Braille signs

One of the things I've always wondered about lately is: how do blind people find Braille signs?

Seriously? It's not like there is a rule that the signs will always be at a certain place in a room. So how do blind people even find them to begin with? It all seems like a really mean practical joke to me, and a bit of a waste of resources. Of course the reason why I'm pondering this question is the sign that I saw in a coffee shop restroom, below:

I wonder if the Braille actually says "Employees must wash hands". I would think that a better sentence would be:
"Bet you'll wash your hands now that you finally found this sign!"

Caffeine and other drugs

First off, if you're a fan of coffee, particularly espresso, you may want to check out Fieldshead coffee. The site may not seem like much but the coffee is damn good. Plus they sent me an extra half pound for free, bonus! Oh, if you are interested I found them through the Coffee Review web site.

However, on the way to picking up the coffee at the post office I had the joy of witnessing a drug addict have one hell of a bad trip. And that got me thinking, maybe the reason why the anti-drug campaigns of the 80's didn't work was because they were at best lame, and at worst funny.



Now if they had instead just shown video of the nutball I saw yelling and howling this afternoon I think it would be far more effective. This dude was just out of it, stumbling around and and yelling incoherent sounds in a parking lot.

See for me, looking like a complete fool and acting that crazy is a deterring reason not to do drugs. Seeing an egg fried is really just a suggestion for what to have for breakfast.

Cyclocross hurting

So I mentioned at the end of my last post that I would describe my latest race for you guys. I suppose that I should mention that I haven't been biking much at all...ok, not counting the race I think I rode my bike once in a month, and that wasn't really a hard ride. So my fitness level is crappy is to be polite. But I figured WTF, the race was just across the river from downtown, it was a great day and I needed a break from writing the proposal.

So I rode up to the race location, disturbingly winded from the short ride. The first group was already racing so I got my number and waited for a chance to pre-ride the course. The pre-ride gave me some hope, the course was pretty flat, not much climbing, either on or off the bike. But there were some narrow parts of the course; like a lose dirt run-up, where I actually ran into the bike in front of me in a practice lap because people were going to slow up the hill. So with a lot of twisty corners and a total of four barriers in the race it was going to be a good technical race. I figured that would suite me and I might have a chance to do well.

Well we lined up, almost 80 of us! That's about four times more than the number of people I raced against in Alberta. That was going to make the first corners a lot more sketchy, particularly this second corner which was downhill and off camber!

But I got through smartly on the outside, I was probably sitting about 20th. Ok, so this should work out relatively well. Oh wait, I have to keep pedaling? Maybe not, there's starting to be a bit of a gap to the guy in front of me. Good thing there's a set of barriers ahead, that slows the others down and I can maybe even pass a guy or two while getting back on the bike.

Ok, the run-up sucks. People are going slow through here and I can't pass anyone until I get to the top and run around them. But then there is a long flat section, it seems in this style of racing I get passed when I have to pedal...maybe I should just start doing running races? Nah, I'd look weird doing them wearing a helmet and with a bike on my shoulder.

The rest of the race was pretty much like this: get passed by people on the flat sections, pass them back on the next running/barrier section, then they would pass me for good and I would repeat the process with another small group. All the while it feels as though my stomach and blood are full of battery acid. With about two or three laps to go I start to notice that my crank arm (that hold the pedals in place) on the left is feeling lose, this has been a problem lately and I hoped it would hold for the whole race.

So deciding against possibly ruining my bike I pulled myself out of the race. And proceeded to cough up most of a lung, which I don't think I was using in the race anyway, so at least next time I will be lighter.

Oh, as for the crank, I tightened it but it came lose again on the ride home. But it did it quickly enough that as I was going up the last climb it had pulled itself far enough off the spline that I actually shaved down part of the teeth on the crank (oops!). I may have fucked the crank arm right good, though since these were the inner most parts I may be able to get away with riding it for the rest of the season if I can get some loctite on the bolt to hold it in place.

Either way it was a fun race and I'll be trying my luck again on Sunday. Hopefully this time I'll be able to finish the race...though I'm not sure my remaining lung will.

Junk mail

Wow this isn't funny any more. I keep getting swamped with work. Once again it was the proposal, which needed some serious tweaking before it went out. Thankfully it's finally done, now I just have to wait and stress about whether or not I'll get interviews, which I can stress about when they come around...boy this is fun! Incidentally what day of the week is it? I've been confused by that for the past two weeks, the days keep changing but not in the order I anticipate. I think I need some sleep.

