Worst. Karaoke. Ever

There needs to be an "undo" for karaoke nights. Or a way to bribe the bouncer to keep certain people out of the bar.

Maybe it would've been better if anybody but me, Will, and Jay had shown up (I'm talking about cyclists. It was a pleasure to have Dani and BeardedMegan for company). Or if the Johnson and Johnson d-bags had been able to appreciate the performance of anyone who wasn't from their group.

Fortunately, Will and I rocked so hard ('Shout' and 'I Want You to Want Me', respectively) that the bar couldn't help but rejoice with us. Rocked, my friends.

For the first time EVER, we made the decision to pull the plug early. Like a DNF in a bike race (yes, it all comes back to cycling analogies), it was a necessary evil, a decision made for the right reasons but questioned interminably thereafter. We left the bar just after midnight. I got food at the 24-hr Dunkin Donuts.

I regret nothing...

...except singing 'Do You Love Me'; never again.

Spotted on Today's Commute

Being an Engineer, I live and work on Busch Campus (aka "The Cool Kids' Campus"). However, a lot of the things I need to do, like sing karaoke or get race reimbursements for my teammates, require trips across the Raritan River to the College Ave Campus.

I really like this commute. There's a hugemongous curb after the pedestrian bridge (which I can now ride down on my fixie), but other than that it's scenic and rolling and pleasant.

Today's scenery was a little unusual. Gather 'round, childrens, while I tell you all about it.

1. First there were the kids on fixies. They must've been 15 or so. Sure as hell, they were cooler than me, because their bikes were brakeless, their bars were un-taped, and the flowing of their oh-so-emo hair was unchecked by helmets. They were Busch-bound on the pedestrian bridge, and our paths crossed at the very narrow section. Lacking any faith in other human beings' ability to control a bicycle, I slowed and got as far right as possible. When they noticed me a good 2 seconds later, they moved to their right... but they didn't (or couldn't?) slow. One of them clipped the wall with a pedal, but managed to stay upright. Color me impressed.


2. Then there was the family swimming in the Raritan, where the canal spills into the river. Weird, but I was a little jealous... until I realized that 80 fafillion infectious bacteria had just crawled up their excretory orifices.


3. I met Will with his long-overdue reimbursement check (thanks, RU-Screw). As I locked my bike up, we heard a shout - a lady, on her cell phone, was backing her van up and stopped a few inches short of a little old man. Onlookers, including Will and I, were dumbstruck and befuddled, not to mention flabbergasted. Then the old man broke the tension with a comic (albeit unintentionally so) outburst: "Women drivers!!!"


4. On the return trip, I was treated to a second oddball-sighting on the pedestrian bridge. I looked down at the river and saw a new family had waded in... and this one had fishing rods. They were about 50m from the shore. I think they were planning on fly fishing. No news on whether they caught anything, but you will be updated as soon as information becomes available.


5. So finally I got back to Busch. I was climbing up the hill from the pedestrian walkway to the main road when I saw something barreling towards me. Some crazy guy (sans helmet, of course) on a BMX bike was flying down the descent, riding in the shoulder of his lane. No problem. He starts drifting left. Um, okay, still not a problem. Now he's in the wrong lane, and a car is headed straight for him. Oh shit. It is only in the last possible second that the dives to his right, off-roading briefly to get on the pedestrian path. This is when I started breathing again.

I'll tell you what, though, it's nice to get out of the lab.

An Analogy for Stage 3

If you watched Stage 3 of the Tour, you saw something special. I don't claim to be an expert on the bike game, nor on the history thereof, but I do know an extraordinary performance when I see one.

If you'd like, you can watch the following video, which shows the final kilometer-or-so of the 237k day. I strongly suggest watching it, even if you have no idea what the hell is going on. It just looks cool. Listen to the excitement in the commentators' voices as they realize what Cancellara (the dude in yellow) is trying to do. If that doesn't pique your interest at least a little, I don't know what will.


Enough of my readers don't know the ins-and-outs of cycling well enough to fully grasp the degree to which this was an unusual, unpredictable, unprecedented* result. That's okay. Nobody's perfect.

