Another crazy day

Yet again I have earned my salary and then a whole lot more today. It boggles my mind how busy the office can get and only a few weeks before the holidays. But I digress.

Yesterday on Speed Skate World (see the Blog Roll on the right) Peter Doucet mentioned the new 120mm x 3 wheel skate frames. Peter said, "It is unclear when the wheels will be produced and ready for sale due to cost of production and tooling." I have to wonder, perhaps Gyro will have some problems but certainly the manufacture of 120mm wheels is not a complex feat of engineering. After all the two wheel scooters that were such a fashion craze in the early part of this decade used wheels that were approximately the same size. But there has to be a point of diminishing returns with big wheels, I can personally vouch for the difficulty of hacking a turn or even a slight incline in 110s. To say nothing of the loss of surface area as a skater goes from 8 points of contact (four wheels per skate) to 6 points. I have gone over all this ground before, but I still believe that 120mm wheels are taking a good idea, big wheels, and pushing it too far.


On the other hand what can be done to improve and grow the sport of inline skates? Its no secret when big (90/100mm) wheels came out suddenly sales of skates shot way up. I suspect an awful lot of people buy a pair of rec skates and are happy with them for years, it took a major change to get people to upgrade their ten or twelve year-old skates. Would more revolutionary ideas increase sales and hopefully result in more skates on the trails and not in the closet?

My own personal observation is that what is required is a greater feeling of stability and control. The fact is from day one we grow up used to the notion that if we put our feet firmly on the ground we stop moving. Somehow something equivalent has to happen to get the novices to keep trying and not relegate the skates to the back of the closet. I know at least one company had the idea of putting shock absorbers on aggressive skates, which is an interesting idea but what about entry level skates why start with aggressive? One vendor tried putting disk brakes inside skate wheels, I don't know what happened to them but I think the fundamental problem for the novice is the fact that their center of gravity is just too damn high. On a bike you have to stay low and its no great secret put a small sports car and a truck on a tight turn and we all know whats going to happen, either we get an over turned truck or some pretty heavy duty braking, but either way the sports car comes out of the corner an awful lot faster than the truck will. Stability is not achieved through height, but getting low is not easy, if it were, I'd have been at the Pan Am games showing Joey Mantia how its done.

Okay, now I am really depressed, I wanted to make sure I spelled Mantia properly so I Googled JM and now I know, Joey was 9 in 1995, that means he is young enough that I really could have taught him swimming back when I did that sort of thing. Its official I really do feel like an old fart! (The fact that tomorrow I turn 30 drives that point home pretty hard, by the time my dad was my age, he was a father twice over.) There's a transition point when you aren't really a child anymore, suddenly you realize, the biggest concern isn't the next Calculus III assignment, its not balancing the cheque book and the Visa bill, its paying the mortgage and making sure the fridge is properly stocked with fruits and vegetables, and when your dad comes round for dinner his complaint when he peers into the fridge isn't about the lack of food, rather its the lack of beer. Oh well, I can at least draw comfort from the fact that my wife's birthday is not too far away so there is one person who cannot take cracks at my age... well she will but not for very long.

Anyway I did the elliptical machine and a wack of push-ups, its hard work 48 hours after donating, but I feel a lot better for it, but also awfully tired. But tomorrow I think an appropriate thing would be to reminisce about the last decade, you have been warned!

Tip of the hat.

Today was another stupid intensive day at the office. I think I had ten whole minutes of reasonable sanity first thing in the morning before the work load went to some state of insane.

Naturally I had no chance to skate, and even if I had, its way too cold. I need a pair of ice skates, but I think I mentioned that in an earlier post. (Did I mention the City Hall skating rink is across the street from my office? Sadly I've heard from Mike Linn - no blog to my knowledge - that speed skating is not allowed at City Hall.)

Anyway I got a favourable mention from Peter Doucent in Speed Skate World (see the blog roll on the right). And thank you Candy, too many people question the sanity of donating and skating, but I don't care, one is the right thing to do, the other is just a passion, or hobby depending on my mood. Then again "never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right." - Isaac Asimov.

I wonder what the good Doctor would say if he were alive today. Sometimes I think it for the best that he is not. Asimov would be, justifiably right pissed off at the state of The World and The United States particularly. He did not like the US entanglement in the first Gulf War, I find it hard to believe he'd have a 'support our troops' bumper sticker today.

For a guy who spent so much time thinking of the greatness of empires, both real, Rome and imaginary, the Galactic Empire of Cleon and all that, its remarkable how opposed he was to an American Empire. But as I have previously written, I believe The American Empire has an inevitability to it that is as inevitable as the demise of The American Empire. I am as frightened of the ascent of Pax Americana as I am of its descent. Skater dreams indeed! I should probably try harder to stay on topic. (Well at least it beats me describing what happened at work today.)

Anyway in honour of Professor Asimov, I end with a quote that I find reassuring:

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

Eat your heart out George Bush Jr.

On donating

Sorry to all my readers for the lateness of this posting. Last night I was at work from well yesterday morning at around 7:45 until this morning at oh... 1:30~2:00am. When I got up later the same day it was thanks in no small part to urgent emails sent to everyone in the company. (I have a Crackberry and every urgent email will wake me up.)

Excuse me for a minute but I have to rant, what is wrong with people who just need to send urgent emails proclaiming the success of this year's Sugar Plum Treats Day? No really that was the email that woke me up, it was to announce that Sugar Plum Treats would remain on sale in meeting room B until 2pm. Excuse me for being blunt about this, but I really could not care less and please explain the urgency of that message while we are on the subject. See to me an urgent email is, "Michael the telephone system is down, outgoing calling does not work." Or "Michael the website is down, get into the office and get the servers working, our clients are going crazy." See these are not only time sensitive, they are important. Sugar Plum Treats are not exactly time sensitive, and heaven help the sorry individual who thinks that home baked goodies are somehow important.

Anyway early this afternoon I donated blood, it was my 57'th donation. A number of people in the Skate Club have asked me in the past why I do so I will try to answer here for the final time. I know donating really does bad things to my performance on the track or trail, but I am not a professional racer and what I loose on my time I gain on my conscious. According to Canadian Blood Services one donation can save three lives. So by my rough numbers I've saved potentially something in the neighbourhood of 170 lives. I will not set any speed records in the next month. If I get to do any trail skating, although I doubt it in this weather, I won't be setting any PBs. But I will be giving several other people a chance to set a new PB and that has to count for something.

How to Blog when distracted

So my personal life has been turned completely upside down in ways that are totally inappropriate to broadcast to anyone and everyone who happens by my Blog. Suffice it to say the State of the Union is not so spectacularly wonderful and there is going to be some serious amending of plans to ensure domestic tranquility.

To think I had never punned on the US Constitution before, makes that last paragraph pretty impressive I think. (Maybe next week I'll try for the Magna Carta... actually I guess I should wait for June 15, 2015, make it a sort of 800'th anniversary thing.)

Anyway last night at Scooters the Toronto Inline Skate Club had their annual awards ceremony and pizza party. I must admit I wish I could have been there, but as one might expect Peter (see Speed Skate World on the right) did his usual outstanding job documenting the event for all posterity... there I go again, puns on the Constitution, oops!

In other news, Cor (see Road Rash Chronicles on the right) just gave a 'Shout Out' to this Blog, Candy (see Dream Chaser On Wheels) and Peter. Thanks Cor, but what article was it that you liked so much? And Cor, on your way to Mexico in February or March stop by Toronto and we can go skating on the trail, the mangoes will be nice and fresh that time of year. (Yeah, I wish mangoes grew along side the trail!)

Finally on the new home front, last night we, my wife and I, went to the post office to retrieve a letter that was sent by registered mail. I hate when people do that, just send it as regular mail and follow up with a phone call! (Is it really necessary force me to go to the post office just to get a one paragraph note?) The builder has rescheduled the final closing date to March 31, 2008, previously it was February 7, 2008. Obviously the promised free beer to... anonymous, who are you, well too bad, I guess I get to drink it all!, will have to be postponed.

