Why did another turkey cross the road?

This morning, I drove my sister to the dentist and decided to take the back roads. There was this car in front of us. It was going a bit faster than I was for the most part, gradually getting further away from us. Then around one of the curves, we saw the car stopped in the middle of the road. My first reaction was to curse the driver to death. But then we noticed why he stopped.

There was some creature blocking the way. I squinted a little to see what it was. I was really surprised. It looked like a German Shepherd, with its head bowed down, quickly and politely scurrying backwards across the street. It's huge shaved tail was up in the air like a big question mark. My sister and I looked at each other in shock. I screamed out, "Whoa, that's so cool! Why's that dog running backwards across the street?!"

My sister gave me a weirded out look. She was like, "That's not a dog..."

Driving closer to it, I did a double take and a Gestalt switch realizing it wasn't a dog, after all. It was a baby ostrich! I could see how I mistook the dog for the ostrich. The big feathery tail being the dog's head. The ostrich's long bare neck being the dog's tail. In any event, the thought of seeing a dog running backwards was pretty neat. On the other hand, seeing an ostrich? Around these parts? That's quite impressive. As we were slowly getting closer to it, I was speechless. At the same time, I had to keep my eye on the road.

My sister was laughing pretty hard and then commented, "Haha... what the heck?! That's hella random! So... why did the turkey cross the road?"

Turkey?! Wait a minute. I quickly turn my shoulder and get an up close glance as I drove right by it. It was a turkey...

I now know why the turkey crossed the road... to confuse the freaking hell out of me (and to have a reason for my sis and whoever else knows this story to make fun of me)!

Few Degrees Socially, Few Degrees Musically

Crazy, I was chilling with Roy and Winston last night at a lounge. Roy mentioned one of Winston's band friends joining us later in the evening. When Winston's friend, Joel, joined us, I could've sworn he looked a tad familiar. Just couldn't put my finger from where or when. Either that or he just reminded me of someone that looked like someone I might've known or seen in the past.

About fifteen minutes in, I just couldn't help myself and simply asked him, "Do I know you from somewhere?" I realized how off topic and random that sounded, but the die has been cast. Interestingly enough, Joel was thinking the same thing. After a few clues, we realized we were both in the Bay Area Wind Symphony from about a decade ago. Three degrees comes full loop to actually being just one.

I think what I found most interesting are the relationships between all of us. I first knew Roy between first and third grade, at which, he went to a different elementary school, high school, and college. Fifteen years later, we randomly got back in touch and started hanging out. Roy knows Winston from college. I forget if he met Winston through another good friend, but for simplicity sake, I'll just say they're originally one degree from each other. Winston knows Joel from a wind ensemble that they're currently participating in.

Socially, that's: Me => Roy => Winston => Joel

However, on the other hand if you look at it from a musically social standpoint, a few connections are flipped. Let's start with Roy. He has a relative. We'll call her Ms. A for these purposes. She happens to give piano lessons, one of her students being Roy himself. After having taking piano lessons from someone else, I decided to switch teachers years later. My new teacher happened to be Ms. A.  I then joined the Bay Area Wind Symphony and do my thing there for a couple years. A short time into it, Joel happens to audition in to the same wind symphony as me. He also played the clarinet, and he sat just a few chairs from me. Due to numerous reasons Joel, leaves that ensemble and joins a couple more ensembles. Finally the one he's currently at, Winston happens to be a part of that band.

So musically, that's: Roy => Me => Joel => Winston

I have a feeling that as social networks progress with the technology, the concept of six degrees of separation will eventually become obsolete.

During the Commute: The Long Catch Up First Entry

Having an hour commute for work each way, I find myself having a lot of time trapped in the car to be left to my own devices. It's gotten more apparent now than ever, ever since my car radio broke down a few weeks ago. Accumulating these random thoughts, random observations, and strange vocal noise, I decided there'll be commutes worth looking back at for myself sometime later.

This entry in particular will be especially long, since it's about five months overdue, and I'm not in the mood to split them into smaller entries right at the moment.

About a week ago, there was this white car behind me trying to pass me up. As the car passed me on my left, I got a good glimpse of the driver. She was steaming hot (approx. a 9 in reality, probably a 6 or 7 in TV fantasy) wearing a cool pair of shades. She zoomed passed my left side just as quickly as I notice her on my rear. For about a minute or so I just observed the drama that unfolded in front of me. As she passed other cars, I noticed a number of cars getting a bit distracted and swerve a little. You could tell which ones were guy drivers or not. One car even lost control and nearly changed lanes right into another car, which in turn nearly got that car to react by changing into another occupied lane! Almost witnessed a horrible horrible multi-car collision. I thought to myself, "Wow, she not only turns heads, she breaks necks." Yeah, that's pretty lame line, but I saw it written on a Piece of Flair one day during work.

