Same-old same-old

Elections over. Here are my predictions for the next 4 years:

The national debt will increase all 4 years.

The social security system will stay broken. The medical system will stay broken. The quality of education will continue to decline.

The size of the government will increase. More human rights will be infringed on. The government will continue to move away from the form instituted by the founding fathers.

In other words... same-old same-old.

If McCain had won, how would my predictions have changed? They wouldn't have. These predictions were made before the election occurred!

My wife was a bit upset at me last night. She turned on election coverage and after a few minutes I went to do something else. She asked if I didn't want to watch the election and I told her that I didn't really care about the outcome.

I didn't. And I don't. The rhetoric will be different than if McCain had won. The end result will differ only in terms of WHICH human rights are ignored, WHICH branches of the government will grow the most, WHICH special interest groups will get the most benefits.

I do exaggerate though if I say that nothing about the election interested me. There are a couple aspects in particular that do interest me. The first is how does the makeup of the house and senate look. It's bad. The president is democrat. The senate is strongly dominated by the democrats. The house is strongly dominated by the democrats. I would have been much more comfortable if it had been split (or even if the democrats had had only a small edge), but it's pretty obvious that the American people have had enough of the republican party for now.

It's a shame. It shows that people are tired of the way things are going. It's also a shame that they think that things are really going to improve with the other party in power.

Same-old same-old.

Another thing that interested me was how the third-party candiates would do. Obviously I voted third-party, but how many others feel the same way I do? I had hoped that at least some voters would realize that neither party was going to solve the problems this country faces. Unfortunately, it appears that somewhere around 1% of the vote went to third-party candidates.

Here's what I've found for past elections in the percentage of the vote that went to third-party candidates:

 2008    1.0 (??)
 2004    1.0
 2000    3.8
 1996   10.0
 1992   19.5
 1988    1.0
 1984    0.7
 1980    8.3

So, what we really need is another Ross Perot type to shake things up. I wish that the impact he had on the two elections he was in had continued, but it seems to have disappeared.

I have one wish for this coming term: I hope that Obama proves me wrong. Prove to me that you're NOT just rhetoric, that you actually do want to change things. I'd love to see this happen... but I'm not holding my breath.

There are a couple of additional things that interest me. I'm interested in the fact that Obama is black. Race doesn't matter to me. I've never made a decision about someone based on their race, but I recognize that it IS important to some people. I am curious to see what impact having a black president will have on racial issues in this country. I can see it going either way.

I'm also interested on the impact it will have on the US-World relations. It's no secret that the world dislikes America and hated Bush as a president. I don't think that that is necessarily a bad thing, but the reasons they hated Bush are justified in some respects. America is a sovereign nation. In other words, we do not answer to any other government or nation (including the United Nations). As such, if it is necessary to make decisions that no other country in the world approves of, we have that right, and the fact that other countries disapprove should not be a reason to change our stance. On the other hand, the decisions we make need to be made with the intent to preserve out liberties and our people. I'm not at all convinced that many of the decisions made by the Bush administration (or any other recent administration for that matter) really meet that criteria. So I'm less concerned about public (i.e. world) approval of this country, and more concerned about how well it meets the standards and measures set up by the founding fathers. Unfortunately... the answer is POORLY!

Why I am voting libertarian

I believe in personal responsibility. The democrat/republican based government believes in bailing out homeowners who bought homes they couldn't afford; financial institutions who's decision making process involved only what would look good on the books this quarter, not what would look good on the books 20 years from now; automobile manufacturers who figured that the way to boost profits was to concentrate on SUVs... at a time that gas was reaching new highs every month; and who knows who else.

I believe in living within my means. The democrat/republican based government believes that a 10 TRILLION dollar debt is acceptable. For the democrats who remember that there was a surplus with the last democratic president (Clinton)... just remember... the national debt went up EVERY SINGLE YEAR HE WAS IN OFFICE!!! The highly touted surplus was ficticious. He ran a deficit for 8 straight years. And Bush (who supposedly represents the "more fiscally conservative" Republican party) has been an utter catastrophe. Many means have been used to make the debt appear less significant (reporting it as % of GDP, adjusting for inflation, etc.), but the fact is that there hasn't been a president in my lifetime who has had a balanced budget. The principle is simple: if I earn $1000, I cannot spend $1001!