The Imperial America Grows

I just read on an upsetting article on TPM Muck Raker linked to from The Huffington Post that the US and Iraqi Governments are within spitting distance of establishing the latest legally permanent military garrison of US solders abroad, this time, obviously, in Iraq. To those of us who subscribed to the notion that the United States is not in fact an Imperial Power, its time to crawl out of the cave and have a look around.

Sorry this has nothing to do with skating but I don't live in a vacuum and the Imperial reach of America is not healthy, not healthy for the rest of the World obviously but also not at all compatible with the ideals of a Democratic Government.

Ironically the ideals of the second amendment to the US Constitution: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Ambiguous in its meaning today, but this amendment was added to the Bill of Rights not to ensure that a bunch of guys could throw their rifles in the back of their Dodge Durango, rather the ideals behind the second amendment were that the United States would not have standing armies, rather the States would be defended by "well regulated militias".

Only in times of war would the United States actually have an army. In fact Article II of The Constitution spells out that the President will be commander-in-chief only when there is an army or navy: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States... The men who created the United States knew that: liberty, as we all know, cannot flour­ish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government. - Aldous Huxley in Brave New World Revisited (chapter 1, Over Population).

Fifty years from now I fear that this date will be remembered as the day government of the people for the people perished from this Earth.

It is too difficult for me to talk about leisure activities when The World, or at least the United States - the "shining city on a hill"-, is flying apart at the seams. Sorry for the melodrama, maybe I will feel better about these things in the morning.

In the meantime would someone please give Bush a blow job so Congress can impeach him?

Wet leaves

I went skating again today, on the trail. I could go to Scooters, but I cannot really go. Now that my wife is home and I have to work tomorrow morning driving all the way out to western Mississauga and heading back home at 10pm just does not sound like a prudent use of my time.

Like the title of this Blog suggests, the trail was covered in wet leaves. By Sunny Side outdoor pool, melted snow and ice had put parts of the trail under as much as an inch (2.5 cm) of water. The water made that section of the trail effectively impassable. I eventually gave up in more than a small degree of disgust and did a few circles around Marilyn Bell park. (Actually there is a nice little loop you can do there that is just shy of 2km long. Starting at the top of the hill just East of Aquatic drive, (near what I think is the Toronto rowing club) skate down the hill and along the water's edge towards Ontario Place, at the East end of Marilyn Bell turn around and take the North trail that rubs against Lake Shore Blvd. One thing to be very mindful of, do not skate clockwise, always counter clockwise! There are a couple of good reasons:

1. For one thing you will be doing left hand turns which is what we always seem to practice anyway.
2. If you go clockwise when you get to the East end of the park you have to make a really sharp right hand turn while going down a hill. If you don't time the turn right on the first try you fall down some steps and if you have not come to a stop at the bottom of the steps you hit a fence. If the fence does not stop you, you get a nice cold bath in Lake Ontario. I did that turn the first lap and my heart was in my mouth the entire way down the hill. (It does not help that the ground is leafy and damp.)

As for the rest of the trail, too leafy, too wet. With the exception of Marilyn Bell the trail conditions were in various stages of appallingly bad and plain impassable.

On Web Trends

Today I skated at Scooters. I did a little better than last time, each little improvement is a good thing so I will say I am happy, even though I spent much of the morning in the centre of the track trying to improve technique. I have learned something very useful, I need to concentrate very hard on keeping my knees pointed out so that my feet stay close together and I do not pronate. If I can get that act together I stand a good chance of making significant improvements over the season to come.

Anyway I went through the logs of where my site traffic is coming from, since Peter Doucet posted his little tidbit on Speed Skate World (see the blog roll on the right, the November 24 entry of Speed Skate World) I have had over 20 visitors from Speed Skate World. All Peter said was: "Why He Lied: Here's an interesting little entry from Skater Dreams called Why I lied." I guess I should write more "interesting little entries!"

Other interesting things I came across, Andrew Hegarty (see the Blog Roll on the right) posted a terrific video on November 21. Damn what a cyclist, I wish I could do that! Car drivers really ought to learn that they do not own exclusive right to the roads.



Now I would like to discuss some politics in Canada. I know, I know, I can hear some of you groaning, or more likely your already off googling some speed skater video or you are looking up how to fix an in-grown toe nail or something. But this is important, really, this matters.

For those of you who are still with me, thanks. I hope by now you have heard about the Federal Government's "Democratic Representation Bill". This bill will assign something in the neighbourhood of 5 new seats in the House of Commons in Ottawa to Alberta, 7 new seats to British Columbia and 10 new seats to Ontario. If this bill becomes law all provinces, except Ontario, will have no more than 101 thousand souls for every Member of Parliament they send to Ottawa. (Some provinces will be considerably better represented, for example Prince Edward Island has something in the neighbourhood of 35 thousand people for every MP.) Ontario on the other hand will have 107 thousand people per riding. It gets better, for every 100 thousand new people a province gains, it will get one riding, except (wait for it...) Ontario, we need 200 thousand new tax payers to get a new riding. (Now some of my numbers may be off, I was going from memory, but the fundamental fact is, Ontario is way under represented if this bill stands.)

I wrote a letter to the Globe and Mail today in response to a letter they published on Saturday, the 24'th. I would like to quote it, even if the letter does not get published because I believe it to be a good summary of the situation so far.

Government House Leader and Honourable representative of York-Simcoe PeterVan Loan writes that the "Democratic Representation Bill will result in...better representation for... Toronto and Vancouver." This after previously calling Premier of Ontario a small man because The Honourable representative of all Ontario wants equal representation for all Canadians.

Mr. Van Loan, rather than retort to you directly I will let Jonathan Meyhew answer, "No taxation without representation!" For as James Otis said"taxation without representation is tyranny."

Mr. Van Loan if the Honourable MPP of Ottawa South is a "small man" so is Tomas Jefferson, Tom Payne, Gen. George Washington, John Jay, & cetra. Fine company for Mr. McGuinty, but when will the Madness of King Stephen be playing in the theatres?

Now the letter that Mr. Van Loan wrote, I will reprint here so that everyone can see I edited only for brevity not to change the MP from York-Simcoe's meaning.

Re Bill C-22, Harper Writes Off Ontario (Nov. 22): The existing formula for distributing seats in the commons is designed to limit the size of the House. It does this solely at the expense of the provinces with the faster population growth, such as Ontario, and it will get worse over time.

The existing formula shortchanges the rapidly growing parts of Canada where immigrants settle.

Our Democratic Representation Bill will result in more seats and better representation for these areas, such as Toronto and Vancouver's suburbs, by correcting the current unfairness in the formula.

- Peter Van Loan,
Government House Leader, Ottawa (in the November 24'th letters to the editor of the Globe and Mail).

I would like to consider for a moment the American Revolution. In December 1773 wealthy smugglers boarded the East India tea ship Dartmouth and dumped some 342 boxes of tea worth 10 thousand pounds into Boston Harbour. The 'Boston Tea Party' was not a protest of excessive taxation, on the contrary, "the price of the tea in question was exceptionally low, since the British government had just given the East India Company a rebate on the much higher duty the tea had incurred on entering Britain. In effect the tea left Britain duty free..." [From Niall Ferguson in Empire The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, copyright 2002.]

The American Revolution was not a war protesting a tax hike, rather the American Revolution was a war protesting a tax cut! The complaint the English Patriots in America had which instigated the entire war was the arbitrary nature of the British taxation system. Put plainly they fought because they were taxed without representation. Put even more susinctly the entire American Revolution was a protest over the lack of representation loyal subjects of the crown suffered under in the American colonies.

Now the Federal Government in Ottawa proposes that a new law be created which is to ensure better representation for most Canadians, but in Ontario we will be under represented. The old law was a sin of omission, the new law a sin of commission.

One day someone will have to explain to me why my vote counts for one quarter of a vote from some guy in Prince Edward Island. In the mean time, my wife is due to arrive home after a month in China, I better go to the airport and pick her up.