I still recall my first months of working and how the commute was. In the beginning, my enthusiasm for starting work was good enough to cope with the commute. I even made plans of making efficient use of that time. I told myself I would one day rip some language CDs and pick up a bunch of languages. It would be a waste of time to use up these opportunities to just listen to morning radio. So in the beginning, I refused to turn on the radio. Okay, well... after about a week, I gave in. That enthusiasm towards work didn't exactly carry over to the commute all that gracefully.

What did though, was trying to figure out the ideal route to to get to and from work. Almost every other day, I would try I different route. Each day, I'd keep a mental note of the numbers on the odometer, rejoice if it was shorter than last time, calculate a new route if it was equal or longer. Around this time, I had started reading Kuo's blog about game design. It was around then when I started seeing how a lot of everyday things could be made into a game... especially the more mundane things in life, and make them a bit more bearable. Before starting my job, I also attended a conference on Agile development (CS stuff), which made mention of treating the development process like a game. Interesting stuff. Anyway... catching myself before I break too far off topic... it was my commute in particular that had turned into a game.

In the beginning, I would have to say it was finding the shortest route to get to work. As you can probably guess, this game of finding the best route to work didn't last long. Probably a couple weeks at most. By then, I had mastered the main route I take today and the alternate routes in case traffic goes sour. I had to find something else to pay attention to while driving. In a sense, finding the ideal route to work felt like LEVEL 1 of this commute game. Interesting piece of trivia: having found the route I currently use now, I noticed that through those minute differences in distances of the cumulative turns of my commute, my commute back home is a couple miles longer than my commute to work.

LEVEL 2, I'd have to say, was a bit more reckless... that is, how quickly can I get to work? It involved a bit more speed... let's just put it that way. Did you know it's quite easy to potentially hit the 100mph mark on the San Mateo Bridge? Cars on average are hitting 70s 80s around there anyway. Instead of taking about ten minutes, one could theoretically cross that bridge during a typical song on the radio.

The fun that came out of this level wasn't so much the speed itself, but more so the intricate puzzle of getting through the traffic. I'd look at the cars ahead of me, see where they all are, note how fast each one's going, try to calculate when and where an opening would show up, and what alternate routes to escape to in case it backfired due to the driver doing something stupid/annoying. Speaking of annoying drivers, I started to rate and size up the various drivers out there. Most of the time, I would rate how "decent" their lane changes are. For example, if they lane changed right in front of a car, I would give them mental props if they were going faster than the car they changed in front of. If they didn't immediately break away from the back car's buffer zone, yet manage to not force the back car to break, then it was acceptable. FAIL, if the car behind was forced to break or change lanes. As a side game, I made it my goal to make at least decent lane changes.

I'd size up drivers on a bunch of other things.... sometimes even imagine that driver's personality based on their driving style. They were a douche if they drove slow in front of a car, and then sped up when you lane changed next to them. They were cool and considerate if they sped up if you were on their tail, but relaxed a bit and slowed when you lane changed (though, this would make ME the douche for tailing in the first place). The inner dialog was a bit more involved than just saying "DOUCHE" or "NOT DOUCHE", but y'get the point. Interestingly, it seemed that the secondary goals to LEVEL 2 was as much, if not more of the focus during the commute the main goal of getting to work ASAP. Another piece of trivia: Although going through the Bay Bridge to get to work is a few miles shorter than taking San Mateo Bridge, the latter is hellova lot faster due to the lack of a huge merging pileup after toll and the less curvy route in general.

Well, I ended up learning that no amount of weaving and speeding before 10am would get you to work faster than waiting til after 10am and going however fast you wished. Not to mention the metering lights and insane traffic for the commute back before 7pm. Though this wasn't fully realized until I had LEVEL 3 inspired upon me through Mike, who had a similar commute and also worked around the peninsula just a few miles from me. By this time, I was nerding out by going back over a variation of LEVEL 1: with my handy dandy notebook, I would take note and collect a set of mileages of all my point A to point B travels. Home to work, noted. Work to home, noted. Work to the old apt in Hayward, noted. The Hayward apt to some random gas station a third of a mile down, also noted.