I believe that securing personal liberty is the ultimate purpose of a government. I'm not alone in that either. Read the first few paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. The democrat/republican party voted in the patriot act (357 to 66 in the house, 98 to 1 in the senate, so it was CLEARLY both parties) that, in essence, allows the government to ignore most basic civil rights. All they have to do is say "terrorism" and all rights can be ignored. People have forgotten that rights MUST NOT be traded for safety.

I believe in separation of church and state. Both parties appeal to people one way for what amounts to a religious stance. I will illustrate this using one example: the discussion about same-sex marriage. All parties are talking about it. Ultimately, marriage consists of 2 things: a union of two people in a setting which definitely has a religious base historically (but is not bound to any one religion or social organization), and a legal union involving things like property and financial obligations. The government should not be involved AT ALL in the first aspect. Yes, from a personal standpoint, based on my religious beliefs, I agree that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. I also believe that the government should NOT be involved in this at all. I do not believe there should be such a thing as a marriage license. Marriages should not be conducted by government officals. The government (specifically the courts) SHOULD be involved in enforcing legal contracts between two people, just as it is now. If two people want to live together and call it a marriage... it should not be against the law (even if it does not fit my definition of marriage). If those same two people want to sign a contract, then it is enforceable in court. The sex of the two people is irrelevant. On a side note, although I do not regard "marriage" as a government issue, parent/child definitely IS. Having laws which define parental rights and obligations is absolutely necessary. Religious arguments are also made (quite innapropriately) for issues such as abortion, death penalty, welfare, etc. Even where these issues are appropriate topics for government involvement, the religious arguments are not.

I believe in the 10th amendment. In the constitution, it clearly lists the functions of the federal government and states (in the 10th amendment) that all other powers are reserved to the States or the people. What this means is that 90% of the functions of the current federal government are unconstitutional. Some of them are legitimate government functions, but should be performed at the state level, instead of the federal level. Others should be performed by people instead of the government. Welfare, education, agriculture, social security, and many others fall into these categories. The federal government has no right to be involved in them!

I briefly considered voting for the Constitution party (since it appears that Ron Paul has endorsed that candidate), but they violate the separation of Church and State too much. Also, their primary platform is a return to the original constitution. Although an admirable goal, I prefer the philosophical purpose of the Libertarian party: to protect rights. Returning to the original constitution certainly helps fulfill that, but that is not the end goal. It is simply a means to an end.

My wife

I haven't written anything about my wife yet, so I wanted to write down some of my thoughts about her.

I have a theory about marriage (though I don't actually thing there's anything theoretical at all about it; I think it's fairly dead on). If you go into a marriage expecting that you will be able to change the other person in order to correct the things you don't like about them, or to get them to like the same things that you like, either your marriage, or your expectation is doomed. One of them has got to go. Hopefully you realize that in time that the expectation is the thing to go, instead of the marriage. Instead, if you go into your marriage willing to take the person as they are, and you work on a consistent basis to love them as they are, what happens is that you actually start (subconsciously or consciously) changing yourself to be what they want you to be. When both people do that, everything just seems to work out.

Heather and I have managed to be like that for the most part. I try (perhaps not on a daily basis, but pretty often) to find significant ways to make her happy. Most often, that involves "doing" something for her (cooking a meal, or occasionally doing a chore :-). But occasionally it actually means something a bit deeper or more important. I've certainly changed in several ways since I married her.

Heather is a stay-at-home mom, which is the best thing in the world. When I was dating, one of the things I really wanted was someone who would want to do that when and if we had children. I find it sad that so many people have children, and then, almost from the start, hire other people to raise those children for a significant part of the day. Fortunately, Heather felt the exact same way, and from the day we got married, we made sure that we were living such that we could get by without her salary (as a matter of fact, I always paid all the bills, groceries, etc., so that we could lose her salary any time without causing a financial strain). When she got pregnant with Elizabeth, she had figured out her last day at work by the time she was a couple months along. Of course, something that we knew from a theoretical standpoint was that being a stay-at-home mom was still going to be hard work. But the reality is that it's REALLY hard work. Heather's good at it though. Elizabeth is growing up in a wonderful environment. Now, Heather is expecting again, so Elizabeth will soon be joined by a brother or sister, and both of them are going to have a full-time mother.

