February 2010 Archives

I'm still not sure what I did or how I did it, but I managed to solve the problems I was having with my TV recognizing my newly acquired PS3, but it's working now. It's a serious relief because I didn't want to deal with getting my money back from the dude I bought it from (via craiglist)

I don't have any games yet, but I'm online and can stream Netflix movies. The first movie we watched was The Taking of Pelham 123. Not a great film, but entertaining enough. The selection on Netflix is on the small side, but growing.

The bluetooth DVD remote came in the mail today (via eBay), so I don't have to navigate DVD menus with the Sony game paddle, which is nice. I also picked up an HDMI cable (also via eBay) so I can connect at a better resolution.

I'm off to check out the PlayStation Network.

(Just after I got my console up and running, I saw this.)

My new favorite cooking show is Eric Ripert's Avec Eric. Ripert is the chef at Le Bernadin in NYC. His show is a combination travel log and cooking show. Typically, in the first half of the show, he travels to the culinary centers of the world, Tuscany, Provence and Northern California, for example. Then he returns to his kitchen filled with inspiration from his journey to create exquisitely simple dishes.

There are samples on You Tube, of course, but if you want to watch whole episodes they are available on the Avec Eric website.

Here he yukking it up with Jimmy Fallon:

Still not feeling great in this preseason. The bottom has just fallen out of my fitness. I struggled up Old Tunnel and Grizzly Peak. The views of SF were outstanding. Crystal clear with patches of blue sky peeking out from heavy cloud cover. Near the top of Grizzly Peak we cycled into heavy fog and it started raining. It wasn't heavy rain. It was what they call garoa in Brazil— very light rain, but it was enough to make the descent down through Tilden Park downright miserable. At the bottom of Wildcat Canyon I couldn't feel my face.

A few riders, Kyle and Kevin, headed north on the actual route, but the rest of the small remaining group headed south through Orinda. I planned to take BART back, but decided I needed miles so I pushed and returned via Pinehurst, my first ascent of the year. It felt pretty good, but I didn't push it hard. I was helped immensely by the cool weather. I blasted home down Shepherd Canyon, Montclair, Piedmont and Rockride. Felt great to be done and even better not to have to given up and settled for taking the train home.

Miles 42.23
Ride Time 3:15:19
MPH 13.0
Max Speed 41.5
Elevation Gain 3,682 ft
Flats 0

More detailed ride stats here:

• Garmin

Here's the route map:

You just have to love Ski Cross (aka skiercross or Skier-X). It's crazy. It's insane. It's wicked and wild and wooly and just so much fun to watch. I really don't know how these guys do it. It's the sport of tube-fed, genetically-modified (oft alcohol fueled) adrenalin junkies.

If you're not familiar with it, this is how it goes. Four skiers race simultaneously down a winding snake of a course filled with bumps, jumps, and steeply banked turns. Competitors are not supposed to push, shove, or elbow each other, but in a sport that's like roller derby down the bobsled run, you won't get penalized if you don't get caught.

Naturally, the risk is high and the crashes can be severe, but these guys are tough and probably little mental. American Daron Rahlves, previously an Olympian in the Apline events, crashed horribly just three weeks ago at the X-Games and dislocated his hip. But that didn't stop him from competing in Vancouver.

Skicross has long been a part of the Winter X Games but was added as a full-medal sport in the Olympic lineup for 2010 after it received recognition from the IOC. I highly recommend checking out the vids on the NBC website, if you didn't catch the broadcast.

*If you don't get this reference it probably mean you're weren't a male teen in the mid-80s. sorry

It's really beyond the pale how bad NBC is at covering Alpine Skiing at the Vancouver Olympics. The latest joke the Men's Giant Slalom. NBC only bothered to show 4 of the runs in the first round (each skier gets two runs): Carlo Janko, who finished in first, Aksel Lund Svindal, third, American Ted Ligety, in eigth place, and Bode Miller, who caught a tip and didn't finish. They failed to show Romeo Baumann, second, Massimiliano Blardone, fourth, Marcel Hirsher, fifth, Benjamin Raish, sixth, Cyprien Richard, seveth or any other skiers.

They showed all of three skiers on the second run. Three? Three is all we get? Bode crashed out so they didn't have to show him again, but why not show Ligety? Why not show the first run of the eventual silver medalist, Kjetil Jansrud of Norway? Other Americans? Anyone? Bueller? It's on tape delay, so they can program it anyway they want. They show qualifying for freestyle skiing, yet they won't show the meat and potatoes Alpine events. What gives?

