We ain't got no blueberries.

So, my last post was a little congratulatory quip to the New York Yankees, for winning their 27th World Series Championship. (Their 27th; I know, it’s a lot!) In the title of that post, I accidentally juxtaposed two characters in my haste to get the thing online, and I was quickly corrected by Yankee haters who likely enjoyed correcting me in the worldwide forum that is the Intertubes. Meow.

That same evening — you know, the one where the Yankees WON THE WORLD SERIES — I guess I also posted a little congratulatory quip on my Facebook status, which became a lightning rod for a discussion on the Yankees, baseball payrolls, unfairness, weah, weah weah.

Some great arguments from both sides of the aisle are contained in that thread, and it has had me thinking. Thanks everyone. Still, my overwhelming directive to everyone is to fucking get over it.

I guess my beef with the Yankee haters can be summed up thusly: Yankee haters categorize this whole thing as a problem with the Yankees (or they call them cheaters, or fags, or some other such juvenile nonsense); intelligent Yankee fans call it a problem with the rules (which it most certainly is, but don’t blame the Yankees for trying to win with any means allowed). Idiotic Yankee fans — which are a huge problem in American society, I agree — just say things like “Yankees number one, fuck you”, and this definitely gets in the way of clear discourse.

And that’s why I want to share two excellent pieces I read today that also try to address the Problem with Baseball, from both sides. First up, a pitch for the pinstripes, from none other than John Gruber, who, as a Macintosh zealot already knows a thing or two about making good points amidst a tidal wave of ignorance:

Daring Fireball - The Yankees

And next up, the flip side which makes all the points my frend Johnny Q makes on my Facebook page, but also throws out some real stretches. (This latter link comes to you by way of John Gruber’s website, BTW.)

Joe Posnanski - The Yankees Payroll

Enjoy. Spring training seems like a long ways off.

The title says it all. Congratulations to the New York Yankees!

We’ve been talking about doing this for months and months, and finally did it. We enrolled Hooper in a beginner’s dog agility class at the Boulder Humane Society, starting up in a couple weeks. Hoop spent half the morning running and jumping in the ballfield today, and we’ve long thought that Hooper would be a natural at agility trials. And even if he sucks at it, we figure he’ll have a good time trying to not suck at it. And so, on November 12th, Hooper will show up for class once again at the Boulder Humane Society and hopefully will ace his classes!

Wow, start actually blogging again, and you discover all these new things about your blogging software. WordPress, the software that has “powered” this blog for the last several years, is up to version 2.8.5 and a lot has changed for the better. Software updates are automated and work seamlessly, even for users running WP on other hosting sites (like me). Themes and plugins have similar auto install/update functionality.

Apparently there’s also a change to the database from latin1 to utf8 character sets, which is wreaking havoc on a few of my posts that have “smart quote” characters in them. Lots of solutions exist, but the “right” one seems to be a slightly involved conversion of my MySQL database and I’m not in the mood. I think I’ll manually change all the characters that need changing.

The upshot of all of this is that I’ve been spending the better part of the morning reading the WordPress Codex site and looking at new themes and plugins for my site. I guess I’m motivated again.

(light transport simulation geekery alert)

Freshly inspired from the recent Radiance Workshop, and cooped up under 22 inches of snow in Boulder, yesterday I took an old web page I created and integrated it into my website. It’s a summary of my first foray into the use of illums on a project. This page dates back to 2003; I’ve been told it’s helpful, so I thought I’d get it back online with all my other crap.

Here’s the link: http://www.rumblestrip.org/interests/light/using-the-illum-material-for-smoother-renderings-in-radiance/

Happy rendering.

I knew this would be a fun World Series, with two teams I like in there, and a good matchup to boot. With a large percentage of my Facebook friends hailing from the Philadelphia area, I detected a certain bias toward the Lesser League’s team in the growing wave of “go team!” status messages over the last few days, and that’s to be expected. After all, trash talking is how we as fans can participate in the game.

Unfortunately, many of the sentiments expressed in the many Facebok status messages I saw last night ranged from infantile to eerily homophobic. Apparently, a favorite pastime is to call an opposing player a homosexual. For example, this zinger floated across my laptop screen last night:

“Gayrod is Cliff Lee’s BITCH!”

Is the implication that if you have one bad night offensively you become a homosexual? Kind of a “one, two, three strikeouts, you’re gay” standard? This seems to violate all logic and scientific research. And besides, with his statement, didn’t our Facebook scholar just implicate Mr. Lee as being a little light in the loafers too? After all, it takes two to tango, and I think that whether Cliff gave A-Rod a reach-around or not (which he does not mention in his comment), he’s gay, according to my little Facebook friend. So, there!

