the house, out onto the ice-covered sidewalk, up a ramp that was covering the front steps, down a hallway, into the living room "feed zone" (where an entire can of Hamm's had to be consumed), along a path of shingles that had been ducktaped to the kitchen floor, down a slight drop onto the deck, and finally launched off of a ramp and over a fire. Epic.

(Pics are all courtesy of Robin, feel free to click on any of the pics for a better look)

Sketch Brah gets ready for a test ride:

Lyle doesn't fear the ice:

JMac makes a flawless ride through the kitchen, off the jump, and onto the landing ramp:

I clear the fire and land on the ramp, but am promptly ejected over the handlebars and into a snowbank. My hopes of capturing the coveted orange jersey are dashed:

Ruckus makes short work of the can of Hamm's, but can't quite beat the best time:

ZR rockets up the ramp, on his way to the best time of the evening:

Nate is split seconds away from clearing the fire pit:

Current champion and defender of the orange jersey, Sketch Brah takes two costly falls that he cannot make up for:

The jersey is transferred to its new keeper:

Much like the Stanley Cup, each new champion's name is inscribed on the orange jersey:

Victory!