They must really, really suck or not care.

I finally broke down and bought a PS3, only a few years after it came to market. Such an early adopter am I. I don't have any games. I don't even know if I'll buy any. I bought it for the Blu-Ray, as a media server (it has a 120GB hard drive) and to stream Netflix movies on my TV which is pretty cool.

However, I can't get the system to work. My TV won't recognize the console through the AV cables that come with the box. I searched the interwebs for a solution, but couldn't find any that worked, so I ordered an HDMI cable on eBay and I've got a call into Sony customer support, but it's really frustrating that it just isn't working. One of those two things better work.

Since NBC won't bother to explain, I took to the interwebs to find the answers:

Salchow A salchow jump is done from the back inside edge of one foot to the back outside edge of the other foot. A half revolution is done in the air.

The salchow jump was invented by Ulrich Salchow in 1909.

The salchow is usually done from a forward outside three turn. After the three turn, the skater stops momentarily with the free foot extended behind, then swings the free leg forward and around with a wide scooping motion. Then, the skater jumps in the air and lands backwards on the foot and leg that did the scooping motion.

Sometimes, the salchow is entered from a forward inside mohawk instead of a three turn.

Toe Loop
A toe loop is done with a toe assist. While skating backward on an outside edge, the figure skater picks with the other toe, then jumps a half revolution in the air like a waltz jump, and lands on the foot that did not pick. The skater should be gliding backward on an outside edge when he or she lands.

This jump was invented during the 1920's by Bruce Mapes who was an American professional show skater. In fact, in artistic roller figure skating, the toe loop is called a Mapes Jump.

Most of the time, the toe loop is entered from a forward inside three turn.

Loop
In a loop jump, an ice skater takes off from a back outside edge, jumps a full revolution in the air, and lands backward on the same back outside edge from which he or she took off.

This jump is easy for non-skaters to recognize since there is no toe assist. It is considered an "edge jump" since no toe assist is used on the take off. Loop jumps are often done as the second jump in figure skating jump combinations.

Flip
A flip jump is a move where the skater glides backward on a back inside edge, picks with the other skate, jumps a full revolution in the air, and lands on the back outside edge of the foot that picked.

Most figure skaters enter the flip jump with an outside three turn and then "pick" with the free toe. The three turn done before the flip jump must be done in a straight line. The toe pick assist looks a bit like a pole vault. Some skaters enter the flip with alternative entries, such as a forward inside mohawk.

Lutz
A lutz jump is done just like the flip, but the takeoff is from a back outside edge instead of a back inside edge.

The lutz jump was invented by a Austrian man named Alois Lutz who first performed the jump in competition in 1913.

The lutz jump must be taken off from the back outside edge and is considered a counter-rotated jump. It is very difficult to stay on a back outside edge as the skater takes off; if the skater does allow the blade of the take off edge to roll over to an inside edge, the jump does not receive full credit and is consided a flip jump. This mistake on a lutz has been nicknamed a "flutz."

Axel
The takeoff of an axel jump is on a forward outside edge. After jumping forward from that forward edge, the skater makes one and one-half revolutions in the air and lands on the other foot on a back outside edge.

This jump was invented by a skater named Axel Paulsen who first performed this jump in 1882.

It takes time to master an axel jump. It may take years for some skaters to master an axel. Once a skater "gets an axel," double jumps usually come quite easily.

Makes it much nicer to watch when you know what the fuck Scott Hamilton is talking about.

Don't tell me that Mr. T was unavailable? If anything smacks of desperation more than this, I'd like to see it.

Every two years, I get psyched for the Olympics and every two years, I come away severely bothered by the television coverage. The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is no exception.

I've written about this before, and in some ways it gets tired to complain about the coverage, but what else can I do?

First off, not much of anything is live on NBC. There is some programming on CNBC like hockey that will be carried in real time, but all the major events will be tape delay, at least on the west coast. In the days of the DVR, this doesn't matter as much as it used to. However, watching on delay not only takes away much of the drama inherent in sports competition where you will never know what will happen and replaces it with a paradigm where one has to avoid any possible coverage that is in real time from online services to the ESPN crawl lest the results are revealed before the event is broadcast.

