Seattle area road bike loops

Expanding on the bike route thing, here's the first version of the loop page I've been working on. If I'm only duplicating someone else's work, let me know -- I haven't been able to find any good complilation pages that aren't 50% dead links.

Barring women from combat

I know web polls are garbage. And yet on the History Channel's web page today, I came across this whopper:

Should female troops be barred from engaging in ground combat in all branches of the military?

Wow. That's a terrible question. The results?

Yes
46%		5810 votes
No
54%		6823 votes

	Total Votes: 12,633

I have two things to say here.

First, women are already in combat. The only issue is whether we acknowledge this or not. They may not serve in infantry platoons, but they're the gunners in HUMVEE convoys, they're being ambushed, shelled, bombed, and they're shooting back. Pretending that this isn't the case only denies them recognition for what they endure.

Second, barring women from combat means nothing. Do people think that the people ambushing, shelling, and bombing American troops would respect a declaration that female soldiers aren't supposed to be in combat? Should those women stand around and do their nails until someone comes by and puts the bullet into the forehead up close and personal?

As a country, we need to acknowledge what's going on -- women are already in combat. Combat doesn't respect artificial distinctions between combat and non-combat designations, and it wouldn't respect a rule barring them from combat. If you allow women into the military at all, you've allowed them into combat. We should give them their due respect.

Derek's favorite loops

I'll update this with miles, etc.

1. Lake Washington. From my house: down to Marymoor (early, before people get up -- even then, you'll be dodging walking clubs/jogging threesomes), N on Burke-Gilman around the top of the lake*, then follow the UW-Seward instructions to get to Lake Washington Blvd, take that to Seward, Seward to Jean Coulon, then take the trail up along the W side of Lake Washington that kicks you out at the I-90 Coal Creek underpass. Added bonus: throw in some Mercer Island loops for extended hill work to hit your distance/hill goals.

* I love the stretch through Woodinville/Bothell early in the morning, when no one's there and it's still a little bit cold as you whip through the turns. The poor trail condition (roots! roots! roots!) down to and through the UW is hard. Burke Gilman through Redmond becomes more and more dangerous as morons fill it, to the point where you may as well sit up and soft-pedal it through.

2. Duvall-Snohomish-Monroe-Duvall. I used to ride this all the time when I lived out there. Head out from Duvall and follow the Flying Wheels route. Pretty easy on the hills. Lots of easy rural roads. Only problem is you're exposed with short shoulders on some curves, which would be scary if there was more traffic. For added fun, you can throw in the loop down to Carnation.

3. Not-so-Chilly Hilly. 33m, ~2600 feet of climbing. Take the ferry out to Bainbridge, do the Chilly Hilly route. Repeat as required to reach your distance goal, or until you die. Beautiful. Also painful as all hell, especially if your friend is (say) 25% lighter than you are and likes to kick your ass up long gradual climbs. Seems like it's hard to get food/water during the ride.

Psychonauts, part 2

My experience playing Psychonauts:
Love, love, love (repeat)
Last level: haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate, boiling frustration, near-controller-tossing rage, giving finger to monitor, swearing loudly
Then looooooooove.

The game goes from being fun and challenging to frustrating and nearly impossible in the last level. Disappointing and also baffling -- how can someone make a great game and then right at the end take a turn to "awful"? Didn't someone test it?

One of the best games I've played in years. The story is great, the dialogue is outstanding, it's got a genuinely funny sense of humor, it's clever, and there's only one stretch that made me think about quitting... and then the ending's worth it. Loved, loved, loved Psychonauts, and I wish it all the success and sales in the world.

GOSATAN

The state's ruled that having a license plate with a bible reference on it (JOHN316) is cool. Someone complained and they said "pishaw, that's dumb, there's no problem here". Which, sure, GODSGUD and stuff is all over the place.

So here's my question -- can I get a ruling on whether I can have PAGAN1 or GOSATAN or NOGOD or GODZDEAD or whatever? If it's cool to proselytize on vanity license plates, then it should be open to everyone, no matter who's offended by it, right? If the state's really willing to tolerate controversial vanity plates because they're in favor of the country's majority religion, then shouldn't it be open season for this kind of thing?