More from the house warming and I'm on Peter's Blog again!

I've got to wake up early tomorrow morning for Scooters, but I just wanted to post a couple quickies.

There is a picture of me on Speed Skate World (see the Blog Roll on the right). You can see that picture here too.

From the left, Candy Wong, myself, Kevin Noh. For once a photo me that I am not embarrassed by! Well done Peter (the photographer)!

Also in today's (see November 24) Speed Skate World Peter referenced my piece Why I lied. Its odd, sometimes I read over my old writing and I hate it, but that piece is an exception, I actually think it came out rather well. But if someone reminds me in a about two months, I'll read it again, I would not be at all surprised if I change my mind. I have found that I usually hate my own writing within about sixty days of whenever I wrote. It will be interesting to see how I feel in late January.

The aftermath of a house warming

I must admit to my many (?) readers I am somewhat disappointed by the lack of audience participation. The links to comments that are at the end of each posting are there to be used, please, please, feel entirely free to add your $0.02, and while you are at it, answer the survey I've got. I know I am not the only person reading this blog, there is no way in ten days since I got that hit counter I've hit my own blog 143 times. (Actually that's a bad counter, hit refresh and the count increments by one.) It is possible with the use of the (F5) key that in fact I could hit this blog 143 times in about... hmm, two minutes twenty three seconds assuming one key stroke per second. But I have not been doing that, so someone somewhere is reading this, let me know, I need to feel the love.

Anyway last night Jacky of Passion on Wheels (see the blog roll on the right) who exercised his post enlightenment Locke-ian right to life liberty and property, a month ago had his house warming. Of course Jacky does not own some vast tract of arable land in the country side, rather its a two bedroom in Mississauga. This positively sucks for me, now I cannot carpool with him to Hamilton. Whatever happened to the notion of having a town house in the city and the country estate? Oh that's right, the invention of the automobile and the middle class. Damn fangled contraption cost me over $1400 yesterday, new timing and serpentine belt, water pump and spark plugs. I guess I should be grateful, the items I just listed were all replaced as part of regular maintenance. If, for example, the timing belt, had gone on the highway the car would probably be a write off.

This morning Banff Designs had a massive sale on all manner of outer wear. I was interested in the cycle jackets, would have been good for cold weather skating. Sadly I think I broke the bank at the shop getting the flippin car repaired, so I slept in and skipped Banff, maybe when I go to China I can find something, after all that is where most of our clothing comes from and there are still a few cyclists in Shanghai. Apparently skating is taking Shanghai by storm these days, so maybe when I go there I can visit the SISC (Shanghai Inline Skate Club) if there is such an animal, see what there conditions are like.

Actually an interesting thing, I just did a quick Google Search for inline skating in Shanghai and when I ran the search the very first page suggested that there are seven rinks and arenas in the city of 18 million. Sadly, on closer inspection of the addresses I recognized (three of the seven) two are near the airport in the area of Hongkou district, the third arena although much closer to where I will be staying, in PuDong is called the Pudong Children's Palace... hmmm, I don't think that will work, and even if the Children's Palace takes 30 year-old "children" its actually quite far from my in-laws who are in Western Pudong. Ultimately I have to ask is it really worth it to haul my skates all the way to China for perhaps two or three hours of entirely less than satisfying skating? Oh well, something for me to sweat on when my wife returns.

Speaking of returning wives, tomorrow at 3pm Eastern Standard, Air Canada flight AC 088 arrives in Toronto having departed from Shanghai Pudong only 20 minutes earlier at 14:40 local time. (Remarkable World we live in, eh!) On board will be The Boss, aka 'The one who wears the pants'. In expectation of her arrival I suppose I ought to clean the house.

A closing note, to the person who writes what I judge to be the best comment in response o this posting, free beer at my own house warming when that happens in March or April of 2008.

Why I lied

In Speed Skate World (see the Blog Roll at right) on November 21, Peter Doucet mentioned that Skatelog’s Jessica started a 2008 Montreal 24 hour Skatelog team. Technically I should be one of the first people to sign up. By rights I ought to be there with Skatelog wearing one of their florescent jerseys. Sorry, not happening.

Oh, make no mistake, I will be in Montreal, I will be skating with the usual suspects, the same eccentric trouble makers at TISC I’ve come to know and love over the past year. Well alright, not really love so much as stand being in the presence of, sort of… oh okay I admit it, like enough that I’d go to Jacky’s (see Passion on Wheels in the Blog Roll) house warming this evening, and haul ridiculously huge numbers of wheels over the border just to save everyone a couple bucks on shipping.

Back at Skate Log, I did promise Jessica and everyone else in April or May, I’d skate with them in 2008 in Montreal. I’m a promise breaker, I’m right up their with heck’ve a job Bushie. Of course I am not singularly responsible for the decline of the greatest country in the entire World the way that Son-of-a-Bush is. So I guess I’m not right up there with heck’uve a job, I'm not right up there, but I must be pretty close.

So why I am breaking a promise and why am I being so flippant about it? Well first of all if the choice was strictly between skating on a team with people I hardly know or skating with my friends at TISC it is hardly a tough call, if skate with my fellow TISCers I know it will be more fun and an awful lot less awkward. But that is not the main reason I will not race with the Skate Log bunch. Let me rewind a bit and go back to July of this summer just past.

At Montreal in the 24 hour marathon this past July something rather mind boggling took place, the Toronto Inline Speed Club’s Eric Gee (coach, boot maker extraordinaire, web master and Blogger on EGCSkates, see the Blog Roll on the right) skated for 24 hours with almost no interruption. Periodically members of the Toronto Rec team the T’Recs brought necessities of life, energy drinks, gel packs, to Eric to sustain and I think four times over the 24 hour period Eric stopped for scheduled washroom and foot resting breaks of 20 minute durations. (Eric if you read this and I got it wrong please let me know.) The fact that Eric had spent months training at Rondo Park in preparation for this event made Eric’s first place finish, 103 laps or about 460 km, in 24 hours inevitable. But that day, well alright the second day, when Eric’s name was announced as the winner in the solo category, we at TISC were all very proud and delighted by Eric’s well earned victory.

Its difficult to put words to feelings sometimes, but even now, more than four months after that race I think the best description I can give for my own feelings were one of victory. My own team (Canadian Racing And Performance) did… well alright by the standards I had for myself at the time. But Eric’s first place, that was something in some small way we all tried to share in. For myself, I played a minor roll, the one lap I got to pull Eric and Candy (see Dream Chaser on Wheels) as Candy supplied Eric with gel packs.

There were other soloists too though and not to diminish what they did, but none of them came first. One thing I clearly remember though, was during the night members of our, Canadian Racing And Performance, team pulled Lawrence ‘More Cowbell’ Pelo for almost two hours.

In the days that followed the 24 hour, members of the Skate Log forum congratulated Lawrence as a conquering hero. You can see the results here, Lawrence did finish, a full 3 laps, almost 15 km behind Eric. But when someone, who I will not name, told Lawrence (this is not a direct quote since I don’t want to embarrass anyone) ‘I heard that the people from Canada pulled Eric all the time so he had an unfair advantage over you.’ Well that really angered me. The person who made that remark was not in Montreal and excuse me, but last I checked the name Canadian Racing And Performance was an accurate descritipion of the citizenship of the people who pulled Lawrence for two hours in the rain. (Six of us were from the Toronto area and four of us were from Montreal/Ottawa.)

It finally got to me, Eric won, it was a clean race, there was no cheating or even accusations of cheating that I am aware of. Yet some of the people at Skate Log had to trash Eric’s victory to enlarge something they were not even a part of?

Perhaps I am being petty and small, but frankly I do not care. Eric won, it was a good, clean, hard earned, win and when someone comes along as says ‘oh he had an unfair advantage’, well that’s just not right and I won’t be a part of any of that.

