MadAss Flaws and Fixes

I've written about the MadAss before. After my ride on my bicycle yesterday and some thought, I decided to post some thoughts on what it would take to turn that monkey-bike into something useful, with broader appeal than a toy.

First, let me state that the single most popular model motorized vehicle is the Honda SuperCub. Its popular because its nearly indestructible and was designed to work on crappy roads. As we're getting crappy roads bit by bit here in the USA, thanks to the terrible Obamaconomy, we need similar kinds of vehicles to retain our specialized skills and not collapse utterly. I have studied this for 12 years. I'm not joking. Transportation is critical.

The MadAss is a good start, but not perfect. Its got sufficient wheel travel and wheel diameter to deal with crappy road surface and potholes. Front and rear disk brakes. It can be fitted with knobby tires. The engine is big enough to climb the hills. Front and rear disk brake are good. A solid 4 speed transmission is good. Its fast enough for post-oil speeds, just not freeways. Its better than the SuperCub, all improvements over it.

What its getting wrong is the rear trailing arm of the suspension is short, which puts the balance too far back, so it has a tendency to wheelie. This is dangerous in traffic or when going uphill. Hills are a everywhere around here, they're on most of the roads. Many of them are steep, which would put the balance BEHIND the rear wheel hub so any acceleration would make it flip. This is dangerous enough that I haven't bought one of these. Not unless I can verify a longer trailing arm exists to prevent the problem. The upside is its made me look a lot harder at used motorcycles. Those are hard to get parts for, however.

The fuel tank inside the frame is a gimmick, holding barely a gallon. Its fine for around town riding, but if you wanted to do a tour, it would help if you can mount a plastic saddle-bag type tank with tubes to link to the main tank and thus engine. If you could carry another 2 gal of fuel, that gets you a lot more range.

The front forks are famously soft. Who were they designed for? The Germans knew they'd be selling this bike to people who weighed 160-220 pounds. Monkey bikes aren't ridden by light kids or women. Why aren't the forks designed properly, with stronger springs and better fork oil? This is massively dumb, and a nearly bad enough a flaw to drop the design altogether. Any new bike you have to spend money on to get working right, out of the box, is a bike that was designed badly. This is another good reason to step back and reconsider other options.

The local used bike (motorcycle) shop has Ninja 250s out front. Four of them, last time I drove past there. They'll cost about the same as a new MadAss, and can do freeway speeds thanks to their 6 speed gearbox and 250cc engines. Too big to park on the back porch, but maybe that's not going to be important much longer. I need to think bigger picture in many things. I'm not ready to be on the freeway on a motorcycle. I'd rather go slow and smell the flowers, hear the birds sing. As long as the Ninja 250 remains a cheaper fallback option, a scooter that costs more is ridiculous.

Someday, the All-In-1

I really liked the first few episodes of the show Robotics; Notes, before it went all dark and evil. I wanted it to be about an imaginative geocaching game with a fake mystery to solve, and how Augmented Reality would add both fun and function to the real world, but the creator was clearly insane and decided to go full violent paranoid and ruined the whole concept. I would say it was a similar screw up to what happened with that segway-motorcycle one, and how they clearly didn't learn from the success of Girls Und Panzer, which takes tank battles and turns them into a fun sport for cute little girls in high school. Those shows taught me that I actually have a soft spot for sports after all. Who knew?

Apparently, as you age, you outgrow violence entirely. That's what has happened to me. When I was into shooting rifles, I just wanted to show my accuracy, and possibly practice up to a club that did steel silhouette competitions. Those can be pretty interesting, since there are classes using black powder, or old cowboy guns, or various kinds of repro-vintage guns used by people curious about how tough it was for their great-grandfather out on the Plains. Why not? No animals are harmed. Its steel plates cut with a welding torch. These are usually Ham and Spam shoots, where you put in your $5 and either win a Virginia ham or a can of spam depending on if you're a best shot or the worst one. Vegetarians are too weak to lift the rifle so they never compete, thus no complaints about the prize.

Anyway, in Robotics; Notes, the ubiquitous smart phone has been replaced by a 7 inch tablet with wireless connectivity, camera, laptop processing power, and you do all your classwork and music etc using them. No more book-bag. You carry this thing and lunch. They're your data access tool. The island in the story actually exists, the base for Japan's space launch facility (which fails science being that far north), and is pretty big. So big that people ride scooters around because its too far to bicycle between the towns, and there's apparently only the one high school, at least in the story.