Another place that Heather excels at is being my friend. It seems like life is so busy now. There are so many things that need to be done that we often spend several evenings a week apart (in addition to the days when I'm gone to work). It never seems like I am able to spend as much time with her as I want. The only time I get to be with her as much as I want is when we're on vacation. For us, vacation is a family affair. When we went to Yellowstone, we were never apart for more than a couple minutes at a time. I wish it could be like that more of the time.

Anyway, I'll be writing more about Heather later.

Vacation (part 2)

It's impossible to write about everything in Yellowstone. We took some pictures, but not too many for the same reason... it's just impossible to fully capture what we saw, either in words or pictures. So I'm just going to touch on a few things.

First up: bison. We saw a lot of wildlife, but none so impressive as the bison. They're all over the place.

The first time we saw one walking down the road towards us, forcing us to stop, Heather was nervous (actually, that may be putting it kindly). There was nothing we could do but stop and wait while this huge animal (1000+ pounds?) walked slowly by us. Luckily, they are quite used to cars and it barely even glanced at us as it passed. By the second time it happened, Heather was taking picutures of it. The third time was the best though. We had pulled off to look at the Mud Volcano, and as we were getting out, a group of bison wandered onto the main road which was about 50 feet from us. So all of these cars were stopped and these animals kept walking back and forth in the road. They didn't appear to be going anywhere, and certainly weren't in any hurry, and there was at least one young one (calf?) so some of the adults were staying very close. So we sat and watched them for probably 10 minutes while traffic was backing up quite a ways in both directions. Elizabeth was laughing the whole time... I'm not sure what exactly she liked, but to her it was hysterical.

After leaving that area, we drove a short while longer and came to a river, and there was a huge herd of bison. The herd stretched out over probably a mile of river, and I'd guess there was somewhere around 1000 bison there. It was really impressive.

They were definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

Customer Service

This morning as I was biking in, I was reflecting on the financial and political situations that we are in, and I realized that I knew one important part of how we got here.

Several years ago, in my previous job, I was "asked" to go to a customer support class. Over time, several people had complained about my lack of "people skills", and my manager felt that I could benefit from learning some customer support skills. And boy did I learn! I learned lessons in that class that have stuck with me for years. It was probably the most eye-opening class I've ever attended. Let me tell you about it.

First off, let me tell you why I was asked to go. As I've mentioned before, I'm an engineer at heart. I like working on problems, and I dislike wasting time. My job was a system administrator, so most of my time was spent keepking computers up and running (and I feel that we did a very good job of it), but some of the time was spent in customer support or help desk type situations. People came to me and the other system administrators with questions. I was working in a computer science department, so the people who came with questions were people in the computer field (students, faculty, etc.), so I felt (and still feel) that it was reasonable to expect a certain level of competence from them. When people came to me with questions that demonstrated that they had spent time trying to figure something out, but were missing something important, or that depended on some other information that they didn't have, I was always happy to respond, and I don't believe that any of the complaints ever came from this group of customers. But when someone would come to me with a question of the type: I have a problem, and I didn't bother to research it, can you just tell me the answer; in that case, I was much less helpful. I'd resist answering the question and instead try to teach them something about finding the answer for themselves. I know that this was not always taken well (sometimes it was taken very badly), and I wasn't always the most patient about it either, which compounded the problem, but when someone who's career is based on computers will not spend the time to learn about computers, it really bothers me.

Anyway, after a certain number of complaints, it was off to customer support school. This was a day-long class to teach you customer support skills.

Early on, we broke into groups of about 8 to do some basic exercises. The first thing we had to do was think back to some "good customer experiences" we had had (as the customer) and tell some of the qualities that the customer support person had that provided us with the good experience. We came up with around a dozen qualities including things like good body language; professional appearance; competant; able to answer our questions; friendly; etc.

