Weekend watching

Part of owning a home is doing maintenance on it. Or rather, to be more precise in this case, paying others to do maintenance on it. There are some basic tools in the basement. Some of them are even electrical power tools. Previous of my jobs have required the use of various tools in tasks not unrelated to home maintenance. I've done lots of various home maintenance tasks before.

But.

That was then. I'm much more aware of what can go wrong with plumbing or electrical stuff. There's always a part or tool you need that you don't have, and you have to put things on hold to go get it, knowing, KNOWING, that this won't be your only trip.

Now I'm much more willing to pay others to get their hands dirty, and deal with the inevitable issues that come up. So for example. This tap dribbles. We've done the take it apart and soak it in vinegar and scrub with a toothbrush thing. It just dribbles worse now. Turns out you can't get parts for it anymore, at least not through the plumbing distributers.

Some people take this as a challenge and go hunting. Not me. The kitchen tap is much more than a decade old. The replacement tap isn't expensive. I have a limited (but hopefully large)  number of hours left on earth, and I don't want to spend them chasing tap parts. It's easier to earn the money to buy it, and have the moral satisfaction of keeping the economy going.

This tap is even older, and the handle has got all floppy and takes a bit of doing to turn off the water. It needs a new cartridge, whatever that means, plus a plumber with special tools to replace it. Kind of a pity, because we really like these taps.

In preparation. You don't want to know what we took out of there.

One of the things we took out of there was a video tape (you younger readers can google that, it's a real, if old, thing) giving instructions for the care and feeding of the counter surface. That counter was installed mid-90's or so. It's been sitting there for 20 years. You don't want to know what it's been buried under.

Replacing the taps was straightforward, for him. Once the old ones came out, I was glad I hadn't tried to tackle it. There is a tool that makes some of it much easier as you're working up behind the sinks. Plus there's a bit of fiddly stuff, and the instructions look really complicated. I'm happy to pay an expert.

There was also a bit of hot water tank maintenance, plus piping related to a furnace humidifier. All went well. I'm glad I didn't try that either.

In fact, the only problem turned out to be the kitchen drain line. We'd known the drain was slowing down, so I'd asked him to look at the P trap while he was under there. I just assumed that was full of guck. That was fine, though there was just a bit of "mung," as he called it, in the little almost horizontal section of pipe under the sink. We tested the drain after, and the first few seconds were awesome! Then it slowed down, and drained even more slowly than I had remembered. Then the other sink started filling up.

"Oh oh" he said. We went down to look at drain piping. There's a long run of pipe to the main drain stack. It was clear there was a low spot on the piping. Tapping it sounded full. Shaking the pipe didn't produce any sloshing or draining noises. "Oh oh," he said again. "I don't have the drain clean out tools, and I don't have the amount of pipe to cut that out and replace it. Plus you'd have to move all those books. Drain clean out time."

That guy and his specialized tools arrived the next day, and produced cat frightening noises. He did the kitchen sink drain, and the ensuite shower drain just because the second drain was half price. The kitchen sink drain works awesome now, sucking down with a whirlpool forming. The shower drain works better. Trying to do this myself, even with rented tools would be a frustrating use of time at best. At worst it would be trivially easy to create a horrendous mess from what used to be caked inside the drains. Need I elaborate? I thought not.

The only unfortunate thing is that I didn't get my run done while it was nice Friday afternoon. Thursday was a much needed rest day, and Friday an extra rest day, which isn't a bad thing in my books after 6 days in a row doing something every day. One of the things about the nice weather is that this becomes the running surface.

Saturday morning was a swim. We got in a half hour swim in the dive tank till we got kicked out, but by then the main pool had cleared out a bit. I joined a lane with 3 other people swimming my speed and had a fast K or so, plus some various intervals going harder.

There I am at the end of the pool, looking around wondering where Michelle and Amy have got to, when I hear my name. I can't see squat without my glasses, but it's the two women that had been water running in the next lane. Once she called again I recognized Rose's voice, and joined them to run for a bit as she and Madi had a long run and were looking for diversion. We chatted a bit, then Michelle and Amy dragged me off to the hot tub. Then breakfast. Yummy!

Today was a 100 minute spin. Longish warmup. 40 minutes at 150 to 160 watts in various gears at various cadences. Then some hard short intervals, and a cool down. It's feeling really good.