The tablets are tough, scratch resistant, have solar cells impregnated invisibly so they never have their batteries die, and all data access is wireless. Japan is on something like 7G right now, compared to the 4G still being installed in the USA, just to give you some idea. They have no Legacy in Japan. In the USA, its law. Different approaches to technology means we're lagging. Please imagine having a device like this so ubiquitous that people don't even try to steal them because the GPS tells you where it is and they're bio-locked. Just picture it. Wouldn't that be cool? Someday I think this will be reality. It will be so much cheaper to make a largely indestructible tablet than swapping cellphone, laptop, home PC, various TVs and stereo systems every 18 months. Just have this and chill. It will happen when the rate of change slows enough to justify building electronics more durably. For now, its a silly idea. But eventually...

Yer Doin It Wrong

I think that phrase often when I meet people. I feel bad for them. I get frustrated, watching them do it wrong, again and again. I feel empathy for them, want to help them. When I try to help people doing it wrong, I'm the one doing it wrong. People are deliberately stupid. Their ignorance and suffering are both intentional. I think its an inherent flaw in our evolution that our species is self destructive. Whatever.

The bike ride today was great. I saw very few other cyclists out there, oddly enough. It was weird because the weather was really perfect. I wonder where they went? Up to Tahoe? Maybe. Up 49? Maybe. I looked at some of the local roads, like Banner Lava Cap and Idaho-Maryland (named for a local gold mine) road and realized these would be GOOD rides on a bicycle on a day like this.

But even more, they'd be fantastic on a scooter with minimal protective gear, just going really slow puttering along. My one experience riding a Tomos scooter I was wear a helment, a pair of Bermuda shorts and a teeshirt, and teva sandals. Not boots, not gloves, not a jacket to defend my skin from a crash. Just chillin. Why don't people do that? When I see people in full protective gear on a scooter I think "accident prone" "nerd" and "wishes he was on a Ninja but couldn't qualify for the loan". Might be cruel of me and I've read about how dangerous scooters are, just as bad as motorcycles, but seriously: Its a 30 mph machine. I hit 40 mph on my bicycle, in shorts, down most of the local kills. Good tires, proper maintenance, steep hills.

I don't need tons of safety gear on a bicycle. Other than my 0 mph crash at the end of a ride, I've done well this year. If I get strong enough to bike all the way up to Scotts Flat Reservoir and down to Nevada City again? Great. That would be a fantastic ride some gentle morning with the dawn light shining in my eyes as I pedal up a hill. I look slightly odd on my commuter bike, but not as odd as the 1% body fat racer suit-wearing rider on a $3500 kevlar framed multi-flat per ride bikers with their wrap around shades and starvation diets. I feel kinda sorry for them. They live without beer. How sad is that? You don't need a $3500 etc bike to ride these roads. You need determination and physical strength. Only when you're trying to Keep Up With The Joneses does it matter how fast your bike is, or how little it weighs. If that's how they want to spend their hard earned? Fine. Its a sculpture. It's optimized. I respect that as a fellow engineer (of sorts). But it isn't necessary on these roads.

On these roads my deliberately comfortable bike is great. Now that my seat is broken in, it doesn't even hurt anymore either. I climbed the hills, again and again, and got my heart racing each time and I feel great.

Now, imagine doing that while wearing full safety gear: full face helmet, full armored gloves, armored pants, armored mesh jacket with elbow and spine protector, the same way motorcyclists insist is the proper gear to wear on a motorcycle or scooter. Just picture it. Pretty damn uncomfortable, right? Instead of comfy ride, you're facing heat prostration and what would be a good ride in shorts is a life risking activity in full gear. It would stop you from riding when its only nearly 79F out. So why do riders of fast motorcycles insist that slow scooters require the same gear?

Bicycles aren't any safer than scooters. They go just as fast. I think this is a perceptual problem, that you can justify all the gear on a slow scooter because you're NOT PEDALLING or exhausted, so therefore its more dangerous? That doesn't make sense. Bicycles ride in traffic too. Or that bicycles are exercise so you must look a certain way, but a scooter is a DANGEROUS motor vehicle. That's nuts. When I watch those few scenes in each episode of Jamie Oliver's show, buying ingredients, he's pretty minimalist on the gear in full London traffic, but its an effective way to get around. I see kids on scooters and old small bore motorcycles putting this way and that up and down East Main and I say "right on". They are using their brain to be safe, not layers of leather and pretending they're safe. There's no cure for stupidity, and wearing lots of gear might only reduce the injuries caused by your own lack of life-preserving caution. If in doubt, slow down. This isn't hard. On a scooter its freaking easy.