We were then asked to privately choose the 2 or 3 qualities most important of these and write them down. Then we went around and read them. I chose something like "competant" and "able to answer my questions". Without exception, everyone else in the group chose qualities related to the person being nice to them (friendly, smiled a lot, good body language). As this was happening, I was thinking to myself "what planet are these people from???".

Not to criticize them, but they were responding only to their feelings. They may have associated the "good experience" with a friendly support person, but would they have had a good experience if the person wasn't first and foremost able to help them?

So I learned several things. First off, customers just want to feel good. Competence is perceived as being of secondary importance. Smile at them and they'll overlook many other "real" problems (i.e. not being able to give them the help they need). Second, customers (people) are REALLY REALLY REALLY in need of a little stiffening of their back bone. I realize that there is absolutely no reason to be rude to people, but everyone has a bad day occasionally. If I'm at a bank teller and he/she is having the worst day of his/her life, and as a result, isn't the most polite to me, am I supposed to let that ruin MY day too? As long as they are able to help me, I have had a POSITIVE customer support experience. A smile may make it better... but in all honesty, that's secondary.

I'm sure that many people reading this are probably thinking "my he's cynical", and I would probably agree with you to a point, but in this day where we're told that being a couple of pounds overweight makes us as attractive as Quasimodo (and we believe it), and God forbid if we ever say something politically incorrect because it might offend someone (and as a whole, we embrace that), and by the way, if your breasts are a bit too small, or you have just hair just a little too sparse, no problem, we can fix that because you don't deserve to have that major hardship in your life (and we buy into it 100%).

Anyway, I DID learn from my customer support class. I actually did make a conscious effort to be more polite, more patient, and friendly to people, and as far as I know, it worked. At least, I never had any more complaints (that were brought to my attention). But even though I changed some of the outward stuff, I kept my style of answer the same. When people came to me with questions that they had not done their homework, I would still resist answering it... just more politely.

Anyway, I was thinking about all that this morning, and realized that this explained at least part of the problems going on now. Political leaders are NOT helping the country. Leaders of coorporations are bankrupting the companies. Financial leaders have led us into a recession. And how did they get to be where they are?

Probably because they had "good body language" and were "polite". They got people to support them, vote for them, hire them, because too many people are willing and able to overlook less-than-competent behaviors provided you're well groomed. And I'm sure that those leaders learned the same lesson... put on a good smile, and make people feel comfortable, and then you can do what you want, and they'll leave happy.

It's time to start evaluating people based on their abilities and competency, rather than how they look. Would you rather be in the grocery checkout line of the cashier who is ringing up groceries in a quiet, but very competent (and fast) manner, or the line where the cashier is smiling and happy, engaging everyone in friendly conversation... and taking three times as long. Would you rather have someone in a political office who is flawlessly groomed, impeccably tailored, and a master orator, or one who has run a small business and kept it in the black financially for years.

And on the other side of the coin, collectively as a society, we need to grow a spine! There was a time when men (and women) got out there and overcame problems, who took a country and turned it into the world leader in technology, education, and production. Now, we're so concerned about how much the razor will hurt our tender skin, or the unsightly psoriasis on our arm, that we are willing to spend our time and resource battling these life-threatening problems, and we're unwilling to face the discomforts that changing the current situation would entail. In short... we've become a bunch of sheep, led by anyone who will tell us "my what a nice wool coat you've got there".

Oh well... that's my rant for the day (week? month?).

Vacation (part 1)

We just got back from vacation yesterday. We spent time in Yellowstone and Utah (visiting my family). There's a lot to write about (and I won't get it all in one post).

Vacations mean a lot to me. I grew up in Utah, and my family went on a vacation almost every summer. Memories of some of the trips we went on stand out as the best memories of growing up. I want our children to have the same experience.

I can remember many different vacations we took. I'll have to write more about some of them later. I've never written them down. I remember swimming in a glacier fed lake and coming out shivering (my parents chose not to join us in the water for some reason :-). I remember the vacation where we took a ferry ride down the coast of British Columbia. I remember the time we were exploring a ghost town that was on a map in southern Utah and we spent all afternoon exploring, then we drove on and a short time later we saw a sign to the town we thought we'd been at, so we'd been exploring a ghost town that wasn't listed on the map. I'll write about some of these later.