It is for you, my dear friends, that I have come up with an analogy for what you just saw:

It's a soccer game between Brazil and Piscataway High School. For 80 minutes, the Brazilians juggle, do tricks, play practical jokes on each other, etc... Eessentially play Globetrotter (pardon the mixed metaphors). 80 minutes in, it's still 0-0. Well damn, if this ends in a tie, it's going to be scandalous! That PHS could tie Brazil, what a coup! So Brazil starts applying pressure. 85th minute, 0-0. 90th minute, 0-0. The desperation becomes obvious. The Brazilians have clearly miscalculated.

Now the question is, when Brazil scores the inevitable goal, will it be Ronaldinho? Caca? Poopoo?(ie, which famous forward/midfielder will score?) The commentators speculate idly, as the 91st minute, then the 92nd pass, and it's still 0-0. Suddenly their tone changes, and they predict that Piscataway will somehow hang on.

Finally, in the 95th minute, the ref is getting ready to blow his whistle. A PHS player clears the ball, and it reaches the Brazilian goalie. The goalie dribbles past every PHS player, all the way to the 5 yard line, dances around the PHS goalie, and scores.

What?!? The goalie? Really?

If you're more into politics than sports (you know who you are), then instead, it may help to think of things this way:
The notoriety of the 2000 presidential election peaked during the ballot counting in Florida, at the end of months of campaigning. Now imagine if the recount had found that in a surprise turn of events, Winston Churchill had won the state as a write-in candidate.

I'm amped just thinking about it. DanFlan's probably right, this weekend's races will probably be full of Cancellara-wannabes, which could make the tactics, um, complicated.


*We're not counting Eddy Merckx in this one.

All Your Spoilers are Belong to Us

All Your Spoilers are Belong to Us

Poor Jenks. All he wants to do is watch the rerun of the day's Tour de France stage when he gets home. If you can't watch it live, at least you can watch it as if it were live, by simply avoiding cycling-related websites that might spoil the ending.

It's tough. I would compare it to Odysseus, lashed to the mast and listening to the Siren's call. Except Jenks isn't lashed to the mast. In fact, the websites are only a click away, and I'm sure that to some degree, every day involves some internal negotiations... "I just want to know who won, I don't need to read about the details".

Days like today must be really tough for him. One person asks "where can I get live coverage of the Tour", and next thing you know there are emails flying around like:

• "The ending is SICK!!"
• "It's pretty amazing to see the
  power in his seated attack!"
• "Holy crap!"

No, nobody told him who won, or what made this one of the most exciting final 10k I've ever seen. But damn, guys, this must be killing him! We should ease off, if only out of pity.

You can't spell Oratorial without Oral, kinda

You can't spell Oratorial without Oral, kinda

I'm a decent engineer, but by no means am I the engineer to end all engineers (clearly that's Jenks). Similarly, I can fake my way through a toast or a presentation, but I'm no Chamberlain (Neville, not Wilt).

You know what? I'm not going to describe today's presentation, except to tell you that my audience was 6th-9th graders and my topic was Limb Control. There's no video record of my talk, there are no witnesses in the audience to corroborate any claims I might make, and frankly, it's boring to write "I'm awesome".

Seriously, though, I'm awesome.

How awesome, you ask? To demonstrate the non-linearity of the dynamics and control of the elbow joint and the non-intuitiveness of joint stiffness control (yawn), I got a volunteer to do The Robot.

My presentation involved doing The f'in Robot. You wish you were there.

EUREKA!!!

EUREKA!!!

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta. I've been bashing my head into a wall (figuratively, of course... I'm way too much of a wimp to do that for reals) for a few days now, trying to automate a process in my software. None of the variable sizes matched, none of the matrices were simple nx1's, and I needed to nest a bunch of loops.

Translation: COMPLICATED. I'm normally pretty good at picturing my matrices as spatial objects... it's probably one of the only reasons I've been able to keep my head above water as an engineer. These bastards, though, were 116x23x3 (and some were 115x20x3, and some were 117x22x3, etc) and they needed to be reshaped to 100x1x3.