So full gear on a scooter when the weather is perfect for shorts? Yer doin it wrong. Strip down, slow down, take it easy and be here instead of mindlessly rushing to your doom.

Heat Wave Over

Weather was LOVELY today. Had to use my blanket last night, too cold. This morning, fan felt chilly. There's a nice delta breeze blowing (all the way from the SF Bay), cooling off the mountains. One of the reasons people live HERE instead of say, Cool (because that name is Sarcastic) or Chico, is we get the Delta Breeze here thanks to a quirk of the mountains. You get it, faintly, in Rocklin too, but far better in Dixon and strongly in Benecia, where its more of a Delta Gale instead of Breeze. Amazing how the place has decent weather but only villains live there. Yet more proof to my theory that only Evil people are rewarded in life, and the Afterlife/Paradise is just a con to keep the peasants from revolting.

With weather this nice, it would be a shame not to use it properly so Dad, who hurt his back yesterday, suggested I go for a bike ride. So I did.

See my Google+ shared map location. If you can see it, you've been friended. If you want to see it, ask me. With 70+ unique IP address views per day, but only 2 followers, apparently I have more shy friends than I realized.

View Grass Valley Overview in a larger map

So, the route. I went up my street, climbing all the way. Parallel to Ridge Road over to the church across from the Nevada Union High School. Union is NOT an idle name. The locals voted one side or the other during the civil war. Grass Valley, being mostly Irish and such were northerners so opted for the Union side. Nevada City, mostly being southerners from Georgia and such, voted with the South and the Confederacy. Lest you worry, there were NO BATTLES fought in the civil war here in California. There were drunken words, but it was mostly an Eastern Problem, not one for the West. Slavery was illegal here as soon as the Spanish lost in the coup d'etat of 1848 at Governor Vallejo's home up in Sonoma. Its a nice little wood house, btw. He signed the surrender and then asked: "Can I go back to bed?" I admire his candor.

Anyway, from the high school, I turned up Ridge road and went up hill till I saw a street sign for Via Colina and looped down through that over to Evergreen, then Ridge Estates loop as well. Not bad, actually. Heavily treed and shady in the long summers, probably a bitch for satellite reception and power blackouts when branches fall on the lines in storms, so own a generator if you live there, but not bad. For being 3 blocks from the biggest high school in this part of the county you could hardly tell. Rich people aren't WRONG to retire here. It really is nice. Its just not nice to try and make a living here. Rich people are stingy, and won't pay for labor at any kind of living wage. The streets there are kinda rough, which is common up here. Some of the gravel used in streets is softer so wears away fast. I see people riding bicycles with those super thin narrow tires and I have to wince. On these roads that's a lot of flat tires and bruised crotch. I love my 2.5 inch wide slicks. They're great on these roads. Grippy, roll over the bad bumps, plenty of shock absorption and no flats (yet). They even go over glass, rare as that is.

After dipping into those neighborhoods, I was back on Ridge Road headed uphill to the East, towards Nevada City. It was pretty fast to the top of the hill, then coasted down all the way to the crazy intersection near the old National Guard Armory, the school district office, and the main CDF firehouse at the bottom of that steep hill. I then turned right towards Town Talk road and proceeded to pedal up the hill once more. I'm glad I've got blinky lights. The shadows and narrow road mean lots of cars came pretty close, but after Sonoma Mountain Road near misses, everything else since then is "Meh". Only the really crazy drivers try to hit you on purpose. Most do their part to miss. Tourists are money, after all. Once I coasted through the intersection of East Main, and Banner Lava Cap at the top of the hill, sound the freeway below tires and engines whistling through, I coasted easily down into Burger Basin, as we call it, through the mess of traffic near McD's and the gas stations, then along East Main, slowing to pedal uphill past various businesses and Humpty Dumpty, a local breakfast restaurant that recently reopened after a long rebuild following a fire. I climbed East Main until I crested the hill, then down to Sierra College, a steep slow hill taking all my breath and concentration in 2nd gear low to climb. Easier than Hughes, being shorter, but still a hard climb. At the top are lots of medical offices, Briar Patch natural foods co-op, a firehouse, and the college itself, which I attended briefly. A pity it doesn't take itself seriously and only offers feeder courses that require you to commute to Roseville or Rocklin to graduate. Once you're wasting that kind of time and money on the commute, why bother building a business up here? Many graduates leave the state, things are so bad. Sigh. It doesn't matter how good the weather is if unemployment means you have to live in a tent.

