An open letter to San Diego sports fans.

First of all I want to thank and congratulate you. The sight of so many of you using the trolley to get to and from football and baseball games is inspiring. Normally I would expect your stupid redneck asses to be in the seats of pickup trucks, polluting the environment, clogging up traffic and drunkenly ruining lives. So thank you for evolving beyond that.

Unfortunately you still haven’t quite attained the ranking of functional member of society. See I ride the trolley too, I take it to and from work, it’s convenient and allows me to catch my train out of town on time...unless there’s a ball game. I’ll admit, the system is a bit confusing in terms of what tickets to purchase and how your trip is classified in the automated ticket box. But that confusion shouldn’t carry over into your use of the train. The process there is quite simple, much like other doorways, elevators and bathrooms, when the doors open get on, when you want to get off, walk out the door. So why on earth is it that my trip takes an extra 5 minutes (~30%) longer?

So in a desire to try and get home on time, rather than having to wait 30-45 minutes for my next train here are some tips for riding the trolley:

You know that your stop is near the end of the line right, so get the fuck away from the door. You just stand there with your fat ass blocking everyone else from either getting on or off the train, costing us valuable time.
Pay attention to the people around you. If you see someone get up and move toward the door they probably want to get off, so let them get off.
Figure out how to use the door. Don’t stand there with your baseball glove in hand looking at the door longingly, as though your minimal cerebral powers had been able to harness the full spectrum of telekinetic powers. See the circle of green lights around the button? It’s right under the bilingual sign telling you to push it to open the door. Don’t wait around a minute to push it, causing the train to wait longer once again.

Thank you for taking this advice to heart, hopefully this will result in both me getting to my train on time and give you more time to get shit-faced; if you work with me on this you might not even remember the bottom of the fourth inning.

Technology: 0 , Me: -2

So in preparation for the second class of the semester I decided that it would be a good idea to try out the projection system a couple of times to make sure that I had been able to work out all the bugs. Sure enough I was able to clear things up. I even figured out how to display the slide on the projector while keeping the speakers view on my laptop screen. Having managed to accomplish this in only a couple of minutes in the actual classroom that I was to be teaching in I felt pretty confident that I wouldn’t have any problems.

Incidentally, have I mentioned how stunningly fast this Mac laptop is at booting up? Wether from a full shutdown or just being put to sleep by closing it up it will generally boot up in less than a minute.

Well yesterday I went to the class about 10 minutes early to ensure that I would have enough time to get things rolling. I went through all the steps that I had successfully used last time and sure enough nothing happened. Not nothing went wrong, I mean nothing happened. The projector didn’t pick up the feed from the computer and I was left sitting there like a putz. Ok, I’ve still got time to handle this, maybe if I close the laptop and open it again I can get it to figure out the connection to the projector.

By about now you should be able to see where this is going and why I included that little mention of how quick the laptop is too boot up. Sure enough when I opened the laptop up it got stuck in some eternal booting loop that I just didn’t have time to deal with. So by my scoring that puts technology at zero and me at negative two. Some might argue that it should be 2-0 for technology but I don’t see technology as having won anything yet, it’s simply fucked things up and made me look like an ass. Stay tuned for more score updates in the coming weeks.

First day of class

So yesterday was the first time that I got to teach my class. All through my grad studies and beyond I’ve been told by people that I’d make a great teacher, and to a point I’ve started to believe them. Then I tried to really teach for the first time...let’s just say that the bar has been set sufficiently low that so long as I show up wearing pants in the next class they will be happy.

I should clarify that last statement, I don’t want you getting the impression that I was only half clothed while teaching, but that was the only part missing from the nightmare scenario.

One thing you need to know is that like 75% of the classrooms on this campus, my classroom is a “smart” room - though as I’m learning this does not imply that I’m smart in any way. I’d had been given a brief overview of the system and felt pretty confident that I could get it working. Ha! It turns out that the combination of a “smart” room, a new computer and fancy new software conspired to result in my fumbling around behind the podium for about 20 minutes trying to get ANYTHING to appear on the project; all while trying to present some of the material in a coherent fashion. I finally had to flee the classroom to get a tech support guy (I tried calling but all lines were busy, which makes me feel a bit better) to get things up and going.

So with his help things got going, sort of. You see, I started using the Mac software Keynote. It’s really sweet and has a lot of nice features to make presentations that much easier...if they work. I had been relying on being able to see my presentation notes while giving the class, unfortunately due to an error in the settings I couldn’t see anything. Needless to say, flying blind without having memorized everything doesn’t work terribly well.