I will be going to Montreal in 2008 for the 24 hour marathon, but I will be wearing the blue, orange and black of the Toronto Inline club. Not the Skate Log colours as I had previously promised. And you know what? If that makes me a liar that is just too damn bad.

I ought to buy a pair of ice skates

So its raining, or snowing, or hailing, or well uhm, basically some sort of water in a state somewhere between liquid and solid is falling from the sky and making the weather some state of miserable.

Obviously I will not be hitting the trail this afternoon. It is rather ironic, here I am in Canada, fourth, (or was it fifth generation?) Canadian. Should have been born with skates on and guess what I do not have. Used to borrow dad's skates for those few laps round the rink. But since I have fallen so madly in love with skating again why is it I don't have a pair of blades?

Well to be fair, look at what my options in the sporting goods stores are: hockey, more hockey and yet still more hockey skates. Fila makes a beautiful boot, but it's a 195mm mounting, to my knowledge most speed blades are 165mm, unless you want long track and as Eric Gee (see EGCSkates.com on the right) has pointed out, there are no long tracks in Ontario.

Actually there are some really nice looking short track boots out there, but my big concern is how well will they fit. In addition, ice season is only four months long, if I can only attach a short track blade (or frame) to this boot I can not get much use out of it come warmer weather.

To top it off, yesterday I spoke with my mechanic, the car itself is fine right now, but it is time for the timing belt change. I literally felt like someone gave me a good punch to the stomach when I heard how much it would cost. I know, I should have been prepared, I already knew the timing belt was about due for a change, but still, its just a freakin belt, why is it so hard to change? Its not like timing belts are a fancy new technology, according to Wikipedia, timing belts have been around since the end of World War II.

Ever get the feeling that some people around you are callous and cruel and don't care how much they impose on you? I won't give names or places, but I just encountered such a person, its remarkable how much one such person can ruin an entire day.

A frustrating day

Warning: This post is nothing but a huge rant against Bell Communications Enterprises. If you or someone you like works for Bell... WTF!! you like someone who works for Bell? (!) What the hell is the matter with you, go piss off, and tell the Bell employee to drown in a vat of untreated pig sewage!

I have a confession to make. I used to think Bell Canada was a reasonably well run organization. Their customer relations skills were appalling, their account management was dreadful, but once you got your particular needs satisfied at least they had good availability figures. Well they are still reasonably good at the availability game, but their customer skills are so incredibly bad I cannot stand that evil EVIL company. There are good and decent people in Montreal but if that entire island sunk under a swamp of raw sewage the employees of Bell Canada would at least get exactly what they deserve!

My manager and I were supposed to have a white boarding session with Bell on Monday, so a day I had booked off a month ago as a vacation day, I came into work on. Bell rescheduled for Tuesday, I had to take Tuesday off, had to get the car in for repairs and wanted to go skating after. But I planned to come into work for a couple hours for the white boarding, it had to be rescheduled, again, to today. Guess what! The meeting, it's been rescheduled again. To me white boards are beginning to sound a lot like water boards. Good lord does Bell suck!

What else is there to say? Well I added a new Google Search bar at the top of the Blog, so now you don't have to mouse all the way to your Google Tool bar or worse, actually go to your home page, you can start your next search right from the comfort of my Blog! Aren't you lucky! This is all part of my new "customer focus imitative" the idea here is I am going to be exactly what Bell is not, expect the new Michael Cole branded cell phones just as soon as I can figure out how to provide service in obscure locations, like oh... downtown Toronto! Oh yes, and high speed Internet access where anything under 5Mbps down and 1Mbps up is considered sub SLA... and that's another thing, I'll have an SLA! How many retail ISPs/Telcos even use the acronym SLA in their 'customer agreement'?

For anyone out there who does not know, an SLA is a Service Level Agreement, it basically binds the vendor to a minimum service level. For example suppose I loose my Bell ExpressVu television signal. If I don't have signal back within x hours of initiating a call to Bell they have to refund so much money to me, except I am pretty sure ExpressVu does not have an SLA, so no money for me! Oooh and another thing, Michael Cole, the anti-Bell provider will not have telephone customer queues exceeding 600 seconds, that's ten whole entire minutes. That's right kids, if you have to stay on hold waiting for one of my customer service reps for more than 10 minutes we send our manager of customer relations to your home and you get to give him (or her?) a good swift kick in the ass! We'll even send them over with a release wavier that reads "I (customer relations manager) am permitting (customer name) to kick me once in the rear end as hard as they can with one of their, left or right, feet." I think I should probably provide exemptions for steel toed shoes eh? (Hmmm, maybe those are permitted for more than 3600 seconds, 1 hour, on hold.)

Sigh. I should go into the ISP/Telco/TV Cable business, I'd win over 10 million customers in 10 minutes. (Americans would be jealous of us for a change.)

For those of you snickering saying "I have Rogers." Stop snickering, saying you use Rogers is not bragging, its an embarrassing confession, Rogers is only there to make Bell look good. I've been on hold with Bell once for more than 1 hour, when I worked for a company that used Rogers wireless, I recall every single phone call required being on hold for at least an hour before I actually got the under-qualified customer service representative.

Surprisingly, I feel a lot better having made that little rant. Maybe tomorrow I will start a bitch feast on our National Airline, or maybe our useless "new" government in Ottawa. Heck maybe a big whine about how useless the entire Federal Government actually is. (For all you Americans, our system is pretty simple, the Feds defer all important issues, health care, education, roads, food safety, to the provinces leaving the feds with lots of money and not much to do. Its not like your system where the Feds were good, then you elected the Bush theocracy and now your whole country has gone to pot... that was really smart, why did you guys vote for him anyway? Oh yeah, that's right, you didn't elect him, the supreme's did in 2000 and Diebold did in 2004. Clever little son-of-a-Bush.)

Sorry I cannot talk about skating today, I won't be going to Scooters tonight and its raining. But if there is some technical aspect of skating, like how to clean skates or something similar that someone wants me to discuss please post in the comment section below.

Tuesday, reprise

Since I've got some free time I'll post again. First I wanted to point out I wrote an entry on how to look after skate bearings and bike gears. (In the hope that this would be interesting and maybe informative to all the skaters and cyclists I am friends with.) Naturally this discussion mentioned Petro-chemical distillates. So now of the four Google ads, three refer to the black dino juice in the ground. (Speaking of which, ever notice you change the word Freedom to Liberation in Operation Iraqi Freedom and you have the true reason for the Bush administration's misadventure in Iraq?)

Anyway enough of that! I went skating today! Outside! It was wonderful, except for the part where my time positively STUNK. I maxed out at 34km/h with a light wind, what the $#*@ is wrong with me? Is it the cold? Is it the sweat pants? Am I still recovering from Scooters? Is my GPS busted (the heart rate monitor was not working). There was a head wind, but it was not that bad. I wonder why I did so badly.

I noticed that I am on Eric Gee's (see EGCSkates.com on the right) blog roll. Thanks coach! I should start some sort of incentive program, list me in your blog you get a cookie, list me in the blog roll... hmm, Chocolate Milk? Maybe the next survey topic can be what rewards I should give. On second thought this whole paragraph is an example of a really bad idea.

Time to do some push-ups and drink my milk. Maybe tomorrow I can discuss the relative merits using an elliptical machine instead of skating, there has to be some merit in it somewhere... isn't there?

On bearing cleaning

Last night at Scooters was, for me, a disaster. I don't know if its the fear of the tight formations, fatigue, or a lack of endurance, (I have good sprinting abilities but cannot sustain speed for more than ten or twenty laps) but I just could not stay in formation. After practice Scott Pauly (to my knowledge no blog or website) suggested that I should try to keep my feet closer together around the corners. Something to think about for me.

Anyway I'd like to spend today's post discussing something that ought to be important to cyclists and skaters. How to look after your metal parts.

