Major Waze Fail

I wasn't going to post this, but then I realized that I might be able to save others from having a similar experience to me.  I've been using the Waze navigation app for almost a year now and generally love it.  It still has the occassional hiccup, like the time it decided to get me across DC diagonally by going left-right-left-right-left-right across all the blocks, but there have also been times it's been a real boon.  Driving through New Jersey, there's been more than one occassion where it's had us get off the turnpike and route around a traffic jam.  

Much of the power comes from crowd sourcing.  The servers are tracking the users and can see where they are being slowed down.  Unfortunately, I found a failure case a couple weeks ago.  

I was on my way through Pennsylvania via I81.  Apparently, there was a BAD accident that closed the highway for something like 50 miles.  Where I would normally get on, they had blocked off the entrance, and such was the case a long way.  Everyone who had been on had been shunted off, and no one was getting on.  I think this totally foobared the Waze system.   With no one on the road, no one could report a problem or demonstrate it by be stopped.  Waze had no data indicating that there was even a slow down.  Worse, because people had been shunted off onto surface road, Waze tried to be helpful by shunting me around the resulting congestion  which actually took me 20 miles in the wrong direction, where it then told me to get on the clearly closed highway.  

Not being familiar with the area, I spent over an hour trying to find ways to convince Waze that the road was closed.  You can report road closures, in theory.  But you're actually limited to declaring intersections within about of half mile of you as closed.  This meant that I could declare the on ramp closed, but then I was just rerouted to the next closed on ramp.  I guess I could have done this for mile after mile, but that would have involved driving right through the center of Harrisburg in the least efficient way possible.  

In the end, I had to dead reckon my way up the side of the river until Waze finally found another bridge to get me across, and then took me through 50 miles of wilderness area.  By this time it was getting dark and I was down to 1/8th of a tank of fuel.  The first gas station I passed was closed.

Panic time.  "I'm out in the land where gas stations actually close. I'm screwed." Actually, then I hit a town with an open station/convenience store.  After I got my blood sugar up, I wasn't ready to reroute to Waze headquarters via the nearest novelty jumbo croquet mallet store.  We just have to accept that in a algorithmic world, edge cases can really ruin your day.  

Mystery Item

We're cleaning out the house we grew up in. Neither of us are living in the area, so there isn't much that makes sense for us to do other than sell it. Boy, Dad sure did do a lot of modifications. I wonder how many will turn out to be to code. We're also coming across some mysteries like this one.

What's it?

I have vague memories of him building it, but no idea what it was for. One possibility was that it was some sort of holder to help in the assembly of the hexagonal hurricane lanterns that he was fond of building.

Seems unlikely though. The lanterns didn't vary in size, so wouldn't he have built it to be an exact fit? The most likely use to me is that it was something for Mom to wind yarn on so that it could unwind easily while you're knitting. I can just about call up the memory of Mom knitting with this thing mounted to one side, but that is just as likely to be a “recovered” memory. If that's it, then I bet it didn't work that well, since it was banished back to the wood shop.  

Anyway, that's my best guess. Anyone else have an idea?