For both the Men's and Women's Downhill, I was unable to keep from seeing the results before I saw the event on TV, which is just fucking horrible. The Alpine events are the centerpiece of the Olympics and downhill skiing is the crown jewel of the event. Yet the coverage on NBC is simply a joke. And knowing the results beforehand just makes it a sad joke.

For the men's event, NBC deigned to show 6 runs. America's Steven Nyman and Bode Miller, Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal, Switzerland's Diider Cuche and Didier Defago and Canada's Rob Dixon. Count 'em. That's six runs. They probably wouldn't even have shown Defago except that he happened to win the event. And Dixon probably only made an appearance because of a spectacular crash. That's six competitors out of a field of 64. It's just unacceptable.

The women's event was only slightly better. NBC showed the runs of America's Lindsay Vonn, Julia Mancuso and Stacey Cook, Austria's Elisabeth Goergl, Germany's Maria Reisch, Sweden's Ana Paerson, Switerzland's Dominique Gisen, Italy's Daniela Merighetti, and France's Marion Rolland. The final four on that list all crashed out including Rolland who somehow caught an edge out of the starter's house and keeled over before she even got started.

The men's and women's course were totally different but equally exciting. The men skied the famous Dave Murray Downhill while the women were on a special course created on Franz's Run (I've skied both and they are incredibly fun). The women's run on Franz, a whippy labyrinth of a piste, subjects the skiers to several massive jumps including the infamous "Hot Air" at the bottom where many competitors, including Paerson, Gisen and Merighetti, crashed spectacularly.

The entire competition is available online sans commentary, which makes it quite boring. And you can see the full results for the men's and women's downhill on nbcolympics.com.

There's no good reason why more of this incredible competition should not be shown on TV. It's just inexcusable, especially when you consider the wall-to-wall coverage of curling on CNBC. Curling? It's like watching the ice melt. (Any event where the inclusion of pizza and beer does not dramatically impact the results is not a sport and certainly should not be in the Olympics.)

More on Flickr.

With the exception of the parade of nations, which I always get a kick out of, and maybe the cauldron lighting, I can really do without the Olympic opening ceremonies. But this moment, k.d. lang singing Hallelujah, just gave me chills:

The official video is on the NBC Olympics site.

We ordered sushi from a place in Berkeley that delivers and it was pretty good—better than expected at least. The delivery was quick, the selection was impressive and the sushi surprisingly tasty. Mak definitely approved.

It's now been three months since Fil escaped. She's out there on the wind somewhere. It's the saddest thing that's ever happened to me. It's seems unfathomable that she's been missing for so long—a quarter of a year. I remember back to the first night she was gone when I thought, of course, she's going to come home. Then I thought the same the next night and the next. But, as of yet, she has not. Now, I no longer think she's coming home.

The cats have escaped from various places many times, and have always come home, but this time, it's different.

I don't know if we've done everything we could do to find her, but I did almost everything I could think of. We combed the neighborhood. We talked to neighbors. We plastered flyers everywhere. We visited shelters and filled out reports. I even signed up for some scam-like thing called the Amber Pet Alert, because I was so desperate. I would call her from our backyard. I left food out. I left my smelly clothes on the porch so she could find my scent and make her way home, but she never did.

Many people called. Many. I would rush home and try to find her. But while each call began with a sense of hope and relief, each ended in disappointment and frustration. Everyone who called was certain that he/she had seen Fil. But they hadn't. She had just disappeared.

I'll never understand why, but people would tear down the flyers we put up. Some were even torn down by well meaning people. I would respond to a call and see that the person who called had a flyer in hand which was obviously ripped from a pole. I thought how stupid can these people be, but I couldn't say anything. Our immediate neighbors to the north we're continually ripping down the flyer that was posted on the street sign in front of their place. As soon as I saw that it was ripped down, I would replace it in an endlessly stupid cycle that I eventually lost. Many flyers where shredded. I would see them laying in tatters on the ground. One flyer was even burned. I don't get it. I even had one neighbor who called to tell me take them down. After about two months, I gave up and stopped posting them.

Fil came into my life when I was living in a small village in Samoa. She just showed up one day and insinuated herself in my room (along with her brother Makelani). I didn't have a camera with when when first arrived, so I'm missing images from when she was really tiny, which a little sad. I was told not to bring my camera to the village because there was no place to lock anything. I wish I had ignored that advice.