To start with there seems to be some ambiguity as to what causes rust. Steel, which bearings, bike chains and many other moving parts are almost always made from is almost entirely Iron. In fact according to the Wikipedia article steel is roughly 1-3% carbon and the rest is almost purely Iron. Now recall from high school chemistry what happens when Iron with a low electonegativity is exposed to Oxygen in the air, which is second only to Fluorine in a list of elements with high electonegativity. The Oxygen combines with the Iron and moisture and creates Iron Oxide, or rust. Why doesn't steel rust when simply left in the open air? Not enough water, rust is actually Iron, Oxygen and Hydrogen, you get the Hydrogen from water in the form of a Hydroxide. Remove water or oxygen and you get no rust. If you did underwater inline skating you would not need to worry about rust, just like skating in dry weather.

So how to take care of bearings? Hose 'em down with WD-40 and forget about them? Absolutely NOT! Although WD-40 is composed of Napthas and other solvents WD-40 is very adhesive and as such is the dictionary definition of a bad lubricant. (Might as well just squirt some loctite in and wait for the bearings to seize right up.) The WD-40 will displace the water, that's what it stands for, Water Displacement 40'th try, but it is sticky. Dirt will get in the bearings and instead of being displaced by the lubricant will instead just sit between the balls and the races gradually wearing the balls down, and since the balls and races are being roughed up there will be more room for the sticky nature of WD-40 to really manifest itself.

Bearings should be cleaned by something that is not water based, I like Napthas in the form of paint thinners, but these are toxic, other options include Isopropyl Alcohol in a 99% solution. In a crunch citrus cleaners are an option, but too many manufacturers dilute their product with too much water. Yet another option is combinations, paint thinner that is reused with each cleaning can get rid of the dirt and old lubricant, then a bath in clean Isopropyl Alcohol to displace the paint thinner and remove any remaining dirt works very effectively.

Once the dirt has been displaced a lubricant is required, very light oil works, or white lithium grease. Grease needs to be broken in over a period of about 100km for skaters but will require about a tenth the maintenance of oil. In theory oil will give a better skate than greased bearings, although I have never seen a statically valid study to justify that belief. Cyclists should go to a good bike shop to find out the scoop, but I believe gears are generally packed with lithium grease, chains get oil. Use of WD-40 is, obviously, not recommended. In fact if you use WD-40 you probably shouldn't tell anyone, hide the fact and your face in shame!

In the event of a rainy race WD-40 can make sense, spray the outside of the bearings prior to the race, this will displace the water while racing. Once the race is over get the bearings in to a sealed plastic bottle topped with some fluid, water is fine. The main thing is keep the bearings away from Oxygen until you can get them into a bath of Naptha or Alcohol. The solvents will displace the water, then after removing the steel from the solvents the oxygen will have no water to react with.

Another important thing for racing in the rain, make sure you have good rain wheels, but wheels are a discussion for another day.

On silly Google Ads and Michael's Philosophy on Women

Okay, so yesterday I post on Slideboards and the Beatles, what does Google say? "Small cap stock picks" you want my advice on investing? Don't, I bought Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq SunW, then Java, now JAVAD) in 1999 for about $100/share, its now trading at about $20/share. Question, why spend so much effort coming up with new ticker symbols, wouldn't coming up with, oh new technology make more money? (Just a random thought.)

At least today's ad has the word inline in it, "Process InLine Viscometer", what the *#@!

On the advice/request of a friend of mine today's topic is on women. Namely my philosophy, which can be summarized in six words, "they must always win, you loose". There is an old joke email, its been floating around since the dawn of SMTP the email gives rules, the rules are as follows: (note, they are all numbered zero, I have omitted the zeros but basically consider all rules as most important).

• She is always right.
• In the highly unlikely event that you are right see above. (I can hear my wife nodding in agreement to that one.)
• What's yours is hers and is hers is also hers.
• You are a man, therefore: you are wrong and you will never understand.
• You are wrong even when you agree with her, but she is still right.

Feeling confused? Relax that feeling does not go away, you might as well get used to it.

Actually I have to confess I have a big advantage over a lot of guys, I cannot stand watching sporting events on TV, except for speed skating, that I'll watch, everything else is boring. So I've got a big leg up on most you guys.

Here are some other useful tips, this is more of a guy to guy thing, not so much an order, aka a girl to guy thing:

1. If its your first, she will dump you. Its actually remarkable you were together long enough to read this sentence before she riped your heart out and stomped on it with those pointy healed shoes they wear.
2. Its alright if they are cruel and callous towards you, but if you get them upset... well I hope you dug a nice deep bomb shelter, you are going to need it. (And people thought the cold war was a waste!)
3. Marriage is the most effective prophylactic since the invention of sexual reproduction. If you are married and you define foreplay as two hours of begging you are just the lucky dog, I'm up to two weeks myself.
4. I had a girlfriend who dumped me by email, it went something like this: "I realised last Saturday night that we were two totally different people on two totally different Worlds. Don't ever write me again. Have a nice life." Apparently that is an acceptable thing to do. Another did it by phone: She said: "I met a guy." He said:"And you like him more than me." She said: "Yes, how did you know?" He said: "You were pretty obvious towards the end." Apparently that too is alright.

Anyway as I write this, its not to suggest love is impossible, although I imagine some of you might suspect it is now. (Hey I still love my wife, none of these rules are based on experiences with her, except for rule #3.) Rather I am simply saying there is a gender gap, a gap in understanding if you will. I honestly believe that guys are more fragile, emotionally speaking, than women are. So be forewarned, but also, be kind. There is nothing worse then watching your girl friend cry and realizing its all your fault you big asshole! Mind you if you are thinking that when she cries you can at least take comfort from the fact that you have learned the rules and are ready to progress to the next state of not-understanding women.

Tomorrow I will write on proper bearing maintenance technique, based on extensive experimental and authoritative research. (I even went to a machine shop and spoke at length with a for-real expert, not just something I read on the Internet... of course you will have read it on the Internet which I guess kind of blows the authoritative data out the window.)

On slide boards

Last night Kevin (see Finding the Dream at right) and I had dinner. Today we were supposed to make slide boards with Eric (see EGCSkates.com on the right). But Kevin could not wake up early enough for skate practice and we were supposed to meet Eric (who lives not far from where we practice). I had to cancel our plans with Eric, it turns out I should have canceled my practice at Scooters too.

I did not do so well at Scooters. Making tight turns with people not ten centimetres away scared the piss out of me. It should not have, but I have a good excuse, I was tired. I am also used to trail skating in nice wide trails with lots of room to screw up and still recover before hitting the grass. Still I believe I have to get over this fear of collisions if I am going to make any real progress. After practice we did dry land training and again I did not have my heart in it, I needed more sleep.

Coach Double-A (see aaronarndt.ca by Aaron Richard Arndt on the right) told me something interesting, using a slide board will promote use of inside edges (which is what happens when you pronate - bad, pronation is when the blades or wheels splay away from the skater's centre of gravity.) It was Double-A's opinion, at least my impression of his opinion that at this stage I should avoid slide boards. Oh well, its probably for the best since I've already blown over $100 on a new TISC skin suit.

In other news, in honour of my recent viewing of the movie Across the Universe I started the rather monstrous job of ripping all my Beatles Albums into MP3 at 192 kbps samples. (See my November 3 blog post On The Beatles and the MGT.) Apparently Kilu the cat doesn't much care for the Revolver Album he's been crying right from Taxman through to Tomorrow Never Knows, this is shocking stuff for me, because and here I agree with Wikipedia's authors, "Revolver is often cited as one of the greatest albums in rock music history." What can I say? My cat's nuts! (Mind you he seems to be okay with Sgt. Pepper's.)

In other unrelated news, today, after dry land skate training I went to the new house. The dry walling is completed. The place is going to be specular, but for the fact that those damned evil Porter Airline flights (see my other posting from November 3, The Problem with the Globe and Mail) are still only a few hundred feet up by the time they reach my home. I cannot believe how far I am going to move and I still have to contend with BS from that hoax of an airline.

I was going to include a photo of the new place but most of the pictures were taken with my old 35mm camera and I cannot be bothered to setup my scanner. But all the TISCers who come out for the Halloween skate next year can stop by and see it then, Peter bring your camera please.