Thanks Mom-Mom Penguin

If you're wondering why wehaven't posted in a while, it's because a lot of crap hase been going on. New projects at our day jobs, much needed home projects, and on big thing. Last month, our mother, aka Mom-Mom Penguin passed away. It was not a complete suprise, but was still sudden and unexpected. Sepsis can take you quickly. She was planning the the household organization and giving out todo lists an hours before her final trip to the ICU.
You don't have to be physically strong to be the strongest person in the room.
Dad died in one of those car accidents that will always be a mystery. It was a clear autumn morning day on a stretch of road that he'd driven down almost daily for most of his life. He drifted off and hit a tree. He was cut out of the car and helivaced out, but was DOA at the hospital. Mom was at the scene of the crash that afternoon doing her own investigation of what may have happened. She even interviewed the one witnesses. What is appropriate for conversation varies from family to family and group to group. I can remember the first time I brought my would-be wife home to meet the parents. Mom was the triage nurse at the local university health center. Needless to say, the students were always creative at finding ways to injure or infect themselves and Mom could always be counted on for an interesting story, And by interesting, I mean the find of thinng to make any adolescent boy squirm in his seat, power down his veggies, and ask to be excused to go do his chores in record time.
I'd survived adolescence by the evening of this story, but Mom's story's were done embarassing me. On this evening, the story centered around an argument with a student who had an infected piercing. This is probably an at least weekly argument at any university health center. The medical professionals want to remove the stud to let the infection heal, and the student doesn't want to remove it because then it will heal closed and they'll have gone through the piercing ordeal for nothing. Worse, if they're determined to have the piercing, they'll have to do it again.
I have to admit some sympathy for this student not wanting to go in for a repeat. In this case, it was a stud through his penis.
Know your roots.
My father's side of the family was one of those families that kept records. They wrote everything down and somehow managed to keep from losing it. As a consequence, I know such meaningless factoids like it was my 11-greats grandfather who first landed on these shores and built a grist mill on Long Island, and my 3-greats granduncle who was secretary of the navy for six weeks before getting the boot. Apparently the fact that he'd never actually been on a boat actually said something about his experience for the job.
Mom's side of the family didn't necesarily keep such extensive records, but they stay connected in a much more organic way. She actually knew her second cousin once removed. In fact, he's been a lot of help at this time, as have numerous other friends, relatives, and people who might be somewhere in between. Importance of community. One of Mom's first jobs after getting her RN was as the nurse for the local school system. Of course, this didn't give her much to do (or pay) over the summer. Her summer job was to do a survey for the county. Over the course of a couple summers, she visited every house in the county. Mom's superpower was that she could talk to anyone, and after doing this, in meant the she knew and remembered just about everyone in the town where I grew up. If she didn't know a random guy we met in line at the bank, she knew his father, mother, or siblings. There wasn't a problem that could arise that was too arcane for Mom to know somebody with expert knowledge on how to fix it. You have a bat in the house? Call the animal control, they'll know what to do. Ok. How about a big scary hawk that punched through the screens or your porch and can't get out? That's a job for Heinz, the falcon guy. Need to repair grandma's tatting? There's somebody who can do that, too. How about identifying an old painting found in the eaves of granddaddy's house? Done. Mom knew everybody, could talk to anybody and consequently could never run into a problem that she wasn't a couple of phone calls away from solving. I never thought of it this way before, but in a time before the internet, she was the town google.
It was an amazing resource growing up, but like most such things, I didn't appreciate it at the time. I only saw the down side. Any good database requires a lot of maintenance. In Mom's case, that maintenance came in the form of conversations. There was many the time that I'd have to go into town with Mom to "run errands." I hated these trips and longed for the day when I was old enough to stay home alone. A few "quick trips" would inevitably drag on with one boring grown-up conversation after another. We couldn't go anywhere without running into someone Mom knew and needed to catch up with. Now that I'm an adult, and living in a comunitee of transient professionals, and know very few and almost no one well enough to be comfortable asking a favor, I understand what an incredible resource my Mom had cultivated. I wish I'd picked up that skill.

Thanks Mom. We all miss you terribly. PP put it best upon hearing the news. "We'll always remember her in our hearts."

Cluquah

Kid's are weird. It's fascinating how they make up their own words for things. It seems to come up during the time that they're still learning how to make all the right phonems. Instead of waiting to be able to make the sounds, they just substitute a new word. Some of them stick, possibly with parental help because they're so darned cute.

One of PP's is his name for touch devices. They are all "ohnos." There is little ohno, the iPod touch, big ohno, the first generation iPad, and magic ohno, the second gen iPad, so named because it could magically turn off when close the cover.

The name that's really stuck is his name for Mrs 'Struction. Thanks to her coaching, he learned "dada" as one of his first words. The site of him steadying himself on the child gate, looking up and me, and saying "Hi Dada" for the first time is deeply etched into my brain.

A couple months passed from that time, and he still wasn't saying "Momma." Other words had come right on schedule, but Mrs 'Struction was getting downright annoyed. "He's been saying 'Dada' for months. What's with this?" One day, she got determined. She sat him on the couch and positioned herself in front of him. "MOMMMA!" she enunciated, bobbing her head with the emphasis.