And if not, why not?

The eagle in my backyard.

I saw a bald eagle in my backyard this morning. I was working on my bike, and heard this weird sound -- more like a scream than anything. I looked up into the trees to see an enormous white headed bird, and I felt a shock spread from the back of my head as I recognized it from hanging around in Juneau, where bald eagles are much more common.

Then came the crows, yelling after the eagle, trying to take a beak at it. The eagle moved, the crows pursued, a noisy angry mob. The eagle took off, soaring in long, lazy circles way above while the crows gathered in the tops of the trees, calling to each other and complaining.

I stood in the grass, my bike on the stand with pedals off, 15mm wrench in hand, and laughed.

Hamfisted metaphor time: I've been having problems putting up with the overhead at USSM, specifically the amount of crap heaped on us as authors. In particular, I've lately been told that I "need to take my meds" before writing about baseball, I'm a vile person, blah blah blah, and then today I got a snitty letter from a dude who pointed out a grammar error. His email started off "how about paying a little attention to grammar?"

I have, within arms reach as I type this, a good dictionary, thesaurus, Strunk and White, a set of style guides, a slang dictionary, and a book on modern American usage. I sometimes read them for fun. Saying I don't pay attention to this stuff because I made one stupid error is exactly the kind of constant sniping that makes me want to stop doing things in front of an audience.

I went out for a ride, and burned around Lake Sammamish. On the east side -- saw the eagle again (I assume it was the same one -- having seen one so rarely here and knowning it took off in that direction from my house). This time it was chilling in a tree, all by itself, and there were no crows anywhere near it.

develop pulverizing hand power!

(found in the sidebar of an old article I just read)

Response card, which might be 2" by 2.5"' reads

Yes, I want to start building powerful, granite-hard hands, wrist, and forearms.

I enclose check (or money order) for just $9.95.

Send to me immediately the KARATOK Grip Developer to try in my own home. If not delighted, I may return the KARATOK in 10 days for full refund. No questions asked.

Margrace Corp, makers of the KARATOK Grip Developer, appears to be gone. Hopefully the centuries-old Japanese karate-training techniques it was based on have not been lost.

Psychonauts

It's great. I don't even like platformers and I love this game. It's getting great reviews so I'll skip that.

I've been following this game's long development for years, because of two people: Tim Schafer, who's been involved with some other great titles (Full Throttle in particular, one of the greatest games ever, but also Grim Fandango, which was awesome, and Day of the Tentacle) and who you may know, and Erik Wolpaw, who you probably don't (but along with Greg Kasavin, writes the best game reviews on Gamespot and more importantly wrote Old Man Murray which has gone years without being updated and is still funny).

The thing that's so great about Psychonauts is that it's got a sense of humor, like the other Schafer games. It's legitimately funny: the setting's funny, the dialogue is funny, there are weird sight gags , satire of computer games, and adult humor.

The relationship between increased development costs and creativity's been discussed elsewhere, but essentially the more money it costs to push out a game, the safer it is. I have enormous respect for companies that continue to do innovative and crazy things with their games (like Nintendo) even if I don't play them, and for games like Psychonauts that display such care and attention in every detail that even when I'm frustrated with a particular puzzle or level, I can appreciate the effort and creativity they poured into it.

So go check it out. Support this kind of work.

Lies I've been told by recorded voices while on hold today

• We're currently experiencing unusually high call volumes
• We appreciate your patience
• We're doing everything we can to answer your call promptly
• Your call is very important to us
• Someone will be with you momentarily
• An agent will be with you shortly

I wonder, while listenting to the loop again, if the people who record these short lies think about this as they're recording them. "My voice will be played over and over saying things that are clearly not true, angering countless callers... maybe I should reconsider this job?"

Do they ever have personal trust issues? "Baby... you know I was only out playing poker with the guys." "You told me I was a valued customer and my call would be answered quickly too, you bastard!"

Xbox = ass

How in the world did Microsoft expect to take over the console world with something of such low production quality?