Its funny here I am talking about my new home and what am I listening to?

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in,

Stops my mind from wandering, where it will go.

I'm filling a crack that ran through the door...

Course it turns out, according to some, that that song is actually a reference to pot, or heroin consumption. To me that song is all about a home owners worst nightmares, well in my case my home is steel framing so I don't have to worry about any songs that involve termites.

On skating in the cold

Having made two posts on the fact that The World is frantically running out of oil what does Google do? They post an add for jobs in the oil patch, sigh. Anyway I dug up another piece of Tom's art, I am going to include it and then discuss inline skating in the cold.

Before I discuss cold weather skating I better explain the picture. A variable in computing can only take up so much space. For example in the C programming language an unsigned short integer can only take integer values between 0 and 65,535, if for example we had an unsigned short called x and it had a value of 65,500 and we added 36 we would have a variable overflow error, if we then output the value of x instead of getting 65,536 we would get 1.

Anyway enough on computing.

So this afternoon I went skating and ran into Mike Lin (to my knowledge no blog or web site). Curiously although there was less wind today than yesterday my top speed today was considerably slower (about 10km/h slower) than yesterday. As well, I stayed closer to my bottom speed then top speed for most of the skate, yesterday I stayed almost right in the middle, yet I only skated 5 km further today than yesterday, total distance today, 26km, yesterday, 21 km. Yesterday I did wear tights, today I wore sweat pants, who would have thought that sweat pants would make such a difference?

It has been bitterly cold lately. I wonder if that is a factor.

I know in Duluth during the North Shore Inline Marathon, the cold got to me. My lungs filled with phlegm and my back was in nine kinds of pain, still it was a wonderful feeling, getting a reasonable time, not the back pain.

On an unrelated aside, I just went to the NSIM website, for the link and noticed a TISC skin suit, Mike Lin is right, if you want to stand out in a photo make sure to wear your TISC colours.

Another aside, I had to Google North Shore Inline Marathon, its not like I type that URL every day, one of the first hits, after the official web site is a You-tube video that was put together by none other than Peter Doucet of Speed Skate World (see the Blog Roll on the right). When it comes to inline skating it seems either Peter, Morgan or Herb have to be involved, no matter if its just a casual photo or its a race to the finish. Okay from time to time double-A (see aaronarndt.ca by Aaron Richard Arndt) kicks in A2A or the time Jesse Pauly did the most amazing hawk I ever saw to get second place in the Mississauga Criterium... alright but it seems to me that someone from the Toronto club just has to be in every single photo or photo finish, or You-tube video of a North American inline event. So to keep a good tradition, this is a warmer weather photo with a bunch of people you wouldn't want to meet in the dark, or buy a used car from.
From left to right, Morgan Williams, Mike Lin, Myself (idiot with the whistle... actually on the trail not such a dumb thing to have), Herb Gail.

Anyway I was going to talk about how to dress for the cold weather and still enjoy a nice trail skate, but the fact is, I really have no idea. Every time I try a different permutation and the best I can come up with is really tight fitting clothing seems to trap heat better than loose stuff. Beyond that I don't know what to suggest. But it is really really cold and I wish it were April, I want warm dammit! I like warm weather.

Oh incidentally, for all you TISCers, Lowblaws has a sale on, Chocolate Milk is still $6 ($1.50 off regular price until the end of November). And register now for the NSIM is only $55... I will once my wife gets back from China, have to get permission first.

In which I stroke Peter Doucet's blog and on Tomas Benda

Alright enough ranting about the imminent EOTWAWKI (End Of The World As We Know It). I'd like to talk about a discovery I just made.

I was working with a vendor's SE (Sales Engineer) on a product that really is not ready for prime time (this is the project that has eaten up my entire life for the past week, hence not ready for prime time). Anyway the vendor was trying to trouble shoot a problem and while doing that I had the rare opportunity to sit at my desk and twiddle my thumbs. So I got a chance to catch up on some of my reading. I am listed yet again on the Blog of one of the fastest inline skaters in Canada. Specifically, on Speed Skate World (see the Blog Roll on the right) on Tuesday November 13, Peter wrote: "I thought that the reaction to being linked up to Speed Skate World [in Skater Dreams] was pretty cool..." Well I think this reference is pretty... recursive? No,... more loopish.

When I was an undergrad I had a friend who had a little too much fun making fun of math (recall I have a B. Math from Waterloooooo.) Anyway one line he had was, "definition of loop: see loop". He drew some pretty impressive covers of mathNEWS too, I'm gonna include them because my blog is missing something, specifically art work!



Here Tomas explains the difference between various OSs, ironically, Solaris or SunOS is notoriously slow, Slowaris I've heard it called. Slowaris used to run on ultra fast systems so it actually seemed pretty good. Though not so much any more, now it runs on Intel mostly.

The Traveling Sales man problem is an example of a problem of NP completeness. You have to find the shortest path between n cities starting from any random city and ending there. It turns out that although only slightly different from a depth or breadth first search, just a slight change, random selection of a starting point and touring in a non-recursive manner, makes this problem much harder. Except we cannot prove how hard we think it is! Don't understand, don't worry, just kill the sales man, preferably with a really big gun.

Descartes was the name given to an old Sparc Server, running SunOS, of course! We, Tom and I, loved it because it had such a low CPU load. Descartes had a low load because none of the other undergrads used it, it was an old slow clunker and not up to the Y2K roll-over, Descartes was retired in the summer of 1999.

Tom drew that last one during a bunch of Math 235 classes, for the life of me I cannot remember the name of the professor. The professor was a nice guy though, just not very organized, made boring material (linear algebra II) even worse, but if you appealed a grade on a paper you could watch you mark go from the low sixties to the high seventies. Tom hated that class, by then I think Tom hated university, well we all did, its a love hate relationship, we love it and pine for it after we graduate but hate it when we are there toiling over assignments.

The Math and Computer building was built in 1968 and looks like a massive hulking... tomb, it cost the tax payers of Ontario $7 million dollars to build, the IBM mainframe it used to warehouse cost $8 million dollars, by 1999 that mainframe, long since obsoleted had been replaced a number of times and finally even the data centre (known as the red room), the system was warehoused in, was replaced with more lecture space. The new data centre took up something like an eighth the space. The math building remains an ugly blight on a horrific campus (collection) of appalling architecture. If you want to see megalomania run amok go to Waterloo and ask for the MC building.

More on oil.

So last night I did not actually leave the office until almost 6pm, much later than I planned, too much work to do. So I had to skip reading Fast Food Nation. But at least I did my exercises, so I don't feel too bad about things right now. Tonight I expect to be working until Midnight, possibly later, so I don't imagine I'm gonna feel so swell tomorrow morning. But at least this monster of a project is nearly done.

Anyway yesterday I discussed at a high level what is going on in Fort McMurry right now. (I should point out, that I went from saying a barrel of Fort McMurry tar costs about $32 and a barrel of synthetic crude costs $40, the reason for the delta? $8 per barrel to upgrade from tar to synthetic.

The reason I bring up Fort McMurry is that it is an outstanding example of what is wrong with the World today. At a rate of about one and one half million barrels of oil a day from North Alberta tar sands we are ripping up four thousand pounds (two thousand kilos) of Alberta tar sand and four hundred cubic feet (10.8 cubic metres) of natural gas per barrel. Multiplying the numbers, 1.5 million * 2 tons = 3 million tons of sand and 800 million cubic feet of natural gas, every single day are spent to make oil to drive just a small fraction of the World's economy.

Why do we as humans put out such a monster effort to tap Alberta tar? To be sure Alberta is much more politically stable and reliable than even parts of the United States. (Heck they've been electing "Progressive Conservatives" (note the change in font size) out there in Calagry since the days of Peter Lougheed was elected in '71. That surely beats trying not to get killed or nationalized pulling oil out of Iraq or Venezuela.