Growing up in Utah, the vacations we took all had a similar theme: exploring the western US (primarily Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and into British Columbia), usually camping. For me, that is what a vacation is. I can enjoy visiting cities or museums, amusement parks or historic buildings, but that's not what a vacation is. A vacation is about being outside in the forest, mountains, desert, or beaches of the Pacific.

One of my goals is to take a family vacation at least every other year so that my family has those same experiences. Of course, living in Florida, the places I want to go are a lot harder to get to than they were growing up in Utah, so I don't think we'll be able to go every single year, but at least every other year should be possible.

Two years ago, I took Heather to Bryce canyon. This year was Yellowstone. In a couple of years... who knows.

I'll write about Yellowstone in another post.

Buying a Van

Well, we're now the happy owners of a Toyota Sienna. We bought it on Monday. A lot of factors combined to get us to this decision... but overall, I think it was a good decision.

Factor 1: having a reliable primary vehicle

Heather's car was a 10-year old Honda Civic. It was actually relatively low mileage (only 125K), but it was showing some wear. Our only other vehicle is my truck, and it's 16 years old. I'm definitely of the mindset to drive a car into the ground, but especially for long trips, it's nice to have one that we don't have to have any concerns about whether or not it will make the trip with no problems. My truck is actually doing well... but I'd be uncomfortable driving it on a several hundred mile trip. For around town stuff, it's just fine, and I plan on driving it until it really becomes too much trouble to keep it running.

Factor 2: we'll be doing more driving

Another factor is that it looks like we'll be doing more driving in the future. In the past, the economics of travelling favored flying most of the time. Although marginally more expensive for two people to fly somewhere then to drive, when you throw in the time involved, flying made a lot of sense. Unfortunately, this year, so many things are changing. Plane tickets have doubled in price (by the time you throw in all the extra charges that are being charged, it may be more than that). And in December, Elizabeth turns 2, and at that point, we have to buy a ticket for her. So, flying this Christmas would cost 6 times what it cost last Christmas! Unfortunately, that shifts the economics strongly towards driving. Add in the advantages of not dealing with the severe luggage restrictions that you now face, not having to deal with the TSA rules, not having to get a rental car, etc., and it becomes quite compelling to drive. We'll save almost $1000 by driving this Christmas instead of flying.

Note to Airline companies: I'm sure that I'm not the only one to have figured out these economics! Yes, I'd rather fly. It's faster. But there are so many forces involved which make the costs outweigh the benefits. So many of those forces are beyond your control (the price of gas, the incredibly annoying procedures involved in getting past security, etc.), that you REALLY need to pay attention to the ones that you DO control. Your prices need to rise to offset the gas... but don't turn around and nickle and dime us with hidden costs that make it impossible to calculate the true cost of flying. Don't skimp on the costs that really are irrelevant (removing snacks which weigh virtually nothing, not letting people choose where they sit, raising fees to change tickets, etc.). Yes you can make it appear as if flying were "cheaper" by charging extra for these things... but when you get right down to it, the flying experience has gotten more and more frustrating. The airline companies need to make it more and more enjoyable (within the limitations placed on them by gas prices and regulations), and most of them are failing miserably. It doesn't matter how much you "cut costs". If nobody is flying... you're losing!

Factor 3: car seats

Heather and I hope to have a second child. One car seat in a Honda Civic isn't too bad (though it's certainly not trivial... as Elizabeth gets bigger and bigger, it's gotten harder getting her into the seat). Two will just be more hassle than it's worth, not to mention that that effectively removes our ability to take anyone with us. One adult could sit in the back with the two car seats, but it wouldn't be comfortable. The van can seat 8. That means that we can put Heather and I and two car seats in, and still take four other adults comfortably. That's nice.

Factor 4: safety

Let's face it. If you're going to be in a wreck, it's better to be in a modern van with air bags everywhere, then in a 10 year old compact car which only had air bags in front. This is definitely a case of bigger/newer is better.