"Clu Clu" was his reply.

She tried again. "MOMA."

"Clu Clu"

This went on. and on. She tried pointing to herself. She tried pointing to me and saying "Dada"

"Dada" was his reply.

Then she pointed to herself. "Moma"

"Clu Clu!"

That's when it final dawned. "Hold on," I said, "I think you're Clu Clu."

She pointed to herself, "Clu Clu?"

At this point he was a teenager (if measured in months), and the eye role he gave fit the part perfectly. He pointed right at her. "Clu Clu!" The message was clear. The old lady finally got it!

I gave it some thought. "I think he's been calling you that for months. We just never noticed."

And that was how Mrs 'Struction became Clu Clu, which gradually morphed into Cluquah, which she has stayed ever since, and I've been eternally jealous that she has a cool bespoke name, and I'm just plain old Daddy.

I thought you had him...

We had one of those parenting scares yesterday. It came to our attention that this was the weekend for the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. On a whim, we decided that we'd abandon the much needed spring cleaning we had planned and spend part of the day at this event. It's the Mecca for anyone interested in the fiber arts on the eastern seaboard, with lot's of opportunities spending money. Even a gear-head like me can geek out over all the different designs of looms, spinning wheels and carders. There's also ample opportunities for petting sheep, llamas, alpacas and border collies.

Mrs 'Struction came across a book of knitting patterns that seemed written for our family. After looking through it, she put it back. "I'm going to look over there so you two can discuss what you think would make a good Mother's Day present."

There are hints and there are hints. I'd been carrying junior around for a while, but this transaction was going to require both hands. He'd also been a bit high maintenance all morning. You parents probably know what I mean. Not necessarily crossing into bad, but requiring constant attention. "Careful, thats breakie." "OK, put that down, it's time to go. No really!" "Don't touch that!" "You don't work here, come out of there." Some folks are natural helicopter parents, and I think some are trained by their children. Still, he'd managed to hold it together to get a lesson on a $1200 loom. He picked it up fairly quickly, but was in near tears that we couldn't just buy it on a whim, or for that matter fit it into our car.

I looked around and realized that getting from the display to the checkout required weaving into the claustrophobically narrow cul-de-sac of this particular booth, all the while keeping track of little man and keeping his hands off of all the astoundingly interesting books, kits, tools, and brightly colored yarns.

"Why don't you go with Cluquah while I buy this," I said.

"Ok!" he turned and went after her. There was a rare open patch in our section of the isle, so I could watch him for the entire 2 seconds it took for him to get right next to her. Then I turned my attention to making the purchase.

When I was done, I caught up with Cluquah, but she was alone. "Where's the boy?" she asked.

"I sent him over to be with you."

"No really."

"Really"

"Shit"

Panic time. How hard can it be to find a 6 year old in a huge exhibit hall packed with people? Darn near impossible. We split up and did a quick search. Then she set out for the information tent while I kept looking. My first thought was to cover the exit, but there were six. Probably not a really effective strategy. There wasn't much I could do other than wander hall, scanning the crowd for short people, and mentally kicking myself for being worst parent ever.

In the mean time, Cluquah got to the information tent and had just started writing down his description when he showed up with one of the festival staff. They sat down in the grass so Mommy could have a good cry. Meanwhile I was still frantically wandering the main exhibit hall and realizing that Mr. Observant didn't really have a clear idea of what color shirt his own son was wearing today. Eventually the other parental unit calmed down enough to realize that I might want to know and sent me a text. The entire episode lasted maybe 20 minutes in total, but certainly felt much longer.

Here are a few things I learned from the event.

• I've cultivated the habit of taking a picture of where the car is before I leave the parking area. I don't always need it, but it can be a real lifesaver. In the future I'm going to take a picture of the boy too. At the very least, it's a lot easier to scan a crowd and find that patch of red (or whatever color his shirt is) than try to recognize a face.