I’ve never understood this knee-jerk reaction to call the opposition gay. Hurling these random ad hominem (ad homonem?) attacks on teams when there are plenty of other suitable insults and jabs available just make you look stupid. Besides, everyone knows that it’s just the Boston Red Sox that are a flaming bunch of queers.

Personally, I’m looking forward to at least four more awesome games in this series, and great performances on both sides of the Great Baseball Divide. I think we truly have one of the best World Series matchups in years, and that both teams truly deserve to be there. This brings me to my second favorite idiot of last evening, the guy who said the Yankees were “overrated”. 103 wins is not an opinion, you homo.

Game Two tonight. Bring it.

Thank you Chase, for making my blood boil with rage enough to finally achieve enough inertia to log in to my long lost blog and post some bile. I should also give a shout-out to the asshole driving the cab to my hotel last week in Boston because that idiot is to blame for starting this little mess in the first place.

Hi everyone!

Yeah, so, I get in a cab at Logan and this guy takes me to my stately suite at the Holiday Inn; $23.30, the total. I swipe my card, feeling a pang of guilt over being so lazy (I probably had the cash, but didn’t feel like digging through my wallet). Should have known.

I navigate the prompts on the screen, approving the sale and gather my things as the screen thanks me for my business and the receipt machine up front whirs and ticks satisfyingly. The cabbie tears off the receipt and studies it. I hand him a five spot. He looks at me like I have a penis coming out of my left ear and asks me “what is this”? I say it’s his tip, impressed with my restraint. He claims I didn’t pay for the ride, that the receipt is missing a confirmation code or whatever. My overwhelming thought at this time is that a receipt came out of the damned machine, and so I’m all done here. The cabbie claims different.

I explain I’m not paying twice; I swiped a card, a touchscreen thanked me for my business, the machine printed a receipt and I forked over five bucks cash that can go unclaimed on a tax return for chrissakes, dammit, I’m done.

The cabbie’s not having it; a debate ensues, in the parking lot of a crappy Holiday Inn, in Cambridge. I make some good points, while the cabbie calls the cops. As I stand there watching this kid pretend to call the police, I decide it’s not worth the embarrassment arguing over twenty bucks in front of a crappy Holiday Inn in Cambridge and swipe again. I take both receipts. The cabbie complains that I didn’t believe him. I said I did not. And tonight, tonight, a week after that incident, I check my bank statement, and there they are, two charges for $23.30, for a business I will not cite out of privacy concerns. Let’s call them “Assface Cab Company”.

Phase Two: we call Chase’s “customer support” number. I summarize the workflow to date, which has no resolution and is comical if you are not me.

Call 1:
“Thank you for calling Chase…”
(I enter account number)
(I wait)
“how can I help you…”
(I explain)
(typing is heard)
“Thank you mister googleametty, I’m sorry for da inconvenience, but as we transition your account to Chase from WAMU we are experiencing some system maintenance and the system is unavailable…”
(I explain that I have been on the phone with this idiot for several minutes and that she could have told me to simply call back when the “system” was “available”, she retorts with nonsense and says to call back in 30 minutes to an hour.)

Call 2, thirty minutes to an hour later:
“Thank you for calling Chase…”
(I enter account number)
(I wait)
“please enter your tax ID number”
(yes, that’s right, they asked me for my tax ID number)
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your entry…”
(I was cursing and yelling)
(I try hitting zero)
“Thank you for calling the service center. Our offices are now closed…”
(I verify that I called the same number as I called an hour ago, entering the same info, and then hang up)

Call 3:
“Thank you for calling Chase…”
(I enter account number)
“Please enter your four digit PIN…”
(OK, now I’m encouraged, because this is the prompt I got when I first called and spoke to the idiot; I enter my pin.)
“Thank you. For your checking account ending in 2938, your balance is $3,298; for your savings account ending in 9823, your balance is $728…”
(These are not my accounts, nor are the other ones I was given balances for. I hang up.)

So, that’s where we are at this point. God damn, I hate these people.

The upshot, as previously mentioned, is that I am posting again. Good lord, it feels good. My disdain for the general population simply can’t be explained in the construct of a Facebook status update.

A few years ago I wrote a little post on this here website about my idea for the Best Band Name Ever. Imagine my surprise when there was a comment on that post, this here mornin’:

did a google search of my band name… found this…

So it appears that some one else passed all those highway exit signs in Jersey for “The Amboys” and figgered it was a cinch for a great name for the band!