I'm pretty pleased with my month of workouts. Some people write up a calendar with planned workouts. I write down what I actually do. If you look carefully, you can see the novel writing progress as well. (At this very moment, the project is at 45203 words, and I'll be back at it as soon as I'm done writing the blog. The things I do for you guys!)

In the shower after I had some brainwaves about the book. I know what the next bits are. One of my characters is lying to a cop, and here I thought she was a good girl. Things are getting complicated.

Round and round, where we stop?

Tuesday was round and round day, running at Talisman. My phone says 4.36 K in 30 minutes. That might be true. Or maybe not. I suppose I could figure out almost exactly by figuring out laps and stuff, but I don't feel up to it. 25 or 26 times around I guess. I changed direction half way through.

This was at an easy pace, aiming for chatchatchat pace, but there was nobody to chat to. I wasn't sweating hardly at all during the run, but noticed more while doing a cool down walk, and I was sweating a bucket while doing some stretches after. That seems sort of odd. Running inside is still a bit odd to me. Better than a treadmill.

What impressed me was an older woman tottering along in the outside lane, cane in one hand, handrail in the other. When she got to a break in the rail, she paused a moment, then pushed across in a big effort till she got to the other side. I think she was part of the cardiology group. I don't know how she got to this, but for her, walking 3 laps is clearly a huge effort. She was only supposed to do two laps. Good for her.

Swam Wednesday, 1.5 K, 28:10, pretty steady pace, trying to go nice and easy and relaxed. I was so looking forward to the hot tub and it was being cleaned. Sigh.

Curtis still hasn't figured out the front door.

Some random photos, just because.
Dawn from Talisman. Shortly after this it got spectacular, but I was driving.

The same dawn once I was parked.

Sunset from home, facing south.

Curtis vs the front door

Curtis knows perfectly well the front door leads to out.

He tells us he just wants to go hunt his mouse, to contribute to the household. We tell him it's cold out, that the mice are hibernating. We tell him we suspect him of trying to hunt for better human servants. We tell him there are no better humans, and every other cat we might wants to lead the life of Curtis and Celina. We tell him it's a tough old world out there, and that he's been homeless before. He gives us a look and tries the door again. If he figures out the two locks, and the handle, next will be world domination. Look out.

Swam 500 m 9:20 feeling kind of slow and sluggish. 5 x 100 all right on 1:43. What's odd is that some of them I was trying to swim faster, and one of them I was dogging it. Then another 500 m 9:10. Felt pretty good. No hot tub though. Sigh.

Easy 45 min spin and some stretching. Then another 3 episodes of House of Cards. Still loving it.

It's the half-assed ones

This was after my run, but it hasn't changed much since this morning.

This is actually a really hard temperature to dress for. Get the layering wrong and you'll be drowning in sweat, or freezing your tail off. There's only so much adjustment you can make on the run.

Today I went with the usual shoes and socks, no yak trax or anything like that. One pair medium weight tights, no special wind or weather proofing. One short sleeved tech shirt, and the usual winter jacket. Gloves and a fleece hat finished it off. Not a coordinated fashion statement, but I don't care about that. For a guy my age, there's only one way a "fashion statement" goes, and it's not good.

Around the neighbourhood to stay out of the wind was perfect. I think if I'd been running into the wind or out on the exposed bike path for any length of time I'd have been looking for another layer.

5 K, 38 minutes, running carefully. We've had some melting the last few days, and a bit of snow overnight. There's a bit of moisture in the snow so it packs down a bit, and makes for surprisingly good footing, even over ice. Even with ice under the snow I don't slip much when I run, it's the walk before and especially after where I have to be careful.

Part of the trick is to land with your foot right under your centre of gravity, on your whole foot, or mid-foot. Not on your heel way out in front of you, or on your toes like a sprinter. It's too easy for your foot to slide out from underneath you. At best you'll land on your butt with nothing damaged but your pride. At worst you'll break something.

Some of the sidewalks were clean and bare, or well on the way to it. What's nice is that a couple of the people doing a good job pointed out icy bits. Running on that is good. Running on a sidewalk that was well shoveled and just has new snow on it is perfectly fine too. The snow is good footing. The bits along the curb to cross the roads are a bit tricky, but you know what's there, and it's good to do a bit of leaping and hopping.

What kills me is the half-assed shovel jobs. A meandering goat path in the snow. Only part of it done. One guy shoveled the driveway, and piled up the snow on the sidewalk. Jerk. One guy was using what looked like a toy shovel to push the snow around a bit, while smoking. He glared at me as I was going by, no doubt offended by the taint of clean living or something.