• Stranger Danger is just plain stupid. Our child is NOT SHY. He'll talk to anyone, which is a far cry from his reserved parents. We've deliberately tried keep him from being afraid of strangers, but sometimes wished he didn't involve us in conversations with the random crazy lady on the bus. I was just the opposite at his age, and I shudder to think what the experience would have been like if he'd decided to just keep looking for us instead of asking for help. He would have kept wandering, ever increasing the r^2 to find him. It's easy to fall into the fear that some random abductor is going to take your child, but the reality is that that's equivalent to winning the tragedy lottery. Pick a random stranger and he/she is WAY more likely to be a valuable resource toward getting back to Mom and Dad.

• While it's great that he wasted no time in asking for help, it's obviously time to get him to memorize one or both of our phone numbers. Things would have resolved a lot more quickly with that. I'm stopping short of having it tattooed onto him. Vacinations are traumatic enough. Maybe it's time to invest in some temporary tattoo paper

• Finally, parenting clearly takes years off your life.

Destroy Build Destroy

A new show popped up on our Netflix recommendations.  It's called Destroy Build Destroy.  If you have fond memories of the building and bodging that was JunkYard Wars (Scrap Heap Challenge in the UK), then this show will look familiar.  There are some important differences, however.  Firstly, it's clearly aimed at kids.  The constants that make of the two teams are around 12-14.  Rather than leave tweenagers in charge of MIG welders, they are assisted by a "build team" in their constructions.  The other major difference is in where the raw materials come from.  Rather than a heap of scrap, the teams are presented with perfectly functional vehicles, like an SUV or a tractor trailer.  The first "Destroy" in the title comes early on when the vehicles are wrecked to produce the raw materials for the build.  A nice twist is that each team gets to pick the path of destruction for the other team's vehicle.  The choices are usually something explosive (like a bazooka round), something physical (like being dropped off a cliff) or an angry set of burly guys with pick axes a crow bars.  Don't be fooled, a motivated bunch of guys with hand tools can sure do a lot of damage.  Like JYW, the build is aimed at making a machine to meet a certain challenge.  The second "Destroy" in the tittle comes what happens to the losing teams machine.  It is pretty, well, final.  

I introduced it to the little guy tonight, and we're currently in the "just one more." phase of the evening.  I'd call that a hit.  

Messing with a Sea Lion's Head

We set out first thing this morning to check out the cherry blossoms.  There were two problems.  First, they are obviously nowhere near peak.  Second, this was the morning of the Cherry Blossom Run.  Our first attempt at driving down to the Mall ended with us bailing at the first possible moment.  

So as plan B, we stopped at the Zoo.  It was a good opportunity to check out their newly renovated sea lion facility.  While we here there, I thought I'd do a little experiment.  I start recording video on the front facing camera of the ipad and placed it up against the glass.  This is what happened.  

Needless to say, we all had a lot of fun.  After the Ipad, PP and his new friend played a trans-plexiglas version of tag that was too cute for words.  PP has definitely made a new friend.  

Later, he and I had to run off to the nearest bathroom.  Mrs 'Struction wandered down after us, passing the other window on the sea lion enclosure.  She reported that the same individual came up and kept trying to look around her, apparently looking for its new friend.  It then gave her an accusatory blast of bubbles and swam away.  

Wabi-Sabi Lying Trunk Rotation

I've been working hard on trying to get in shape with the goal of having my "beach body" ready come summer time. Heck, let's be honest, I've been trying to have a beach body for the first time in my life. While the weight training is going well, the not-eating-all-the-Easter-candy-in-sight is pretty much a total failure.  

One of the exercises I've been working on is trunk rotations.  There are a lot of varieties out there.  This is the one that's closest to what I've been doing.  In my case, the weights are on my ankles and my legs are much more straight.  I started out doing this without weights, but found that as my core got stronger I was doing more and more of them.  I picked up one of those 5 pound adjustable ankle weights, and that definitely helped... until 5 pounds wasn't enough.  So I bought another... and then another.  It was starting to get ridiculous, and I was running out of ankle.   I just needed a way to attach more weight to my ankles.  

"Hold on" I thought to myself.  I have those nifty adjustable Bowflex weights.  There must be a way of using them.  Well one old log and some free-hand band-sawing later and this is what I got.  It's definitely not pretty, but it gets the job done.  