Folk rock, not my thing. But at least someone has the stones to put together a band and make some music under the banner of “The Amboys”! Check ‘em out on this here myspace page, they might just float yer boat.

It was my idea first, though. I’m just sayin’.

I finished my last job on Friday, and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to start the new one the following Monday. Guess that means I start my new job tomorrow, and to say I’m excited would be an understatement.

Today was a study in change, an awakening of a dormant mind. I realized I had been on autopilot for months, if not years, and was unhappy about it. Sure, I chose to do something about it a couple months ago, but today I realized just how unhappy I was, how frustrated I was with my old bosses, how disillusioned I had become with my current work. Part of that stems from the way my bosses chose to handle my departure: with a sad display of childish ranting, and then, the silent treatment. I am still wondering how a couple of guys who built a company over 27 years can still behave like children, but no matter. They do not matter any more. Not to me, and not to my former co-workers, as a new CEO has been named (I have high hopes for the future of AEC, but alas I will not bear witness from the inside). Time to move on.

Today I went for a bike ride, the first of the season for me, I’m afraid. It was a nice easy spin along the foothills of the Rockies, and also took me past the Boulder Municipal Airport, which was buzzing with activity. This brought home the realization that I have not been enjoying my favorite activities, like cycling, flying, being in the mountains — hell, even just looking at the mountains. Then I came home and Brenda & I took Hooper out for a ride and then a bite to eat at our favorite pizza joint in Boulder. The couple next to us were in town from Madison, WI, househunting. The guy just got a job with a cycling advocacy outfit in Boulder and he was excited about moving to such a cycling-centric mountain city. I was excited for him too. It reminded my of my mood four years ago, and all these things started me wondering about what lies ahead:

My commute goes from a five minute bike ride to a 45-hour-plus drive or bus ride. My workday will lengthen, and my ability to come home for a lunchtime dog walk or dr appointment or whatever just went out the window. I know, I KNOW, that this commute cannot possibly be anywhere near as bad as my commute from Metropark to Penn Station in NYC, but it will still be an adjustment. One thought Brenda & I have is that ultimately we will move to Denver, which will make the commute shorter, place Brenda in much closer proximity to more work in the Denver area, and open up the possibility of us finally getting an actual house with an actual yard. So long term, that’s the carrot on the stick for me as I once again board the commuter “express” train to hell.

Commute aside, today made me realize how much we would be leaving if we left Boulder. The mountains, the mountains are just fucking spectacular, ok? It’s just not the same looking at them from Denver, when you can even see them from there. In Boulder, they are right there, you feel like you can kiss them from anywhere in town. The bike paths, the breweries, our friends, they are here. And yet, moving to Denver would enable us to buy a proper house and walk to Rockies games.

In the short term, Brenda has the Colorado Shakespeare Festival to attend to, and that is right here in Boulder. So we will mull this big decision over the summer and I will try to adjust to working at a national lab after being a consultant for fifteen years. Should be an interesting few months.

Almost as if to commemorate my new direction, I discovered Wolfram Alpha today, which is a mind expanding little playground that I have been having fun with this evening. Check it out. Talk to ya soon.

I know, it’s been a while. Here’s the thing: I got a new job!

After almost four years at the firm I work for, I am moving on to a new job, in a new town. It’s still a lighting/daylighting/sustainable design job, but it’s in an entirely different setting for me: a national laboratory.

To say I’m excited understates things a smidge.

In a few weeks, I (and my co-worker) will be the new resident daylighting “experts” at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, down the road in Golden, CO. I’ll be applying my skills as a lighting designer and simulator, hopefully assisting research aimed at helping us bring light into buildings in more sustainable and useful ways.

I’m gonna have access to a supercomputer; can you say petaflop—oh wait, I JUST DID, beyotch! Ka-PoW!

I’m also going to become a commuter again. The upshot is that my posting frequency on this blog will likely increase.

Knowing I am extracting myself and my favorite-co-worker from an increasingly untenable work situation is one thing, but realizing that my career is not only intact but branching off into a new direction—a totally new direction—is just too good for words.

Yes, this means I am putting dreams of vet school on the back burner, but the burner is still on a simmer. After I ace Biology 2 in a few weeks, I’ll keep taking classes toward my vet school prerequisites, but the pace at which I take them will likely become even more glacial than it is now. I’ll keep going, I just may also mix in some thermodynamics now. And that’s OK.

It’s been a crazy month or so. I’m relieved to be able to let this out. Onward.

- Rob

P.S.
Here’s where I’ll be in a few weeks:

http://www.nrel.gov/buildings/