During a lunch break with Mike, I told him about my commute, almost bragging, about how I was able to get to work in such n such time with such n such speed with such n such distance... showing him my pages of precise numbers of how far each exact location was. He was quite impressed (probably mostly with how bored I was to have gone through all that trouble). But then he casually commented about his commute. About how he drives close to the speed limit around 70ish because with gas costing so much, it's not worth the gas mileage to go so fast. Looking back at it now, I'm imagining that conversation to be the cinematic scene completing LEVEL 2 leading up to LEVEL 3.

LEVEL 3's challenge is to get as much mileage as possible given a tank of gas. This meant adding another column to my notes indicating the number of gallons during every fill up, and its cost. This also meant a bit more research in achieving these results. I went to my uncle who is into cars. He told me that Chevron gave good gas because they didn't add ethanol like other gas stations. I also recalled my '89 Civic driving days in LA, where I'd once in a while fill up with Premium instead of regular. Not only did it increase the gas mileage, it also made driving a bit smoother. That with a couple pointers on the internet, I was set in starting my quest in "hypermiling".

I learned that excess acceleration and deceleration is the the devil, in terms of saving gas. No need to floor the pedal on the green light. Simply let up on the gas much much sooner than you usually would if you anticipate slowing or stopping. Going any faster than 70mph, you'd force the car to lose gas due to unnecessary wind resistance. For traffic lights, learn to time your approach so you never have to stop. You are essentially getting 0mpg while idling on a red light. "Rabbit" timing is where you allow another car to drive ahead of you so they end up sitting at the red light and trigger the sensors to turn green, just in time for your approach (remember the story of the tortoise and the hare?).

In the beginning, I did a couple control test tanks. Normal driving, I'd get in the high 20s for mpgs. At the peak of this project, I was able to get about 35mpg... most of it due to just changing driving habits. This meant avoiding stop and go traffic (aka, leave for work later in the morning 10am or later). It also meant an acceleration of 0 to 60 mph in about a little less than half a minute and staying strictly within the range of 60-70 mph while commuting. Having cruise control helped get me most of the way to my goal. Humans are horrible at maintaining drone boring tasks. Computers are great at that. Humans get emotional and get the urge to speed passed a car just to flip them off. Computer's won't. After a while, I had become a master cruise controller. Could cruise control through poor weather and moderate traffic conditions.

I found it interesting that LEVEL 3 and LEVEL 2 are almost polar opposites of each other. In LEVEL 3, I was the one constantly getting passed. This level was when your humility would shine, allowing all those other car drivers to laugh at how much of a granny driver you are. As long as I maintained what I considered to be good rated lane changes, then, even at my slow speeds, I wouldn't piss too many people off. Being able to try out both sides of the spectrum of drivers, I can now empathize each of them. There are ways to tick off both the speedster and the gas conserver, but there are also ways to keep everyone (who is a reasonable driver anyway) happy.

On a brief note about psychology... I noticed there's a sort of confirmation bias while driving. Regardless of how fast or slow I was driving, I felt like I was driving the speed that everyone else was driving. Going 60 mph, I would see tons of other cars all around me driving around that same speed. Similarly, I would encounter tons of cars all around me driving 80+, while I drove at those speeds. The reasoning behind this seems simple enough. While driving 80+, you're zooming by those 50, 60, and 70mph-ers. You'll only encounter them for a brief moment. Whereas, take a car going about the same speed as you. You two will be seeing each other for a while, further reinforcing each other's reason for continuing at those speeds. The same goes for any other speed... within a reasonable deviation from average. I'd like to think of it as like a radio tuning in to a particular frequency.

Anyway, I'm getting sleepy. Until next time...

Green Garbage Truck

I was driving to work earlier today when I saw this huge garbage truck in front of me with garbage flying out of it onto the freeway. I wanted to drive up next to the driver and communicate through hand gestures about its loose garbage, but before I got around to doing that, I caught a glimpse of the sign posted on the side of the truck.

It said, "We're doing our part in going green. This truck now runs off natural gas."

I lol'd and passed up the truck.

Contractions of Contractions

Random thought while I was commenting some code during work. Wouldn't it be cool to have contractions of contractions in addition to contractions of regular words?

For example, take "it is not". As it is, you can either contract it as "it's not" or "it isn't". Can't wait for the day when it becomes acceptable to write out "it'sn't". In real life, I often say "innit". Now that I think about it, "ain't" comes pretty close.

Anyways, back to work. Thought I'd write a quicky entry that's been bugging me ever since I couldn't decided whether to comment code with "it's not" or "it isn't".

P.S. I haven't been on this thing in forever. Apparently, they made changes to the site that screwed up my carefully written pixel-perfect CSS. Damn you Xanga (and all these sites for that matter who have recently made large not so immediately fun changes. yes, I'm looking at you too facebook)!