Factor 5: the timing

With the end-of-year clearances (coupled with the fact that we got the van on Labor day with extra sales going on), the timing seemed to be as close to ideal as possible. We could afford it.

Anyway, I'll probably post more as we get used to the van.

Why I Am Libertarian

I've gotten a couple of comments on my blog (so far only from my wife and her best friend, but it's a start :-). One definitely interested me. Initially I was going to reply as a comment, but I definitely want to put some of my political beliefs in my blog, so I'll reply as a blog posting instead of a comment.

Some excerpts from the comment:

have you ever heard of/read: Libertarianism, a Primer

I didn't realize you consider yourself Libertarian. I respect that a lot since I feel that our loss of rights for the sake of Government handling our responsibilities has been suffocating lately! They just love to grow themselves, don't they? And there's not a darn thing we can do about it! Well, other than whine and vote for Ron Paul.

I have not read "Libertarianism, a Primer", so I can't comment on it.

My "conversion" to libertarianism really started shortly after graduating from high school when I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time (I've read it several since then). I have some minor issues with the book itself. It's a little long winded. Okay, I take that back. At well over 1000 pages, it's a LOT long winded. Even so, the philosophy and ideas presented in that book are so important, and so dead on that I cannot see anyone reading it and failing to appreciate it.

As I read that book, I realized that government control of the economy, or personal freedoms, and (perhaps worst of all) morality is a direct route to loss of personal liberty.

Although I had those beliefs (or at least, the beginning of them), they were not well formed, and I wouldn't have called myself libertarian at that point. Over the years though, I've spent a great deal of time formalizing my political beliefs. I've studied some of the political statements of the founding fathers. I've familiarized myself with several political parties and philosophies. The greater understanding I have of my political beliefs, and the more I know about the things that made this country great, the more importance I place on personal liberty. For me, personal liberty is the factor that overrides all others when making political decisions. The Libertarian philosophy is the only one which agrees with that. I am therefore, completely and unreservably libertarian.

I would recommend the recent book "The Revolution: A Manifesto" by Ron Paul. It's a fairly simple and enjoyable read, and it presents many of the ideas of libertarianism in a very contemporary setting, so it is much more accessible to people.

As far as Ron Paul, he's an interesting wrinkle in how I may vote in the upcoming election. I hope it's completely unnecessary to say that I will not be voting for McCain or Obama. For me, it will come down to Bob Barr (the libertarian candidate) or Ron
Paul (if he's on the ballot).

Ron Paul appears to me to be a libertarian who actually wants to get elected, so he calls himself a republican in order to increase his likelihood of getting votes. Bob Barr appears to me to be a republican who does not agree entirely with the party, so he calls himself a libertarian. Ron Paul's actual stance on most issues is almost entirely libertarian. Bob Barr's has been very republican in the past with a relatively recent shift towards libertarianism.

If they're both on the ballot, I'll probably vote Ron Paul. He's demonstrated that he's a libertarian but he might actually draw enough support to implement some of his ideas. Otherwise, I'll vote Barr. I'm not 100% committed to this course at this point however.

With respect to the comment "there's not a darn thing we can do about it"... my response is this:

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. -- Thomas Jefferson

As long as we go along with the flow, the current course that this country is taking will continue. If you disagree with the course that the country is taking... if you disagree with the political views of the candidates... if you disagree with the laws that are being passed, that opinion must be voiced.

As long as we continue to vote for the "lesser of two evils" (whichever candidate of the two you consider the lesser evil), we'll continue to get (at best) the lesser of two evils. Vote for the person who supports your liberty (which almost certainly means voting third party). Tell people you're doing so, and tell them why you're doing so. If we stop being silent... we're doing something. It may not be a lot (and it may not be enough), but it's a start.

Voice your opinion about the laws being passed. Write to your representatives. It's very easy at this point since there are any number of "contact your representative" web pages which can be used to send email to the appropriate people containing your views.

And I'd like to say something to all those people who have a "Proud to be a Democrat" or "Proud to be a Republican" bumper sticker (or flag, or shirt, or whatever). I'm proud to say that in the past 20 years, I have not voted for a Democrat or Republican presidential candidate. I'm not sure what it is you're proud of, but I know what I'm prout of. I am proud to have voted for people who I thought would protect personal liberty: both mine AND YOURS!