Down that hill from the Roundabout at Sierra College and back home at a long lazy coast. Fun. It was about a 7 mile ride. Couldn't have asked for nicer weather to ride in. I look at the map and realize there's some interesting roads I could climb, if I were stronger. A pity I don't know anybody tough enough to want to ride with me around here, but that's people. Its not like I have any friends in this town. Many acquaintances, though. The kind that are always busy, always leaving town to be somewhere else. I guess they just don't see the beauty around them, but there's no accounting for taste, is there?

Shaded Relief and the Evocative Writer

YAY! I found a shaded relief map online. One that shows hiking trails and its free. I can find what I want and print it. Since I can read a map, unlike most people, that makes this easier.

I don't have to pay for a fancy GPS now. I can get one that's simpler and cheaper, fitting my budget. When I look at them, I keep bouncing up to better receivers, though, for features or screen size. I need to get control of that urge and remember minimalism. I can get a waterproof Nexus someday, for GIS updating of Google Maps and Wikimapia. I don't need that right now. One with GPS built in. I'll get an altimeter and thermometer separately. They even put those in a watch or an instrument like a stopwatch on a cord. I was already good at spotting trails, and with boots, as long as I'm above the Poison Oak, I don't mind tramping through brush. As long as you've got water, its all good.

The 4th was hot. I went to the parade with my Dad and about 2000 locals. Floats, marching bands, local theaters advertising their plays or musicals, the boy and girl scout troops, and political organizations chanting for the unreasonable. There's a lot of variety around here. Not all of it sane. It was really hot, over 90'F and 100% humidity with virga falling and the sky full of thunderheads and clouds which eventually moved east and dumped big rain in the high Sierras and Nevada. Nevada got hammered with rain yesterday. Kind of impressive. Since temps rose to 100'F on the 4th, I spent most of the rest of the day indoors after a long satisfying shower, and allowed my laundry to take advantage of the heat out on the clothesline. Sun dried clothes smell good, despite being covered in lint and crackling when you take them off the line, being so stiff.

The weather this morning is 69'F, much cooler with a Delta Breeze from the ocean 200 miles away. You can taste the cool sea humidity on your tongue, smell it deep in your nostils. I always enjoyed the caress of fog when I lived in my home town. We'd get heat waves that would eventually break when the fog surged in. The sound goes wonky in the fog. The fog itself is silent, a blanket that covers roads, trees, the sky, and drops the temperature 30 degrees in a moment. The difference is startling. It can kill, too. Hypothermina happens rapidly in fog. Locals raised there, like me, always carry a sweatshirt/sweater and jacket, even if its 100'F at the moment because around 5-6 PM, the fog will come and it will get painfully cold. Go out to dinner or a movie or into a department store or mall in the heat, come out into fog and visibility measured in tens of feet. One of the things I disliked about unPton is they rarely got fog. I was used to it, I liked it. I'm fond of it. Fog is great. It is something to enjoy but also respect. Ignoring fog on the road can kill you, missing a turn. Happens often. Fog is frequently a cause of car crashes and road fatalities.

I would move home if the people living there weren't such corrupt bastards. My prayers for a plague is yet more proof that Atheism is the truth, that religion is the big lie. I'm so glad I came up with that gimmick to my novel about becoming gods. Offending peoples sensibilities is great. And when you publish, all press is good press.

I recently read several chapters of an incomprehensible story about Keitaro and company of Love Hina crossed over with Urusei Yatsura, which is one of those unwanted harem space monster stories. Urusei means "shut up!" in Japanese if you didn't know. The author, who apparently worked with a partner on this, forgot to describe much of anything, especially the characters, so if you didn't know them intimately, it read flat. It was a failure. I'm tempted to email this person and explain where they're getting it wrong, since my own Love Hina story has 25,554 fans and counting, as of a couple days ago when I last looked at the hits. I'm still impressed that writing Keitaro seriously, and fleshing out the guy into someone more real, into a person with feelings that could be hurt after all, was so compelling to readers.