From the beginning, there was something special about Fil. She exuded a sense of calm and belonging. She almost never meowed and was very quiet, except when she purred. She purred like a machine. I named her Filemu which in Samoan means silence, quiet, calm, relaxed and peace, but mostly she was just called Fil (her full name is Filemu Suamalie, or "Sweet Silence").

I lived with her and Makelani for a year in Samoa. For the cats, it was mostly a great time. They could come and go as they pleased (more or less) and the jungle was their playground. Fil was a supreme hunter and would come home with mice and birds from outside and kill anything that moved, roaches, lizards, spiders, centipedes, etc. inside.

When they were around 6 months old, Fil (and Mak) went under the knife for their de-sexing surgery. A vet from the Samoan Animal Protection Society came out to my house, set up a field surgery unit in my backyard and went to work on the cats while I watched.

I sat with them during the surgery and nurtured them back to health as they recovered. It was really rough on Fil. Mak was just snipped, but Fil had an ovarian hysterectomy, which didn't go all that well. The vet had a hard time finding her tubes and the surgery went much longer than anticipated. Fil was all drugged up, so perhaps it was harder on me.

The only issue at my place in Samoa was the dogs. There were a few of them, and they were viscous. I felt like the cats could handle themselves and mostly they could. Usually I'd let them out and they'd be gone for a while.

I'd be sitting at my desk or in the kitchen and I hear this "BAM!!!! as one of the cats jumped onto the screen door to avoid a pursuing canine. Even Fil, normally so elegant and poised was less that sophisticated when fleeing the attack dogs.

One afternoon I was sitting at my desk I saw a blur of orange, brown and beige out of the corner of my eye. It was quickly followed by several dogs. I went outside and watched as Fil escaped into a banana tree. I had to rescue to her from the tree tops.

Another time I could hear a group of darking growling outside. I went out to see a scrum of four or five dogs surrounding something and when they parted, Fil bolted out towards me. It was a constant problem in Samoa for both the cats and myself.

I worked a normal (or abnormal depending on your perspective) 9-5 job in capital, Apia. In the evening when I would come home, I'd open the door and the cats would rush out on to the porch. Fil was so excited to see me, her tail would vibrate. It was the most endearing thing.

When I left Samoa, I brought the cats with me to Sedona, Arizona where I lived with my mom for a few months while I decided what to do next. Again, the cats loved it. They could come and go. The outdoors of the high desert was a perfect playground for cats. Trees to climb. Dried river beds to inspect. Grass and leaves to roll around in.

There were no predators to speak of despite the warnings of coyotes. The only problem was Fil and her penchant to wander. Once on her travels, she fell into a cactus and she growled at me while I removed burrs from her all over her body. Another time, she hadn't come before dusk and we went out to search for her. I found her on a post at someone's house on the other side of the arroyo behind my mom's place. She was assiduously avoiding some punter dogs below.

After a few months in Arizona, the cats and I moved to Vail, Colorado. I couldn't find new tags for them immediately and the best I could were these key chains.

The cats never really loved the snow or Colorado. Hard to the blame them. They are creatures of the jungle. On top of that, we lived in two places: The first was a condo where my roommates were drunkards. The second was a single wide in a trailer park near Beaver Creek. Each places had it charms for the cats, if not for me. They had access to the outside whenever they pleased and more than enough people around to bestow their affections on. They didn't love the cold, but it certainly didn't stop them from going outside.

But the adventure in Vail was a short experiment. Within a couple months, we were all headed back to California

We lived for a few months in Walnut Creek before setting in to an apartment in Alameda, a little island off the coast of Oakland: A return Island living!!! Not really.

The year we spent in Alameda was a serious mixed blessing. I lived on the third floor and there was no easy access to the outside world. I would allow them to wander the corridor because there was no open doorways. The roamed up and down the hall, taking in the smells emanating from my neighbor's apartments. Despite this confinement, Fil managed to escape a few times.

It was also in Alameda that I first starting leash walking the cats. Mostly Fil. Mak was really to skittish to be walked. Fil took to the leash reasonably well. She would sometimes flop around on the ground like a demented ferret and occasionally freak out when there was a loud noise, but she took direction, followed my whistle and seemed to enjoy it.