We even shoveled off the back patio yesterday. Two reasons. One is to get the snow onto the garden for the moisture when it melts, which is looking like next week. And the other is to get to the BBQ. We got a heck of a deal on Alberta rack of lamb, and it was awesome with a smokey barbecue rub Linda found, and a big Greek salad. Plus wine. Simple, easy, super-tasty!

Did you miss the latest visit of my inner shark?

Forward at inner shark speed

Today was a good swim day. At first I wasn't sure I'd go. We finished season 2 of House of Cards last night, not late, but late enough and me tired enough from the spin yesterday that if I was asleep I was going to stay asleep. It's quite different than the BBC version, but equally good. I liked Ian Richardson (playing Francis Urquhart) and the way he broke the fourth wall. Kevin Spacey doesn't do it so well, but you see more the scheming and counter-scheming.

But no, habits die hard sometimes. I was up and ready. Talisman had only 4 lanes for us public, but Deb, Michelle and me got lucky and scored a lane to ourselves. Well, it started out that way, then another woman joined us. At first I was a bit worried, I was coming in for a turn, and she was floundering around at the end, right in the middle of the lane. Someone else was there too, so the turn was careful. Then we sorted ourselves out and it was all good with the 4 of us.

Then my inner shark came out! I was having a fairly strong swim, 500 m warmup in 9:05 or so, even with some waits to pass. It was the surges to pass that brought out the shark within. I could feel the water on my hands and forearm. Swimmers know what I mean. I'd slow down slightly, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, then accelerate hard to pass, then relax again. Some of my 50 m times were amazing for an ongoing pace! One was around 45 seconds, then back to my normal pace. I don't know if fartlek applies to swims, but that's what it felt like.

What was interesting was that I didn't really have to look to know where people were. A part of me was keeping track of where the prey , I mean, where the other swimmers were. It seemed to be easy to time the passes. For a while a guy in the next lane was trying to race me, flailing down the lane, splashing water everywhere. Then he'd stop to rest, and I'd keep going, periodically passing my lane buddies. It made for an interesting swim, and a really good workout. They seemed to be having a good time as well. Hot tub, but no sublime moment like the other day.

I'm not sure of the exact numbers. 500 m in 9:05 or so. 500 m pull about the same time. 500 m mostly kick, lots slower. 500 m nice and easy, working on stroke mechanics, thinking really hard about the water feel on both the front and back of my hands, what my shoulders were doing, and body position in the water. Played some drafting games with Michelle. A bit of this and that, with a bit of chat, in the water a little under 90 minutes or so.

On the way home I got to thinking about the state of the world, and my place in it. Part of it was fueled by watching Frank scheming his way up the ladder in House of Cards. I have known people like that in real life, and will go to significant effort to avoid them. Part of it is getting used to having more time for me, and what I want to do with that time.

There are things to accomplish, but I need to be careful I don't bite off more than I can chew. I'd like to say there is a step by step plan, with goals, and milestones, and targets, but that's corporate bullshit. I'm trying to do this day by day. Get up, do stuff, go to bed. Eat good food. Hang out with interesting people. Go places I haven't been.

Some of that happened Friday. The sunrise was beautiful, and one of our plants is looking out at the winter landscape in a blossomy sort of way.

We did a bit of a date day, starting with breakfast at Blue Star Diner. Awesome food. Bridgeland has become quite a hotbed of good restaurants. Then out doing some shopping for the house, with a side trip out to the deep SE to pick up the stuff. I'm very please I didn't walk off the truck dock. Then some errands along the way home, buying a The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah for the book club. Into the Italian Centre to check it out.

Along the way in the SE I was looking over all the various buildings. Manufacturing plants, warehouses, offices, whatever, connected by road and rail, as well as an invisible network of electric and data cables. Wireless antennas. Water and sewer lines. Gas and oil pipelines. It's an amazingly complicated network, and it mostly works very well. At least until some idiot demonstrates that they are not up to the cognitive demands of driving, and screws it up for everybody in the area.

The point of it all is to connect the people who want to buy or rent various products with the people producing them. In the middle is that intricate network. So many different things, all with their product codes, specifications, assembly instructions, manufacturing requirements, and so many people keeping track of where the stuff is, how many of them are there, who has bought them, or sold them, and the associated flow of dollars.