I want to write more characters like that in future, and that's what I plan with my story about the father who becomes a god, lowercase g. I keep coming up with ideas for that one, little tidbits and scenes and character interactions. This is part of what makes me a good writer. Not a hack. I'm tempted to reference Haruhi Suzumiya directly, as curses for example. "Haruhi's ghost!" or "Suzumiya, defend me!". And perhaps some Kyon quotes. He is wonderful, after all. Haruhi is God, capital G. And Kyon is her boyfriend. A long-suffering boyfriend. I encourage all readers to watch that anime: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. In Japanese with subtitles. The voice acting of the original cast is exquisite. It was world famous for good reason.

I want more details for my other story, for Heart of the Awl, which is slightly based on Love Hina, but with believable characters in America, post collapse, living in the Cascadia trade bloc. How those different affiliations don't change too much daily living, just removes some strain of supporting a bloated cancerous parasite called Washington DC or its sibling, New York City. Remove them from the equation and life in America gets more bearable. I have lots of ideas for that story. Its hard to write, though. I've put a lot of research on that one into scooters, since the hero rents them as a job, which means he has to maintain them. His hands are often soaked in oil and grease and he's often fighting frustration over how dead end his life is, and the girls who rent from his boarding house while attending the college down the road. I want to describe a local shop that builds beautiful Deus-like rebuilds, beautiful and functional, and how the hero is jealous of their success and quality. One rarely gets to write a character who is jealous of someone else doing BETTER. Worse, I'm going to make the craftsman nice and friendly to the hero, conscientious and kind to the struggling rental company. When you're on top, you can afford to be kind. Its one of the more subtle messages lost to gamer-culture folk who apply gamer cruelty to real life business and get shocked when it doesn't work.

Then again, I always liked fishing in my video games with sword and sorcery. Fishing is hilarious. Its an abrupt left turn of mentality in a game about notching up a database. In the real world, most men fish to get away from their wives, around once a month. I'd say that was an idle comment but I'm divorcing so its really not. I enjoy fishing but I don't do it very often. I don't see much fish in the rivers and lakes here. My Dad disagrees with me, but he usually does, mostly to be disagreeable. I didn't become contrarian spontaneously. Fishing is simple. And smelly. Don't fish with a woman who won't bait her own hook. And don't date fussy women if you can help it. It doesn't matter how good they look. They're already nuts, and this is the tip of the iceberg. I speak from experience.

I sometimes wish I had a laptop for the sole purpose of writing. For that to work, it needs at least 20 hours of battery life and only requires enough computing power to run Word-equivalent word processor. My language skills in ENGLISH are the very best. 25K fans, remember. It would be helpful if this laptop has a big Backspace key so my short pinky can hit it easily, and that it's waterproof and shockproof so I don't have to worry about bumping it or sudden downpours or humidity. You didn't know that humidity can fry a lithium battery? Yep. Frequent cause of death was leaving a cellphone in a bathroom while showering. That was enough to fry it. An upside to writing Scifi is you can include these sorts of almost-fantasy gizmos as "of course" technology that are ubiquitous and cheap. Anyway, that laptop doesn't exist yet. Maybe someday it will. So I can sit down somewhere with an inspiring view and write a scene I've been struggling with. Evocative description sells books. And I want to get PAID.

Heat Wave, July 4th, and Vintage

July 4th is Thursday. My ancestors are in the national record for having helped liberate America from the British. New arrivals to America are taught about the revolutionary war in order to be granted citizenship. My family were there. A lot of our biases come from that war, and our suffering passed down. The Civil War was no picnic, and while it addressed the issues of tyranny, history is written by the victors, and both sides of that conflict were doing bad things. More bias passed down. Our society is unfair, built on cruelty and lies, but that's sadly traditional when it comes to people. We're an Evil species. Its a real shame.

There are two reasons that Californians are obsessed with Cars. One is our state is the size of most of the East Coast, a really huge amount of land, most of it empty, dry, and with vast distances to cover going from one populated spot to another, often where water or weather are. The other reason is that with it being empty, its easy to get away from the Evil (other people) by driving out of town. To a lesser extent, we'll take any vehicles. Observing masochism in action makes me sad, but we all get to live with our choices, even when we try and shove them off onto others.