Alameda was also the first place where we lived that had a shower door and both cats discovered the joys of sitting on the door above while I was showering. I guess they liked the steam or something.

On the flip side, both Mak and Fil almost managed to get themselves killed in the apartment. Mak fell off the balcony—three stories to the ground. How he survived, I'll never know. And Fil almost managed to get herself entombed behind the drywall. .

We landed in Oakland, right on the border of both Emeryville and Berkeley, where we still live now. Initially I thought this place was perfect for the cats and that they'd be able to come and go like they had in the past. But then I discovered the neighborhood pit bulls and decided better of it.

The house did have a few things going for it. One was a large plate glass window that looked out on a back yard full of birds and squirrels. It was cat eye candy heaven. The second was an easily accessible and huge glass shower door for the cats to sit on.

In the last few years, it was rare that I showered without Fil hover above me on the shower door. The flow of the shower was her Pavlovian bell. As soon as she would hear she'd come into the bathroom, leap to the top of the door and sit there while I showered.

After a while that wasn't enough for her and she started to want to come down on my shoulders as soon as I finished. She was very considerate of her claws and would only jump down after I placed a towel around my neck. Sometimes should get impatient and get into jumping position and start meowing at me before I was ready with the towel or even sometimes before the shower was over.

Usually she was content to the get on shoulders and travel around my body. But there days, especially when I used a minty conditioner that she'd sort of go crazy, get on my head and start licking my hair. It's very well documented.

She was not always super graceful at this event. There was the time where slipped over my shoulder and, grabbing for anything that would stop her falling, almost ripped off one of ear lobes. Another time she slipped off my back and I only saved from crashing the shower floor by pinning her against the wall of the shower. She was less than pleased.

Fil was far from perfect. She sometimes refused to use the litter box and lately she would cry constantly to be let out of the house. (sadly, she got her wish). But she was a fantastic companion and I couldn't really ask for more in a cat. I loved her to pieces.

* * *

The other week, my sister sent me this posting from her neighborhood listserv:

I just wanted to let everyone know that I have a cat, Buddha, who goes in and out. He has been missing since the beginning of November, and I really thought something bad had to have happened to him. He never stays gone more than a few days, or a week at most. Well, this evening I opened the door, and in he walked! So, if you have a beloved pet who is missing, don't lose faith - they may be ok!

So, I suppose there is some small sliver of hope that Fil will make it back. However, with each day, the hope recedes and the likelihood that we'll see her again diminishes. We still visit the Oakland and Berkeley shelters on a weekly basis and I still sit on the porch and whistle for her and probably will until we move.

My one hope is that she just wandered into someone's house and they fell in love her and are keeping her. She's persistent and eventually she will find her way out and come home. The other possibilities are not really worth thinking about anymore.

Fil will live forever in my dreams and in my photos, and I have videos of her here, here and here, but I want her to live in my house, gently purring while she sleeps in the crook of my arm.

The Feltron Annual Report is one of the craziest things I've seen on the Internets. If this doesn't define Obsessive Compulsive behavior. I don't know what does.

Each day in 2009, I asked every person with whom I had a meaningful encounter to submit a record of this meeting through an online survey. These reports form the heart of the 2009 Annual Report. From parents to old friends, to people I met for the first time, to my dentist... any time I felt that someone had discerned enough of my personality and activities, they were given a card with a URL and unique number to record their experience.

I kept track only of who I gave survey invitations to, the number of the card and where it was given. The surveys answers were submitted via text forms, allowing the respondee to write whatever they desired, and leaving the task of making comparisons between the data up to me. I have used only this information to create the report, however accurate it may be. I have strived to sort and collate the data in a clinical and repeatable manner that could be reproduced by someone looking for the same stories I have selected.

That said, it makes for some compelling reading.

I just signed up for centuries on back-to-back days in the first weekend of May. I've got a few months to get in shape for the Wine Country Century and the Grizzly Peak Century.

It'll be my first go at the Wine Country Century. I wanted to do it last year, but couldn't fathom 100 mile rides on consecutive days. Not sure If I can no either, but I don't feel up to the Sunday ride, I can always sell my registration since the ride sells out and there will be no shortage of people wanting in.

I did the GPC last year and it rained cats and dogs for most of the ride. It's was downright miserable. 10000+ feet of climbing in the rain with perilous descents on wet roads that we impossible to enjoy. I've got my fingers crossed for better weather this year.