Now if I can just lay off the jelly beans.  Fortunately, we're about to run out. 

Midnight Oil and Segmented Sleep.

It's been a bit crazy here the past few week, what with conferences, and periods of single parenting, and old papers that need to get written.  Perhaps is a coping mechanism, but I've found myself falling into an unusual work schedule.  I eventually noticed that my sleep seems to be naturally segmented.  I'll wake up about 1 am, and often have trouble getting back to sleep for an hour or more.  It turns out that there good evidence that this was the norm before electric lights came in and foobared our circadian rythmes.  

I eventually decided that just laying there and listening to an audiobook was not good enough use of my time, but there's a problem.  If I turn on my nice white lights, or even worse, look at an ipad or computer screen, I can pretty much kiss going back to sleep goodbye.  Trust me, I know from experience.  Having the lights on also increases the likelihood that junior will notice I'm up and force himself fully awake to investigate.  

The problem is the blue components of the white light.  For the whole of human history before modern artificial lighting, just about the only time you could see bright blue light was looking at the daytime sky.  Our bodies adapted to use that as a cue to tell us it's time to be awake.  So how am I supposed to get my important data processing and programming done, and still be able to get enough sleep to be able to handle the morning "get everybody dressed and out the door in time for school" struggle?

cntl-alt-command-8 helps a bit, but there's still often way to much light coming out of the screen. I was really disappointed when apple moved away from the fluorescent fixtures to LEDs for back lighting that it didn't include the ability to dial the brightness WWWWAAAAYYYY down.  There are a few apps out there, like Shades, but it still feels like they're not quite doing enough.  

This was my solution.  

It's a sheet of red wrapping cellophane taped to a length of moulding that I had laying around. The moulding just sits on top of the imac and the sheet drapes down to cover the screen.  Obviously I won't be doing image editing or anything that requires color accuracy, but for text and coding, I can now work for an hour or two, and then go back to sleep.  

Come the morning, I just role the sheet up around the stick and leave it on top.  A word of warning:  What you don't want to do is just flip the sheet over the back of the imac, as you'll cover the vent.  I suspect disaster would result.  

Oh yeah.  And it helps if you can touch type.  The letters on my keyboard don't actually correspond to what the computer sees when I press them anyway, so it's not like having the light on would help me anyway.  

*&^$(@^$^&^@! Time Change!

My grandfather was a dairy farmer, but he also did some work as tax collector and other functions for the county.  Every year, he would complain about the time change.  It would take him six weeks to gradually convince the cows that the time for milking was an hour earlier each spring, and then another six weeks each fall when they had to wait an extra hour.  I guess cows are creatures of habit, and they didn't behave well when their habits were disrupted.  I'm assuming it was his other duties that prevented him from just ignoring the time change and milking the cows at the same "real" time all year round.

He hasn't been the only one to complain about the time change.  It's a pain.  It's a disruption.  Try getting a kid up and off to school the week after the time change.  I know with perfect certainty that I'm not as productive for a day or two afterward.  I have strong anecdotal evidence of behavioral issues with the school goers during the week after the change.

The sleep deficit that the change creates has also been shown to have a small but significant effect on rates of heart attacks and fatal car accidents.  In fact, it's been shown that even moderate sleep deprivation is as bad as driving under the influence of alcohol.

All this is true, and sure more death is bad, but what I really want to complain about is how the time change is disrupting my listening to my favorite gardening show.  I've been listening to "Down to Earth" on BBC Radio Leicester for years.  While the BBC has seen fit to release many of its programs as podcasts, this regional gardening show is, I guess, *too niche" for them to bother.  My solution has been to use Audio Hijack Pro (AHP) to record the program each week.  The scheduling works flawlessly, or at least it did until a few years ago when Uncle Sam started moving the goal posts.

You see, I schedule AHP to record BBC Radio Leicester at 7am every sunday, which corresponds to the noon broadcast in the UK.  That worked fine when the US and London were on consistent time offsets.  Now there's a 2-3 week gap every spring and  fall where I'm an hour off.

Grrrr.  I'm tired, my morning walk to work is in the dark again, and I've missed part three of how to grow blue ribbon leeks.  Common people!