I really wish I had a place with a big garage so I could buy an old bike, make it work and make it pretty, ride it to work. Then buy a trailer and strip it, insulate it so it can be cooled or heated properly, and turn it into a mobile HOME, a place to live in with my modest SINGLE needs.

We've had 100'F heat for days now. The low, overnight, was 80'F for the last few nights. I'm glad I have a fan to cool me while I sleep. It means I CAN sleep. Most of my coworkers can't, and complain bitterly of sleep deprivation, being sticky from sweat, etc.

Last evening, thunderstorms started building, and got huge over Nevada and California. The sky is GREY this morning and the sun isn't making much headway at lighting the world. You can see, but its dim out there. No shadows. I'm wondering if I should park my car with the sunroof closed just in case it rains. And its going to be 101'F despite the sweaty air. I am expecting lightning strikes and fires from these thunderstorms. There was a noticeable orange tint to the light all day yesterday, from a fire in Arizona whose smoke filtered its way into the middle atmosphere and rolled into California, visible across the whole valley as well. That color makes the light look really weird, and the orange turns greens blue so signs and plants just look eerie. I am often reminded of the fragile state of life here, of the disasters which define the state and its non-visitor residents. I accept the disasters as reality. New arrivals don't. Eventually they either accept it or leave. Temp is already 88'F at 8:00 AM. Yikes. Its going to be miserable hot today.

This heat would be both good and bad for a convertible. Good because in the morning with the top down its the perfect temperature. Bad because driving home after work it will be 100'F and the A/C won't work with a rag top. When its truly horrendous heat, I see most ragtops closed, A/C blasting, driver miserable. A convertible just isn't the right car for people on a budget. You need a grocery getter, one that's got rain protection, and a garage to park the convertible in the winter. That just turns into lots of money. I'd rather have a 19 foot airstream and welding shop in my garage. Of course, with the way things are going economically, that's unlikely to happen. Scaling back your dreams to reality is an ongoing effort in this economy. It ALWAYS gets worse, not better.

People who don't think twice about owning an open topped car like a convertible or jeep shudder at the danger and risk of a scooter or motorcycle. Probably because they don't realize the scooter or motorcycle gets better than Prius MPG, while the convertible is heavier than a family sedan so slower and uses more gasoline. There's good reason most convertibles are owned by rich people. If you're not rich, you can't afford the gas. You may as well be driving a pickup truck. Not to say this was always true. Before the obsession with "safety" during the 1990's, convertibles were powered by tiny engines with good fuel economy. Some bug-eye sprites have 600cc engines and get 60 mpg. They aren't FAST, but they're small, light, and economical. The original Fiat 500 was named that for the size of its engine, a 500cc two-stroke that smoked like a fiend, buzzed, and was unreliable, often stranding you with a hot Italian girl, which led to a shotgun wedding and bouncing baby 7 months later. For Italy, the 500 was a great dating machine in a Catholic country. The new one is a sad commentary on failure. The canvas roof was great too. The new one is too practical, not at all like the original. Its cute, though. And its the right direction for the nation, finding ways to make Bubble Cars fun. This is a good use of Vintage.

The Hipsters are teased for riding scooters and mopeds and old bikes instead of taking The Bus. My bus-riding experiences, and BART, were like Zims. They motivated me to get serious about 2-wheeled transportation. I must read more of the riding manual today. Pick a random page during break, read it. Find something I didn't know. I'm still peeved that the "right engine" doesn't yet exist. With modern CNC, they keep cheating to avoid building the parts to scale, introducing inherent inefficiencies. If we had a 400cc racing class for street bikes, you can bet they'd do it right. Especially if it was high speed road races, with climbs and turns. I can think of many roads this would be just fine and hardly disruptive to real traffic, being rural. It could be a racing series to show it off. Throw in modern HD cameras and GPS and you'd have something worth doing. Imagine if it were formula based, with regulations to force competitors to tweak the technology, then it filters down into real bikes. It would be interesting. Even when the gasoline runs out, this is still valuable because the amount of fuel used in racing a series for a year is less than a day of commuting in any normal city. It also keeps people engaged in real technology instead of endless simulations. Stuff I got tired of working in GIS and programming. I wanted to get my hands dirty and hold what I made, physically. Speaking of, time for work.

Have a good 4th. Remember your freedoms came from blood and sacrifice, and discarding those insults our ancestors and their sacrifices.