I would like to add one sidenote about Atlas Shrugged.

A common complaint about the philosophy presented in Atlas Shrugged is that it seems at first glance to be critical of acting charitably to people who are in need of help, or of trying to do the right thing for personal spritual or moral beliefs. And it may be true that Ayn Rand (a self-proclaimed atheist) presented some of those ideas in such an emphatic manner that they can be taken that way. As a very religious person, who believes in acting in a moral way, and in the responsibility to help others, I can understand this complaint, but do not find that her philosophy contradicts mine. Her philosophy was that we should be free to behave in such a way as we find good, and to do those things which make us happy (so long as we do not harm others), and that the government should not force a set of moral beliefs on the people. In other words, while I find it admirable that someone would voluntarily help someone who was in need, I find it dangerous (at the very least) that the government should be able to say "this person is in need, and you WILL help them or you WILL go to jail" (and this is exactly what the government does when they take taxes from us and use them for any number of social programs). I do not oppose the social program... merely the use of government force in their operation.

Anyway, enough about politics for now.

I Get 1500 MPG!!!

When gas hit $4 a gallon, I decided to bike to work. I live a little over 5 miles from work, and between stop lights and everything else, I can bike there or back in about 25 minutes. For comparison, in the morning, I can drive in in about 15 minutes (since the traffic is so low), but coming home in the afternoon (even leaving at 4:00), it takes me 25 minutes, so I only spend about 10 additional minutes on the commute. In addition, I save quite a bit on gas (somewhere in the neighborhood of $40/month) and get in over 4 hours of exercise per week. Luckily, the people I work with are in to biking a lot (2 others bike in every day too), so it's a pretty bike friendly place to work.

Anyway, a friend and I were discussing alternative fuels, and in this case, we were talking ethanol. He drives a small motorcycle, and figured that he could get around 50 MPG going 50 MPH on it using ethanol. So, I got curious and started figuring out some numbers.

As a side note... I love math. I got a minor in math, and do math puzzles for fun. I suspect you would have guessed this by the time you get to the bottom of this post.

Anyway, these calculations are just for fun of course... nothing too scientific, so take them with a huge grain of salt.

First off, I went to the internet to find out some information, and learned that ethanol contains 150 calories/ounce, and an ounce is 0.0078125 gallons. A resting human metabolism burns around 75 calories/hour, and an easy biking (10 mph) metabolism is around 200 calories/hour for a 150 pound person. So, biking burns about 125 calories/hour in addition to the normal resting metabolism.

Using simple dimensional analysis (I'll write about that sometime!), you get the following:

X miles     10 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     125 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 1540 miles/gallon

Of course, I'm not suggesting that I (or anyone else) should use ethanol as their main source of calories, but it's an interesting result.

I decided to take it a bit further. If you want to go twice as fast, you don't burn twice as many calories. Instead, it goes up at some exponential rate. So, back to the internet I learned that more strenuous biking (20 MPH) burns around 540 calories/hour (or 465 after you subtract resting metabolism).

Plugging these results in, we get:

X miles     20 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     465 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 830 miles/gallon

A professional biker in the Tour de France bikes 4 around hours a day and burns between 6000 and 8000 calories per day. If you use 7000 as a happy medium, subtract the normal daily metabolism of 2200 calories per day, and divide the result over 4 hours of racing (and yes, I realize that that is a huge number of assumptions and over simplifications), that works out to be around 1200 calories per hour. The average speed this year was 25 MPH. Plug these numbers in and we get:

X miles     25 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     1200 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 400 miles/gallon

Obviously, I don't believe that a biker could actually go 50 MPH (as fast as the motorcycle that this all started with), but what if they could?

The first thing I did was to plot MPH vs. the log of calories burned per hour (since this is exponential). Then I extrapolated to 50 MPH. I realize that extrapolating outside of the range of the data is a horrible practice, given how far outside of the data (which consists only of 3 very approximate data points), the result is almost meaningless... but who cares. This is just for fun.