I bought an Xbox when Halo 2 came out. I played Halo 2, was hugely disppointed, and then I didn't do anything with my box. I probably got maybe 30, 40 hours of play out of it including multiplayer, then it sat, perfectly level, boxed back up, for a couple months before I got a couple of other games. Cranked back up, it ran for maybe 30m before dying, and now on boot it tells me to go call customer service (two codes depending on its mood: 7, HD toast, 12, DVD toast). And of course it's out of warranty now, since I bought it back in November. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee.

So that's $150 + accessories for 40h of light use before it melted down. I guess storage in a room-temperature environment for those months when it didn't have games I could play caused it to grow petulent. And now what am I going to do -- spend another $150 on a box that's pretty close to the end of its lifetime in order to play a couple of games? This is exactly the kind of pointless money-flushing I left PC gaming to get away from.

The only good part is that since my warranty had expired anyway, I cracked it open to check the cable connections (looked good, which in a way is unfortunate) and got to look around the innards. Didn't make me feel any better about the money, though. And tomorrow, Jade Empire and Psychonauts arrive, and I have no console to play them on.

My Playstations have worked without complaint for years, my Dreamcast still cranks on to play Skies of Arcadia (awesome!). Or, to put this another way: my average console lifespan to Xbox lifespan ratio is easily 100:1. I'm sooooo not buying the next generation Xbox.

Privacy notifications

Companies should notify a customer who they intend to send personal information to. For instance, when you complete a transaction with an online travel company, when you submit payment (or at the terms and conditions page, or wherever in the payment path) they should clearly state:

Your personal information will be shared with
- A global booking engine (your airline ticket)
- The hotel
- The car rental company

As part of the booking process.

0 I understand and agree to having my information shared
0 I do not agree and wish to abandon this

And so on. No company should be able to pass on your personal information without your specific permission. If companies want to sell you out to partners or as part of a mailing list (as Performance Bike did to me), you should be able to opt-out of those, or at least be able to decline the transaction at that point:

Your order information will be shared with
- UPS (shipping)
- Mailomatic Scummasters (junk email)

0 I agree
0 I do not agree

There could be reasonable standards on presentation: readable type, and so on. For real-space transactions, retailers should have to ask your permission specifically for each place they want to pass your info on to.

If you do not specifically consent to information distribution, it would be forbidden (so, for instance, UPS couldn't sell your information to Mailomatic Scummasters).

Companies that violate this by sending your information where it's not supposed to go should not only have to pay massive crippling fines, but pay *you*.

This is a case where the interests of the public and of corporations are directly opposed, and the people should win. The use of personal data for profit without disclosure is a deceptive business practice and where government regulation is both justified and beneficial.

China and gravity

I've always been a weird political bird, in that I'm a rabid environmentalist and equally rabid privacy/free-speech advocate. At the same time, I'm also the kind of guy who has skirted being fired over being vocal and active in oppostition to things my company did (this was in the AT&T Wireless days) that I thought weren't cool.

I may soon end up doing a lot of work in and around China as part of my job, and I didn't know what to do about it.

Then my friend Joel, who is smart, made a very short argument:
In Cuba, where we've had harsh sanctions in place forever, they are no more free and no more prosperous than they were when we started. In China, while there's internet filtering and so forth, individuals have a lot more freedom than they did at the same point in time: freedom of individual movement, for instance, is much greater.

Still, it's a weird feeling to have to face working in an environment where oppression and corruption are as pervasive as gravity.

My other problem is that I have two other, larger conflicting views:

I believe that there's no reason that someone just like me but born in China should make some small percentage of my salary, and not enjoy the freedom I do. I fear the global leveling that could make all of us equally prosperous, because I have mortgage payments to make, but I also believe that trade can create wealth, and so on.

On the other side, though, I fear that free trade doesn't get to the people. I may buy a graphics card for my PC that's made in China, but if that money disappears entirely into the pockets of industrialists and officials who keep working conditions terrible, that doesn't help anything. If the fabricators are all in cahoots, an industry boom doesn't help the workers.

Or, to put all of my concerns together: does modern technology and process make it possible to keep the average person in the third world in some early Industrial Revolution serfdom forever? Does it matter what I do at all?