But like I said earlier, odds are that I can only get better from here. And that’s the true key to success, getting those judging you to have low expectations from the start.

Chitchat

So I knew when I moved out here that I was in for a bit of a cultural change, particularly in the realm of everyday chitchat. This may not be all that obvious at first but just think about it for a second, when you bump into someone what is one of the first things that you most often talk about: the weather. I’m still not certain at what latitude the transition occurs, but somewhere as you move from North to South the ever-present conversations about the weather just die off.

I figured that out when a couple of Texans joined the bike club I was riding with in Minneapolis. One of them once asked what’s with everyone talking about the weather all the time. I think she was trying to figure out if it was a Canadian phenomenon as well or simply a quirk of Minnesota living. That’s when I realized that for those living in more schizophrenic climates weather really dominates your life and your conversations. In someplace like Texas after stating that it’s hot, or really hot, the weather conversation is over.

So living in SoCal is just the same. I noticed pretty soon on that I don’t need to check the weather for the day, or even the forecast for the week ahead. Today it was sunny and warm, tomorrow will be sunny and warm, same thing over and over again. So what the hell do people talk about for chitchat? Commuting. It makes sense, traffic and commute times dominate peoples lives down here; as I’ve become very acutely aware.

Unfortunately I realized something else recently. I tend to justify my long-ass commute saying things like “he train lets me do work” (or write this blog) and “I’m really gaining time by not being stuck in traffic”…that’s right folks, I’ve become the equivalent of the person who justifies winter with things like “the spring is so beautiful” and “you appreciate summer more after a winter.”

How did I manage to get lamer by moving to such a cool place?

I've been riding

So Saturday was the first day that I was able to get out for a bike ride since I arrived in California. Ok, that's not quite true, there have been opportunities before now, but I hadn't been able to get up the motivation to unpack the bikes and build them back up. That and riding in a new area always kind of sucks when you're on your own; you never know which roads are good to ride and which have the most rednecks in pickup trucks. But I finally sucked it up and got the bikes together and took off down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). Along the way I learned a few things.

1) Though there are bike lanes all over the area where I live, and along the PCH to the north, this does not mean that there will be bike paths south along the PCH. In fact the shoulder on the PCH seems to vary greatly at random. From a full lane sized bike path, to a narrow marked shoulder area to a parking lane through rather crowded cities.

2) Ocean breezes don't actually blow perpendicular to the shore. Never having lived on the coast before I never bothered to think about it. It turns out that today the winds from the ocean were actually blowing in a southerly direction, keep that in mind, it becomes important later on.

3) California is hilly, the PCH is hilly, living in the middle of the prairies for about 8 years does not condition one for riding hills a lot.

4) Hills suck.

5) I live on the top of a hill.

6) Sitting in a car for a week to travel across the country does not exercise your legs, no matter how sore/stiff they may seem at the end of a day driving.

7) Long commutes to and from work by car and train also do not consist of training of ones legs for riding a bike.

8) This lack of training combined with the above environmental factors (hills and wind) will cause one to crack (want to cry like a little girl) at about 55 km into a 65 km ride that was stupid enough to start off going south - into the wind.

9) Spending the rest of the day shopping for clothes in stores where you have an infinite selection of blue coloured shirts will leave your legs feeling as though they have been hit with baseball bats, repeatedly.

10) I need to get back into shape.

Bitter Commuting

So before I moved out here I knew that I was in for some long hours of commuting, I mean this is SoCal, who doesn’t have a long commute? But I have to admit that I have been spoiled in the past. Though out undergrad and grad school the longest I ever had to commute to the universities was about 20 minutes. Hell, most of my post secondary life I have lived across the street from whichever school I was going to, and never had to live in a dorm…though the house with 8 roommates may have been even worse in some ways. Then when I started my post doc I was living further away, maybe a 30 minute commute. Until I mived in with Deirdre and found an express bus that brought the commute back to just about 20 minutes.

So I knew that it would be a bit of a shock to the system to move out to California, after all with Deirdre and I working so far apart the commute times were going to be much longer than I had ever experienced. But I was able to console myself that at least I would be able to watch the sun rise over the Pacific…oh wait, wrong coast. Well, maybe I could watch it set over the ocean, at least that will make the trip more bearable. Unlike a commute out to Fort McMurray…ooh look, another oil refinery!