Perceived as a whole it's baffling complex, with inter-relationships out the ying-yang. Even with computer help, nobody can track everything about even one thing, let alone everything. That's why us data geeks take slices, or views of things. My boss sometimes rolls his eyes as I get pedantic about what exactly is making up the number I'm quoting, because it matters. You can't do set arithmetic if you don't know that your sets are congruent, or rather, you can provided you know exactly how the are incongruent and take that into account.

While we were picking up our new faucets, the warehouse clerk came back with one instead of two. One of them had been accidentally put on a pallet that was spoken for another job. She couldn't take it, even though it was mine, till they sorted it out. Somebody hadn't consulted the system when assembling the order. This seems to happen to me a lot lately. The computer system says they have x in the bin, but the clerk only finds y, and has no idea where the other is. Even with all the bar codes, and scanning, and tracking, and inventory counts, and point of sale systems, stuff still ends up where it doesn't belong.

Until very recently we used to throw many things into the landfill. For several reasons now, we are starting to track what used to be waste. We want to recycle products and materials. This means knowing what's in them, and developing a process to stream like with like, to go to the appropriate places. More tracking. More complexity.

If you have a kid contemplating what they want to do for a living, they could do much worse than go into data analytics or business analysis. These systems are only going to get more complicated, and they need people to build nice process diagrams to explain to software engineers how to modify existing software to cope. It's straightforward to track new things with bar codes. Old things with obsolete bar codes, or waste products with no bar codes are a different thing.

Then a hard bike spin in the afternoon, 1.5 hrs all up, with lots of short bursts at high effort. I like getting a good sweat on, but last time I was putting out that much effort I was snorfling sweat in as I breathed. Plus it dribbles/ pours down my glasses.

That isn't so much fun. I got a variable speed fan set up now,  with a remote even, and that makes the ride much nicer. I had to tie down the little piece of plastic over the trainer computer. Stupid Blogspot for unroatating it.

Thursday was a rest day. I was feeling knackered from the week, and glad it was only 4 days. Word is the lay-offs aren't done yet. Several of my IT buddies have been told they won't have jobs soon, May or June, or so. That reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon, a boss standing in front of the clerks desk, as he says, "I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go as of 4pm today, in the mean time keep up the good work."

That gives them several months to find a new project to work on, which is good because it might take that long. Looking for work now is tough sledding. There are companies hiring, but it's typically contract work, not employee, and they are asking for very specific skills. One good thing about times like these is they put some work into defining exactly what they want, which is good for everyone. If you don't have the skills, you don't waste your time applying. In busier times they might put out a job requirement that is so vague, it might as well be "can spell business analysis, and has used Visio."

The current read is still "Older, Faster, Stronger" I'm liking it, but it's a bit disconnected in some ways. She does a lot of name dropping about all these older athletes and times, but it's mixed in with her races, and I'm losing track of which one is which.

A sublime moment

During my swim today I was trying out some new goggles. The main result was seeing the crud on the floor of the pool much more clearly. A band aid. A hair scrunchy. What looked like some note paper. Assorted bits of plastic that look like they escaped the lane ropes. A metal S hook. Stuff. I think they installed new lights in the competition pool, and things still look a bit different to me.

The swim was fine, 500 m 9:15 with a slow start. 5x100 slowing from 97 seconds to 105. I tried 100 m hard, and thought I was doing good, till I saw 91 seconds on the clock. Oh well. Cool down.

The other pool had cleared out then so I did 20 minutes of pool yoga. That felt pretty good. I got a random assortment of minor clicks and creaks from my knees and ankles, but although my low back was feeling THAT close a major crack, nothing happened.

Some of you know the hot tub at Talisman. The 20 person one in the new building. There is a wide lip on it, maybe 2 feet or so, made of small white tiles. There were lots of little puddles of water on the tiles of the lip. The pool has lots of lights, and they were reflecting off the little puddles.

I was in the tub, thinking of nothing in particular, when some ideas for my book struck me, comparing and contrasting two world views. I was staring out towards the pool in what probably looked like a really vacant gaze. As you might know I'm really really short-sighted. At 25 m I'm barely able to tell male from female without my glasses, unless the suit is really bright and makes it really plain.

Suddenly I was seeing this independently through each eye. The tile grid lines were at a bit of an angle to one another, with one tilted up a bit. Many lights, many puddles, all reflecting through each eye. There was a bit of a curved lens effect so I could see much of the roof and part of the walls reflected in the puddles. Each puddle had a tiny rainbow effect around the edges and each light. I could see each version of the view independently. Listening to the sounds of swimming and splashing water. The warmth of the hot tub on my body. Smelling swimming pool. It was lovely and peaceful. A happy place.