So not only did I need to reshape the matrices, the process needed to be completely automated to handle the different matrix sizes. Another layer of complexity in an already complex process.

Oh, and by the way, the 20 to 1 reduction of dimensionality isn't necessarily a simple ensemble-averaging. So that'll be fun to play with.

Long story short: after hours of staring at the monitor, wondering why the code wasn't working, I WIN!

edit: I know, I know, that this is unnecessarily jargony. Nobody cares about the technicalities inherent in this level of detail. Still, this is one of those things...

You know what, I've written about this before. This software, these few dozen lines of code, they're but a drop in the bucket of the overall project, and the final writeup won't even mention the work I've put in. Writing about it now, even if just on my blog, was a little therapeutic. Oh well. At least it wasn't as bad as Will's post.

I am officially Flantastic
Since I was at a conference for my birthday, the celebration of the anniversary of that momentous day had to be postponed until July. July! Honestly, who would even want to be born in July? You've got to compete with the 4th of July for attention. For that matter, pretty much every other month has holidays to distract from the potential awesomeness of a birthday... Halloween, Christmas, Cinco de Mayo, to name a few.

June, on the other hand, is the ultimate month vis a vis birthdays. What do I have to contend with? D-Day? Summer Solstice? Bah!

Fortunately, my friends are great, and they would not be deterred by the July-ness of my party. We met up at Harvest Moon for Karaoke, and the rest is history... nebulous, uncertain history, but fortunately there was a camera.

(I would like to take this opportunity to request that everyone related to me, by blood or marriage, stop reading this post. While this request is certainly futile, maybe it will help if I give you a link to click on? Please go play sudoku)

The Karaoke:
The reincarnation of Mr. Roboto by the World Champions
Mike, Jay, and I rock out
Will has a black belt in Karaoke Kwon Do
Rocking out with Erik aka Milky Manchester
The Culprits:
Megan tried to kill me. Observe the Car Bombs...
tastier than an IED, but just as deadly
Rob and Laura
Jay, Dan, and Jen
Adam surprised me with a Boilermaker
Rutger the Bouncer... didn't actually buy me any drinks,
but he saved me from a beating a few months ago...
and that's another story for another time

Dr. Mel, of Dental Hygiene fame
I believe Jay bought this round
The Progression:
Started the night as a Rockstar
Things started getting hazy
I'm not sure what the story is here.
I just wanted this photo to be public
Then things got REALLY bad
I would've written this post chronologically, with some sort of explanatory narrative, but let's not kid ourselves... there are just too many holes in my memory. There are also a lot of photographs I didn't post because I couldn't help but wonder "when did this happen?" and "who is this person?"

The biggest mystery, though, is why I woke up next to a pineapple.





(I didn't actually wake up next to a pineapple)

My Man-Crushes, episode 4

Yesterday at the Hall of Fame race, I DNF'ed, which means I "Did Not Finish". You know who didn't DNF? Jay #1.

Jay F'ed, alright. Jay really is an F'er.

Over the past few months, Jay has proven himself to be a tough sonofabitch. When he flatted at Danville and his CO2 cartridge screwed the pooch, he walked to his car to inflate the tire... when his wheel slipped out of the dropout and he had no tools on him, he walked back to his car to fix it... when his front tire flatted, he walked back to his car to change the flat.

The above story is all from the same race. The poor bastard almost doubled the winner's time, finishing dehydrated and hallucinating. If that's not tough, I don't know what is.

Jay chases back after yet another flat
When I finished the Neshaminy race, rolled back to the car, and saw a tube on the ground, I knew immediately what had happened.

"Quit" is just not in this guy's vocabulary... which is not surprising, because he mostly communicates in grunts.

Jay races singlespeed. On a Kona Unit. With a Rigid Fork.

Jay is capable of the Jew-Fro... and has proven it.

Jay has a high-quality sock collection.

Jay's taste in beer in unmatched.

