Events

My dad's oldest cat died Tuesday night. He was 18 1/2. Here's Tommy in 1997: He was the sweetest cat ever. Not the brightest (we called him "Forrest") nor the slimmest ("Tommy Two-Cats"), but definitely the sweetest. Tom is survived by his best friend, Reggie.

Bruce Schneier reminds everyone how we can really defeat the terrorists: The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of...

I was going to have action shots of my new bike this morning, but I decided to take the bus to my office instead of riding for some reason: I'll have more on the bike later, including the results of my first real ride on it (whee!), but right now I have to crunch a few million data points. I'm also suffering from the after-effects of a midnight inspiration last night, which (a) led to two hours of coding starting at 1:00 am, and (b) got the total speed of the application up 40%.

First, I picked up my new bike yesterday. But that's not the subject of this post. No, the unfortunate real subject of this post is, "I am stupid." I had to import about 3.5 million data points recently, and now that I'm using the data, I discovered that this quick-and-dirty construct was dirtier than it was quick. See if you can spot the problem: const string sqlTemplate = "INSERT INTO data_points (foreign_key_id,year_num,payment,cost) VALUES ({0},{1},{2},{3})"; ... foreach (CustomStruct item in...

I picked out my new bicycle. I pick it up Wednesday. Photos and details to follow.

Today I pedaled my butt off, all the way up to Wisconsin: The total ride was 130 km (80.8 mi). I had intended only to go 120 km (74.5 mi) to prepare for the North Shore Century in four weeks. But, I took a wrong turn somewhere in North Chicago, and lost the Robert McClory Bike Path entirely. That added about 6 km (4 mi) to the trip. Another 4 km (2.5 mi) got added on when I popped a spoke in the middle of nowhere: Fortunately, Anne was home and directed me to the Zion Cyclery, and they had me back on...

As channeled through American Prospect columnist Julian Sanchez: August 11: My anger at The New York Times subsides somewhat as I skim Foucault and Sartre. Surveillance serves its disciplinary function only if the populace is conscious of it. And if Americans aren't wrenched from being-pour-soi to being-en-soi (at least in relation to an observer who is Other) by the objectifying gaze of the state—well, then the terrorists have won. Read more.

From the TSA's prohibited-items list: We encourage everyone to pack gel-filled bras in their checked baggage. I'll keep that in mind the next time I fly.