That said, would it not make more sense to consider alternatives to Oil? As I have hinted at, I am "thinking we're running out. We're running out and ninety percent of what's left is in the Middle East. So if you look at the whole progression from Versailles, through Suez, 1973, Gulf War One, Gulf War II, it's really shaping up as a fight to the death. So what they're thinking is keep playing, keep buying your toys, keep spending fifty thousand dollars a night for your hotel room, but don't invest in your infrastructure, don't build a real economy, so when you finally wake up, they will have sucked you dry and you will have squandered the greatest natural resource in history." From the script of Syriana.

Do I believe in peak oil? Of course I do, Oil is a non-renewable resource, we consume it, we burn it, we turn it into water bottles, we use it to heat our homes and light our lights. But there's only so much and when we have less oil coming out of the ground then we consume then what? When supply is exceeded by demand what will happen? Prices will rise, and as prices rise we adapt, but the supply keeps decreasing, will demand fall? Sure the economy will slow because of the high price of oil, and the slower the economy goes the less oil we will need, so the supply will last a little longer. But eventually all the oil will run out. Then where does the next fill up come from? The next water bottle? The next fertilizer and pesticide? The next food additive? The next Vitamin?

We've developed so many applications for hydro carbons I am not sure how well we will adapt to returning to living like it was 1800 all over again.

Anyway its something to think about.

Thoughts on Oil

So lets see, its noon and I have now put in more than 40 hours work this week at the office. Luckily for me me, today I get to leave at a civilized hour, so my plan tonight is to go home, clean the house, use the Elliptical machine for a little while, then make a nice dinner and shower, read Fast Food Nation some more and go to bed early. Doesn't that sound like a great plan?

Anyway this morning I was reading in the Globe and Mail that the Saudi's think oil is too expensive. Well of course they do, at $100/barrel the World, specifically the American's are going to start taking a serious look at energy alternatives to Al Queda. I have to ask, how do you fight a "war on terror", probably better labelled as a 'war on innocent Iraqi bystander's' while you are paying for the bullets and Improvised Explosive Devices used by the 'insurgents' every time you put gas in the Hummer? But I digress, the truth of the matter is, Canada, not the Saudi Arabia is the United State's biggest smack dealer, don't believe, click the link, it's to the Energy Information Administration, Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government. Truth is, if we Canadians really wanted to help our smack junkie neighbours (and ourselves for that matter) we'd probably jack up the royalties in Alberta tar sands, then again the Government of Alberta did just that, good for them!

Lets get a little refresher on the tar sands, it is estimated that there is between 1,700 and 2,500 Billion (yes with a B) barrels of oil under the Alberta muskeg. Alberta oil producers believe they can produce 3 million barrels of oil a day by 2015, this represents, roughly 30% of total US oil imports for September 2007. Incidentally I recall from a late 90's issue of Scientific American that total conventional oil was estimated at about 2,000 billion barrels, of which we had consumed (between 1850 and 2000) about 800 billion barrels, thanks to rising demand and decreasing supply though (Hubbert Peak) we would see a steady rise in price and decline in availability starting sometime between 2000 and 2010. The Alberta muskeg just doubled the total oil on Earth.

Well lets for a moment talk nuts and bolts, to get oil from the sand you do a multi step process:

1. You clear away all the swamp, muskeg and other petty wild life, like trees wolves, deer etc from real estate just north of Fort McMurry.
2. You use HUGE machines to lift the tar sand that was under the trees and muskeg from the ground and load it on some of the largest trucks in the World. As a rule of thumb on the oil patch, you need about two tons of tar sand to make one barrel of oil.
3. You pipe tons of water through burning natural gas to make steam, you blow the steam at the tar sand and the sand precipitates out of the tar. Another rule of thumb, you need about 400 cubic feet of natural gas to separate enough tar to make a barrel of oil, 400 cubic feet of Natural Gas is enough gas to heat a reasonably large home for two days in the dead of winter.
4. You take the tar, which typically costs about $32 per barrel once you have paid off the cost of all your facilities, and you upgrade or crack the tar molecules into little molecules of synthetic crude oil.
5. You sell your synthetic crude oil, as long as you get $40 a barrel or more you've made money. (After recovering cost of multi-billion dollar facility.)
6. You repeat this process something like 300 thousand to 3 million times per day.

And to think, some Canadian's think most green house gases come from Ontario! Actually the part I really like from that article: Surprisingly, very few placed major responsibility on wasteful consumers (5 per cent), rich people (4 per cent), those who drive SUVs or other big cars (3 per cent) or live in Alberta (1 per cent). Well I don't have a problem with rich people or people who live in Alberta, but really was the Toyota FJ Cruiser really the most sensible vehicle available?

On big wheels

Periodically I like to inspect the ads that Google throws up on my site. Technically its a violation of the terms of service, but I think in this case it's alright. You see I'm not supposed to go visit the ads with the intention of driving up the hit count and thus the money Google pays me, rather once every few days I just like to make sure the ads are topical, that is to say I want to ensure the ads relate to my web site in some way.

Anyway there was (is?) a recent ad on my site for cheap skates (or something to that effect) you go to the site and it turns out to be, Shopzilla. Now I've gotta rant for a second, if I want a search engine, I use Google. What the hell good is a search engine of a search engine. Is this some sort of new distributed recursive programming? Guys, DNS is a good example of distributed systems doing something recursively, Shopzilla is just annoying. Then again Spam is annoying but since somebody out there makes money on it, our inboxes just fill with crap for Viagra or Cialias. (I wonder how the makers of those drugs feel knowing so much spam out there is just selling knock offs of their product?)

Anyway I noticed a link to Skatebuys, a web retailer - of less that outstanding quality - of all things skatish. (Hint, a better designed better priced site would have to be inlinewarehouse for a major online store to carry Luigino is pretty impressive. Although I have found the best places for speed skates are the Mom & Pop shops.) But back on the Skatebuys website I noticed a number of what looked like 3 wheel speed skates. I know there's been talk but I have not yet seen any evidence of commercially available 3 x 125mm wheels. I have to ask, does it make sense? At some point wheels size get too large, trust me I've learned this the hard way. I'm not saying I regret for one second my 4 x 110mm setup, I'm just saying that at indoors and on the track I have to go 4x100 or smaller. 4 x 110 is great on a level trail when you go in a nice straight line, but I get my rear-end seriously whumped every time there's a tight turn or a hint of an up hill. Now I'm sure as I improve the hills and turns will not be such a big barrier, but even so, does 3 x 125 make sense? Somehow I don't really think so, I think there is some bio-mechanical limit and we may already be close? But then again I wonder what people said when Eddy Matzger first appeared stage right with 100mm wheels?

Yet another long day.

Please remember that about a month ago I booked today off as a vacation day. So naturally at 8am I was in the office working. It is now 10:00pm and guess where I still am? I have not left my desk, except for three trips to the washroom, one to the water cooler and one downstairs to Quiznos for dinner (take out, ate at my desk). Of course my bagged lunch was eaten at my desk. So count 'em that's five times away from my desk in 14 hours. I think my employer is getting their money's worth today, even if I take 5 minutes to make a pathetic blog entry. Pathetic? Well of course, I have literally no events that I can write about today, unless I discuss my job which would be inappropriate, for me. I have decided to keep my career and my blog separate. Unless of course I win the lottery and become a proprietor of an inline skate shop in Toronto... if I won the lottery I think that shop would belong in Cancun, or maybe... hmm, Hawaii?

Tomorrow I will be going back to work, probably arrive around 9am and hopefully leave a little closer to 4 or 5pm. But don't hold your breath! I miss being a contractor, between working from 7:30am and 6pm Friday, 12:30 to 5:30 Saturday and 8am to ??pm Monday I'd be rolling in it. Oh well!

Apparently the US dollar is rising against the Canadian dollar. But we're still more valuable! (Actually according to the economists the Canadian dollar should only equal $0.98 US, then again economist is a fancy word for overpaid professional gambler. Sorry guys but it is true to an extent trying to predict the stock market over the short term is lunacy and over the long is depressingly simple, the rich get richer and the poor, well they work at McDoos.)