Of course driving down the coast doesn’t give you much of a chance to look out over the ocean, at least not in 5 lanes of traffic moving at 80 mph (128 km/h) – incidentally I didn’t realize just how fast that was until I did the conversion. So it was a nice surprise to realize that the train that I can take down the coast actually runs a lot closer to the coast than the highway. This allows all passengers on the train a great view of the ocean and beaches.

Though I’m starting to realize that that might not be such a good thing. See, while I’m going to work on a train I see others out biking along the coast or surfing. And the way home isn’t any better, the beaches are even more packed with people enjoying the afternoon sun. At least I’m not alone in my envy of the beachgoers. Half the passengers on the train sit opposite the beach side, burying their noses in books and newspapers to avoid acknowledging what they are missing. The other half are looking out longingly at those who have the freedom to play in surf. Personally I like to console myself by pretending I see shark fins out in the ocean about to eat the bastards in the water.

Put it in H!

So as I mentioned in my last post I’ve gone and bought a car. It’s been a bit of an adaptation to get used to driving a lot., the biggest problem being to remember that even though I’m not feeling tired I may actually need to put fuel in the tank. Hey, years of cycling have conditioned me in many strange ways. I still recall the first time I was driving a car after a couple of years of serious biking, I found myself pointing out potholes and glass to the cars behind me with little effect.

So now that I know to watch the fuel gauge things are getting a bit easier, but no thanks to the dealer who showed me the car. As I may have mentioned the car I got is a Prius; I could claim it was all for the environment but let’s face it, 50 miles per gallon at over $3 a gallon just makes sense. Anyway, the Prius has a bit of a unique transmission and the shifter is no less unique; you simply move it to R, D or B and let it go back to the starting position and you’re done.

But hold on a second; I understand R, that’s reverse (with ANNOYING beeping), and D is for drive, but what the fuck is B…is that back without the beeping? Or maybe just the beeping on it’s own? Well, according to the dealer it’s for something way cooler than that, it’s for “Boost”, you know like Knight Rider (he actually said that). And with that he shifts it to B and sure enough the engine sounds a lot louder and meaner. But at that point I should have noticed something, the engine sounded louder, but we didn’t start moving any faster. But I was still in the process of recovering from brain cell loss due to the new car smell, a.k.a. industrial solvents.

The night after I bought the car I was home reading the manual. Deirdre will attest to that fact, as I never read the manual before doing anything so she was shocked at the sight. Once I get to the section on the transmission I found something interesting. I was right about the D and R functions, I’m pretty clever aren’t I, but B was in fact not for “Boost”. There was only one line explaining what the B was for, it was described as “Engine Break”; the description read, something to the effect of “used to slow the vehicle, do not used for extended periods of time.”

Now I’m no mechanic, but I have a feeling trying to accelerate while using an engine break is not a good idea. So in retrospect I guess it makes sense that the position is labeled B, because with dealer advice like the kind I got B will most certainly “break” your car.

Feeling grown up

So lately I've started to feel more and more grown up. I don't think it really has all that much to do with the fact that my thirtieth birthday is right around the corner. I don't really feel that the fact that I just started a tenure track faculty position is adding to the feelings of getting older. Sadly, it seems to be all the stuff I recently got.

See with the move to SoCal and the new job I now have both income (or will shortly) and a need for a few things that I just couldn't get in the past. So I seem to have procured a lot more material goods in a very short time, the last three days to be exact. In that time I managed to get a car and a computer for the first time in my life. Somehow this finally makes me feel as though I'm grown up. I suppose it's because I always figured that I would finally get a car when I "grow up" so that's really the final stamp on my aging, though the increasing number of grey hairs is a good daily reminder.

Then of course there is the apartment. This places feels nothing like the apartments I've had since I started going to university. It's spacious, huge to be exact, with a wonderfully vaulted ceiling in the living room. Add to that a spare bedroom and a second full bathroom and I really don't feel like a kid any more. Plus this really isn't a neighbourghood that students would live in; the place is so upscale you don't separate your recyclables from your trash, they do that for you. And no, I'm not kidding, that's what we were told at the rental office.

So these things just add up to destroy the mental image of myself as a 22 year old kid. I guess I'll just have to roll with it, I'm going to be get older despite everything I do so I may as well enjoy it. And at least I've already started to get comments to the effect of "Wow, you look so young to be a prof." So that should help ease the transition from student to adult. After all, are you really allowed to consider yourself a student when you haven't been in a class (only to learn) in over five years? I didn't think so...damn you cruel world and your "reality".