But before that I must rant. Why the hell does Capital One send me a fucking credit card application every god damn month! It's not like this has happened twice, it's been every month since I signed up with my health plan through the University, 18 months ago. What to know how I it was when I signed up for my health plan? It's because they somehow managed to turn my name from Christopher to Chirstophe R. And to think, I spent six years at a French elementary school making the Francophones call me Christopher and it's the Americans who call me Christophe.

So other than being pissed that my health care provider would sell my name for money; shows how much they really care about my health (fuckers). I'm just annoyed that I keep getting these pre-approved credit card forms in the mail every month. Seriously, do they think this will ever work out in their favour? I mean they have sent me hundreds of pages of colour printed forms, fancy packaging and all the bells and whistles that they could think of, still they failed. When are they going to get the hint? Do people actually cave in on the 23rd time that this damn thing shows up?

Maybe it's not that big a deal, but at least spam to my email address gets filtered and is easy to clean up. This crap just gets all over the place. That and, unlike my email, I don't really get much anything of interest in my real mail so these fake-out letters really bum me out in the end.

Oh, yes I know this is a lame blog entry. So tomorrow I will try to recount my first cyclocross race of the season. It should be a good read, there are pictures and I sucked big time!

Buy your way into politics

That's right folks, it doesn't matter if you are grossly unqualified, completely ignorant of the world around you or have problems with alcohol/drugs/little boys. So long as you have enough money you can get elected here in the US. Ok, you have to be part of one of the two major (read: only) parties in the country, Ross Perot helped prove that point.

See it's election time in the states, actually unlike the Canadian system, every other year here is an election year. So that means that politicians will try and kiss your ass for votes and nothing will really get done before then because they are spending all their time raising campaign funds. Any guesses how much money was spent on the campaign funds in 2004? Try $1.78 BILLION dollars. Sure the government lost track of more money than that paying for the war in Iraq, but still, that's a lot of fucking money. Particularly when they do this every other year! By the way, they have calculated that it costs on average $7 million for a senator to be elected here. You think there might not be a little bit of influence by big money on what gets done in politics?

The really sad part is that even the credible news sources, like NPR, start comparing the parties by how much money they have raised. They then make a direct correlation between the amount of money that has been raised and the chances of winning the election. Personally I can't fathom how that would work, who votes for the guy with the most ads? Shit McDonald's has more ads than any other restaurant, I still won't eat there.

The really sad part is that with all this money for ads and consultants, this is what they come up with as quality campaign ads go:


Or how about this one:



But the most shame really should fall on the shoulders of Fox news. Sure they could be real reports and actually question him about his claims, but it's just so much easier to praise him for his good work.



Fucking assholes!

Hi. Remember me?

Yeah, so it's obviously been a while since I posted anything on this blog. This time I'd have to say I had a good excuse, I was writing up a research proposal for job applications. See if you want to be a faculty member at a university and do research you need to show them that you know what to do. Go figure they won't just take your word for it. So for the last several weeks, since about the beginning of September actually, I've been buried in books and papers, trying to build up a research proposal that would actually seem good. I guess we'll find out in a few months how that worked out.

The greatest joy to all this is that since I got back from visiting Deirdre in Pittsburgh I really haven't had a day that I didn't go into the office/lab to work. Well there was that Saturday that I went for a cyclocross ride with a team member. We got so lost in the river bottom trails that we had to call her mom to come pick us up and drive us back. How sad, that was the first time I had to do that (other then for a broken chain) in all the years I biked...let's not talk about it again, I feel much shame.

So to return to my blogging ways, I feel it's high time I complain about something. This afternoon as I took the bus home I was treated to the most horrendous sounds imaginable. No it wasn't a child crying, ok so I may have exaggerated a little, this certain comes a close second. It was a gaggle (as there could be no better term) of ~18 year old girls. Now, I understand that the bus can be loud. It's pretty much a given, particularly if you are near the engine at the back. But if your friend is sitting across the aisle from you and I'm sitting 10-15 feet closer to the engine, my ears should not be bleeding due to the tone and volume of your voice. And to the girl sitting next to me, do your friends a favour and save yourself some money, you don't need the cell phone, you're loud enough that they can hear you from here!

You know, maybe I should study this phenomena. After all there has been research done into what sounds will drive away teens. Maybe I could market a device for teens that would emit a sound that drives away adults? Hey, it may not be worth much but I might at least get an Ig Nobel. Though maybe that award should go to the guy who thought of using that sound as the ring tone for teens cellphones...if only we could teach them to talk at that frequency...