Its been a long day...

This morning started at 5:40 am when I woke up and found my right arm asleep, I had cut off circulation, probably by resting my head on my arm and ended needing to use the left arm to lift the right one up and away from my body to restore circulation. My dad later told me that happens a lot as you get older. (You can insert crying noises here.)

At 6:25 the *&#!ing alarm clock did its thing and I headed off to Scooters. (No need for the snooze button today, I hardly dozed off between dragging my arm up and the alarm clock.)

Scooters was tough but good, I managed to pretty much do all the drills without breaking from the pack and after, under the guidance of coach Aaron Arndt, I did some pretty hard "dry land" training - exercises that use skate muscles, without skates on. After practice before dry land, or possibly after dry land, don't remember which, Munro Foster (no blog that I am aware of?) told me he had read some of my blog and enjoyed it. (*blush* Thanks Munro, is there any changes you would like, feel free to put a comment at the end of this post, or any other post.)

After Scooters I went home and Kevin (see Finding the dream over on the right) came by. We spent the afternoon cleaning bearings and watching Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Kevin got a good laugh at that movie. I, having just looked it up on the IMDB for the purpose of the link above, am delighted to discover a new H&K movie is coming out in February 2008, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. So an entirely productive afternoon, Kevin also taught me how to get the ceramic balls inside a caged ball bearing. (A useful skill for the inline skater).

I would like to insert a political rant, I haven't gone off on some long winded diatribe lately. (Believe me I could, I certainly have not stopped reading the Globe & Mail, despite their idiotic editorials.) But I am very tired and have had long day of skating, exercising and laughing. Also Kilu is demanding my attention.

Here is Kilu, he is very demanding sometimes.

Look how great I am...

So here is a summary of a Saturday.

• 9am, alarm clock, hit snooze
• 9:06 alarm clock, drag rear end out of bed, slowly whilst hitting snooze again
• 9:12 alarm clock, turn off #&@! clock and read book (Fast Food Nation). Discover book is one third end notes. Get disgusted that 1/3 of what I paid for was freakin references that I'll never inspect.
• 10am go grocery shopping
• 11:30 skate MGT, run into Mike Lin (don't think he has a blog) turn around early and head home, so that I can...
• 12:40 go to work! (*sob*)
• 4:00 meet Kevin at my office, I'm still working
• 5:30 finish work, Kevin shows me, on Peter's Blog (Speed Skate World on the right) there is a reference to Skater Dreams (See the Monday November 5, '07 entry on Speed Skate World). Yippeeeee! I'm on Speed Skate World. (I guess I'll have something to brag about when I get into the right hand column on Peter's blog.)
• 6 go to Dinner with Kevin
• 7:30 walk home, do laundry get ready for scooters and early to bed.

I would like to stress that today is Saturday, and look what I did at 12:40 this afternoon. If anyone ever tells me they want to work in IT, I am gonna bitch slap them back to the Tong (Tung?) Dynasty! (Alright if they want to go into programming, maybe just the Southern Song Dynasty.)

See I just had to brag about my knowledge of Chinese Dynasties, on the other hand my dearest wifey, who is now in Hangzhou is related, on her mother's side to a great Prime Minister of the Tung? (Or was it Song?) Dynasty. So I'm entitled to brag. (Alright you can roll your eyes now.)

Tomorrow, an explanation of how my great great grandfather was court tailor to Queen Victoria. (It's true, my father's father's father's father, was one of the many court tailors. But then I'm Jewish and here's a big secret about Jews, we don't do banking, and we're lousy with money, but we sure know our clothing, its hardly a coincidence that the maker of the first great sewing machine, Singer, was a good boy who always ate his corned beef. And the inventor of jeans, Levis & Strauss, more good tribes men, Salk and Einstein were aberrations, they must have been adopted. And look at where the "fashion district" is, where ever the Jews settled.)

Over worked

I would like to give a long and detailed review of the day's events, but that revolved almost entirely around work, which I have long ago discovered does not mix well with personal life. Suffice it to say I was horribly busy at the office today. And its not over. Tomorrow, Saturday, I have to go back to work.

Jacky (see Passion on Wheels on the right) told me I should go to Scooters on Wednesday night, frankly the very thought of it makes me fatigued. He also invited me to his place for a house warming at the end of November. I was interested but the day of his house warming is the day the project I am at work on must be completed. I better not commit to anything. (I was supposed to take Monday off as a vacation day that I booked over a month ago, had to put that off, I have no idea when I'll get a vacation day, probably December.)

Yum Yum, it pays the bills and drains your life, but it will all be worth it - if I ever take a job at NASA - damn shame, they only hire Americans. I like the weather in Houston and they have an inline marathon there in late October, what wonderful temperatures they must have in Texas. Sigh.

Google Ads and the early skating years

I've been terribly busy at work and haven't had time today to make my little lunch time journal entry. But one thing I had to comment on, Google Advertises on my site, hey if it'll pay for a hot dog down at city hall it's all good. Anyway seeing as I keep referring to skating today's Google ad mentions the Therma Blade. I'm inline speed, not inline hockey, but I'd like to try inline ice one day, mostly because there are lots of rinks in the city but not many indoor tracks.

A self heating skate blade? That sounds like a really dumb idea to me. Maybe for hockey players who need to turn on a dime and don't have to go very far the issues are different but as far as I can tell, wouldn't ice speed skaters want about the coldest blade possible to ensure minimal friction between the ice and their skate?

Anyway its a curious concept but not one I particularly go for. Personally the big recent revolution in skating technology had to be the MPC Storm Surge, MPC Street Fighter Gold wheels, and in the dry weather the Matter Juice wheels. Give me Juice or give me rain!

On an unrelated note, I was going to post pictures of my cats. (I'd post pictures of my wife, but she has to be home for me to take pictures of her.) Instead, in honour of the HBO T.V. mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon which I am watching a replay of as I type this, I'd like to devote this post to my first pair of inlines. Mostly because... well I'm inspired to do so, don't ask me to explain my thought processes, it can be pretty ugly.

In the summer of 1991 the day I came back from summer camp my parents took me first to Sporting Life, back in those days they did not have any franchise, then to see The Rocketeer. I remember being jealous of the hero, he had a rocket pack, but then I would remember, but I have brand new Rollerblades in my parents car! They were Lightnings with probably 76mm (maybe 80mm) wheels that were solid purple urethane. I remember the first time I put them on I didn't realise that unlike ice skating, inline skating really required the ability to stop. That took some getting used to. My very first crash was on Ava Road, just a few blocks from our home, on a hill, it was a good thing I was wearing wrist and knee pads.

I kept skating until, I think 1995. By that time I had switched from the Rollerblade Lightnings to a brand called Oxygen, they were green and I still think they were ugly. (I actually just found a pair on sale on eBay.) I decided that I could get to school faster on a bike then on skates and so I did not skate again until my wife saw a pair in a store in Shanghai in 2004 and decided I should buy them.

Since 2004 I have had the following skates:

1. Radius Sports (do not remember a model name) Radius is some small company in China, when last I checked, they had a web site and were resisted with a domain, but it was all blank. (Just checked, for the first time in three years, the web site is gone.)
2. Rollerblade Lightning 05s - could not find replacement brakes for the Radius Sports skates and was going through the original pads pretty fast, wanted K2 Mod 8.5s but it was too late in the season and they were all sold. Had to settle for Lightnings.
3. K2 Radical 100s, wanted big wheels, got big wheels, good for long distance, not so good for speed.
4. Rollerblade Promarathons, (had an accident, I was unhurt, but the skates were done in pretty bad)
5. Rollerblade Problades, my first racing skate, very fancy, too many bells and whistles.
6. My Custom Bont Vaypors. With three point frame mounting and 110mm wheels, I sure have come a long way from those first lightnings, 16 years ago.

Anyway Saturday late in the morning I am skating, its going to be cold, it might be windy but I don't care! I love the feeling of freedom I get on skates.