The Wrong Degree

When I went to college, I started out heading for an Architecture degree at Cal Poly. I took my SATs and didn't do that well, and I'm white and Reverse Discrimination was allowed by the Supreme Court, so Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo told me no, I had the wrong color skin and they weren't taking Asians that year either. I didn't want to go to Berkeley and didn't have the grades for there either, and Davis was also beyond my reach. Straight A or don't even apply. I wanted a creative program, for building mansions for rich people, because my 3 years of Drafting prep showed that's what I was good at. I designed houses like you'd expect to find millionaires living in out on the coast, or perched on a mountain, striking, interesting, good for showing off subtle wealth, yet still livable while lording it over the peons. I liked house building. It was fun. When you have a 165 IQ for geometry, it makes great sense to do that. But the SAT doesn't test for that so Cal Poly lost me forever. On the upside, I've since learned that Cal Poly graduates are half idiots, drooling thoughtless morons, half of them, because I worked with them and found out for sure. I would NEVER hire one, on the 50% chance that its one of the morons. Chico grads are smarter.

I changed majors to Physics. I'd been studying cosmology since I was 11, being a big fan of Nova (PBS documentary show on science) and really found it interesting. I'd struggled with calculus, having had a BAD teacher in high school, and another bad teacher in college, so bad I dropped the course. I retook it in college and barely scraped through. For a semester before transfer from the JC to SSU, which was the local Cal State U in the next town over, I went to physics meetings organized by the physics club. I met a lot of famous guys, brought up from Berkeley or around the world, talking about their discoveries, showing off the math. I learned to respect the math. And that I could analyze it by listening to their assumptions and pointing out the flaws. Flawed assumptions show up in the experiments, often invalidating the result. If only they'd had ME to double check them before spending millions of our grant money. I would write down my question and ask at the end. I got a lot of jaws dropped, almost every meeting, by pointing out the Emperor has no Clothes to famous physicists. I suppose this is where I learned to enjoy tossing logic grenades into the room and smirking at the faces.

I destroyed the Onionspace Theory with  a pointed question. Its currently known as Inflation (Cosmology), and remains unproven and untestable. A pity because the idea of infinite universes and a neverending Big Bang, is rather delicious. We could hop to a lower universe and never die off, you see. Infinite resources, infinite energy, infinite life. No need for space ships. Build a portal and walk from this earth to that one. Repeat till you find one you like. When that gets ruined, repeat again. So far there's no way to prove it. Best description of a test I've seen was testing for the curvature of space using some massive error shady test that I'm afraid I just don't buy. A pity. At least it was working along reasonable lines for a test. I'd like to see it tested more thoroughly.

My problem came after I transferred and found the classes really hard, entirely math based with few experiments, deeply boring, and nothing about cosmology. I also learned that I needed a lot of help to pass calculus, that it was beyond my abilities. I am a genius for shapes, not numbers. Not being able to do Calculus closed most of the doors of the ambition I possessed. No science, no engineering. No design.

At this point, I was so full of despair suicide looked like the right answer and I ended up pouring my grief and failure into my novels, which went from slow simmer to full boil. I wrote dozens of short stories, 5 novels, and an autobiography by the time I finished college.

My next degree choice was flipping a coin between Biology and Geology. I was equally interested in each subject, and discarded Archaeology as unemployable (still is). My birthday was a major quake. I figured it was a sign, and the girls were hotter and more slutty in Geology. This turned out to be true, to my grief. They were Lanterns, not Candy, and lanterns are bright and shining. Hard to resist, even if the attraction means you get burned. And I did. More fuel for my novels.

By the time I finished my geology degree, the president at the time, some easily forgotten Southern bastard from a trailer park who couldn't keep it in his pants, had shut down the largest employer of geologists, the government agency called the US Geological Survey. In operation for a couple centuries, mapping and cataloging the land and its resources in the USA for the public good. He shut it down, fired 75% of them, and waited. A couple years later, his Veep offered the survivors a job lying about global warming to suit his politics, via govt controlled grants and cult behavior. The misinformation and propaganda feed a cult of blame.

I picked the wrong degree. Many of the people I've known did too. Someone we trusted told us to follow our dreams, people called our parents. That was bad advice, but we shouldn't expect good advice from the Spoiled Generation that failed to raise us. I don't like them very much. They deserve being abandoned in rest homes. Its their doom. We're too busy cleaning up after their lives to clean up after them when they crap themselves. They never seem to have grown out of it.