The extrapolated value gives approximately 10.75 at 50 MPH. This corresponds to 46,600 calories. Plugging these numbers in:

X miles     50 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     46600 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 21 miles/gallon

It should also be noted that the motorcycle is pushing the motorcycle and rider with a total weight of at around 500 pounds (remember, I'm talking a small motorcycle). The bicycle and rider is no more than 200 pounds. So, the motorcycle gets somewhere on the order of 5 times better gas mileage than the theoretical cyclist who could achieve 50 MPH.

Anyway, just some fun numbers to think about...

My Daughter Awake

It's early Saturday morning right now. Elizabeth woke up a little after 7:00... and for us, that's sleeping in by an hour. It was really nice!

Before I was marrired, my preferred sleeping time was about 1:00 AM to 8:00 AM (or sometimes 2AM to 9AM). That's actually been my best sleeping time all of my adult life.

When I got married, one of the things that both my wife and I wanted was to have the same sleeping schedule, so we ended up compromising on about 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM, and that wasn't too bad.

Then we had a baby who wakes up at 6:00 AM almost every morning. She's done that almost from the time she was born, and became very consistent when she settled into a sleep schedule (actually, it was 5:00 AM, but when Daylight Saving TIme ended, it became 6:00 AM). So for the past 19 months or so, our schedule has been either 10:00 PM to 5:00 AM (during the winter time) or 10:30 PM to 6:00 AM (during the summer time). The Daylight Saving Time switch was mostly ignored since Elizabeth just kept the same schedule.

Even though I've been doing it for for a year and a half, it still feels so unnatural. If I were on my own for a week (which I don't want), I could slip back into my real schedule in about 2 days.

One huge advantage of it though is that for the first time in my life, I'm working a 7:00 to 4:00 schedule. This means a couple of things. I work in IT, and the majority of people are night people like me, so it's not unusual for me to be there one or two hours alone before anyone else shows up. Also, I get to leave at 4:00 which actually gives me time to do a few things after work that need to be done in the normal 9-5 work day. And it gives me a very long afternoon to spend with my family.

I like the advantages so much, I plan on keeping up this schedule permenantly, even though the sleeping still feels so wrong to me.

Incidentally, my wife created a blog for our daughter. It's called "My Joy" and it's linked in the side bar if you're interested.

Why?

I usually do things for a reason, but in the case of this blog, I'm not sure why I'm doing it. I'm kind of excited about it... I get to talk about anything I want. Sometimes it'll be stream of consciousness type writing. Other times I'll write essays. I always enjoyed writing essays. But it doesn't really explain why I'm looking forward to writing. Probably just because it will allow me to talk about things that are important to me. Or maybe it's something else that I'll figure out as I go.

Some of the most important things in my life are: my wife and daughter (I'll write a lot about both of them), my church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; aka Mormon), my political beliefs (staunch libertarian), building things (I love to build), my job (computer programmer and systems administrator), etc.

We'll see where it goes.

Maybe I'll start by saying where the title of my blog comes from. I've been called "The Date Man" on a couple of occasions, and I kind of liked it. It doesn't refer to the number of girls I've gone out with. It refers to a program I wrote (and continue to modify) called Date::Manip. It's a perl module... and unless you are a perl programmer, this probably means nothing to you, and is not very interesting.

One of the fundamental things about me is that I am an engineer. I like to build things. I "build" computer programs. I "build" meals (I like to cook). I enjoy carpentry and metal working and have gotten to build a number of things. Some might think that writing a computer program, cooking a meal, and building a shelf are three completely different things, but I get almost the exact same enjoyment out of them.

In each type of building, I look forward to building something "grand" or especially meaningful. Although I've written a number of computer programs, Date::Manip stands out as one of my most important. So when I was called "The Date Man", it was definitely a compliment. Anyway, it came to mind when I was starting this blog, and it stuck.

But don't worry... I'm not going to go into any details about writing computer programs (at least, I don't think I will). I can just see it. An essay entitled "The inner workings of a computer programmer's mind". I realize that it would be thrilling, but you'll probably just have to do without.

Anyway, more later...

First Post

So, at my wife's encouragement (she loves her blog), I'm starting a blog. We'll see how it goes...