Jay's taste in Jenks' mom is matched only by me.

For these, and other unbloggable reasons, Jay and I have realized that we're pretty much the same person. It's a little unnerving sometimes. So basically, this post boils down to my man-crush on myself.
We coordinate outfits before going out in public
Of course, there are some key differences between us...

One of us is man enough to shave his legs.

One of us has a bike with 3" larger wheels and 300% hotter paint.

One of us had the cojones to liberate the team's beloved mascot MacChouff from a local eatery

One of us went to grad school, and one of us co-owns a lucrative construction company.

Now here's the real story of why Jay has earned my undying man-crush. After the HPCX race in November, we were both pretty knackered. I went to my car and grabbed a bottle of Endurox. Jay rolled over and offered me a swig from a bottle of Pepsi.

"No thanks," I declined, "I've got Endurox." Soda is a good fall-back if there's no Endurox, but I was good to go.

"Well, unless your bottle has Guiness in it, you might want some of this". I could've cried, I was so happy.

...

Oh Jay. I hate your guts, because you keep beating me in races. I hate you because your pickup line is "Hi, I'm Don's friend". I hate you because you know the Beastie Boys' "Paul Revere" by heart.

Observe Jay's accessories: Brown-bagged microbrew in one hand, MacChouff the elf in the other. Nice.

But mostly I hate you because no blog post could possibly capture the depth of my man-crush. Jay Number One indeed.

Suit Up!

I'm still not ready for weddings. I'd say that I've only been to three weddings since becoming an adult - the Nutsy-Clarissa wedding, the Diak-Kristen wedding, and now the Sparks-DU wedding... however, that would be a lie, because I don't really think of myself as an adult yet.

Perhaps the best barometer for all of this is my history with wedding gifts...

There was Nutsy's wedding, my sophomore year, when I gave Rob $20 to be able to add my name to the gift he'd remembered to buy. I don't know what the gift was. I only remember being terribly uncomfortable during the ceremony, then having a bunch of Phi Psis and Alpha Phis taking pity on Hammad and me, the 20 year olds who got carded at the reception, by giving us way-too-many drinks.

Then there was the Diak wedding. This was in December 2006, so it was more recent. Was I more prepared? Not really. There were about 8 of us running around Target at 8pm the night before the wedding, scrambling like highly-motivated, headless chickens. With a dozen items left on the registry, eight of us, and a not-yet-restocked Target, it was quite an adventure. I was terribly uncomfortable during the ceremony, but the reception was a big Phi Psi reunion and I had a blast.
Don and GI Mark at Diak's reception
Saturday was the Diaks' 6mo anniversary
This past Saturday, I went to Sparks' (now the Archers') wedding as my friend Liz's plus-one. Once again, we waited until 24 hours to go (i wanna be sedated) to buy a gift. Once again, I was terribly uncomfortable during the ceremony... has anyone else noticed that the infamous Corinthians 13:4-8 ("Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful...") sounds like a Pat Benatar song? Love is a battlefield!

My biggest concern, though, was which tie to wear.
You'll be glad to know that I went with the boring tie. I'm getting old.

These are my sisters. Little Sister (aka Shoshi) is on the left. Big Sister (aka Peggy) is on the right.
Can't you see the family resemblance?
Liz and I have been close friends since 2002. We shared an apartment with Meyer and Ed (the latter, by the way, is married and in Arizona now) our senior year. There are exactly two pictures of the two of us. The first was taken in 2004. The second was taken on Saturday.

So, no more weddings for a while, thankyouvery much. However, I may have to Suit Up! in the near future, if only because I look damn good in formalwear.

Doppleganger

I am blogging from a Panera. I came here to get some work done, but the blogosphere is a cruel mistress, and this story must be relayed to you.

The cashier is an Asian girl whose nametag reads Ninja. "That's my nickname too!" said I.

"Okay, my fellow Ninja, what name should I put on your order?"

"Don"

"No way. Let me see your ID." It's true, my name is Don.

"No way! I'm Ninja Dawn!!!"