I was just thinking about all those rays of light, created, bouncing off layers of water and tile and into my eyes, through my optic nerve, to be comprehended by my brain. Thinking of the uncountable number of light rays that bounce off other surfaces and are absorbed and dissipated, without entering a human eye. Did they really exist? Were both visions, the straight one, and the tilted one, equally real? Which was the tilted one? Could I choose which one I got out of the pool into? Thinking of the world duality I'm trying to express in my books, wondering where they're going to end up.

Let's see. The Monday swim was kind of blah. Good easy spin on Sunday, with some stretching and core. Tuesday I'm calling a rest day, though it was anything but restful. More people left Penn West, and not willingly. That put a real damper on the day.

Once upon a time I had thought of becoming a journalist. I'd read of the intrepid reporters chasing stories and the various hijinks they got up to. I see it as once being a bit of a romantic profession, knowing what's going on even if it's not published, contacts with (depending on your beat) politicians, police, criminals, what have you.

Once. That time is now long past. Postmedia, a form of corporate zombie bloated on the carcasses of previous media companies has laid off many staff and amalgamated newsrooms.It's a futile effort, I suspect. They are trying to make an outdated and broken funding model work. There are better ways of exchanging information now. One journalist had been at the Herald 34 years. If I'd entered that world, and stuck with it, that might have been me. I hope they still have a pension and it hasn't been pillaged.

Once upon a time I'd walk over to the 7-11 and buy the papers. We'd have a coffee, read the papers, and slowly wake up to a Saturday morning. I'm not sure when we stopped. The delivery of the actual mounds of paper became erratic, and the internet got faster and easier. Not better though. I still miss in depth stories, pulling together many sources into a coherent story. I miss editors, believe it or not. Anyone that reads the comment sections of just about anything now misses editors.

I'm minded of a saying. If the rich and powerful don't mind it being public, it's advertising, but if they try to suppress it, it's almost certainly news.With very few sources of newspapers now, which do you think is being published by them?

I'd like to think there is still a place for community news, for exposes of what the rich and powerful are trying to keep hidden from us, for a community voice speaking out on topical issues. It's just that nobody has really figured out how to deliver it and not lose money. As an iPad app, Zite was good, but it's gone. Flipboard was horridly painful to use. I've tried a couple others, but none stuck. Inform News app is sort of working ok, but I'm not in love with it.

There's a quote from Yes Prime Minister:
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?

Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.

Here, the Globe and Mail is read by the people that run the country, or think they do or should. The Calgary Herald is ready by people that see themselves as the right thinking majority. And the Calgary Sun readers don't care as long she's got big tits.

Now the Herald and the Sun are going to be run from the same office, which isn't going to work. Not at least in terms of delivering two different products. Another swirl around the toilet bowl, getting closer and closer to that final swoop out of sight.

I feel for the people who have been spat out of their jobs like used chewing gum onto the frozen sidewalks, whether they be newspapers, or oil and gas companies, or any other industry. I tell young people I work with that their choices in life are either that, or they take control of their working lives and decide themselves when it's time to leave a job. Very few people now leave a job through retirement on their own timing, and it's going to be fewer every year.

Now that you're all thoroughly depressed, here's a photo of Curtis cheering me up last night. Nothing like a purring kitty tummy rub to make you feel better.

As a bonus, a closeup of the paw of domination.

Hashtag notaweenie

So this.

Plus

Plus.

Equals.

or

I love running with Michelle. She has a rock steady pace, and except for me going up the hills, it was all chatchatchat pace. We both nailed the layering. No SUAR ass-icles were formed in the making of this run, though I'm glad we weren't out in the wind any longer.

We didn't stop  for any other photos because we were afraid our phones would freeze (It's happened to both of us before)  but the Weasel Head is beautiful with snow and hoar frost on all the branches. We were alone for almost the entire run, which is unusual. This is a very popular place to run and bike, but I guess not at -16 C (4F).  The footing was very good, about half of it plowed, with a light layer of packed snow. The rest, down the hill and up the other side, had two packed paths so we could run side by side. Did I mention the chat part?

I'd mentally tagged 4 K as the turnaround point, and knew we were coming up on it at the bottom of the north hill. Michelle totally channeled Katie and said if we start up the hill, we go ALL the way up. So we did, imagining the police band piping us up.