It gets better

I grew up in rural Canada during the 60s. The Civil Rights movement of that era was just a distant rumble that didn’t penetrate in the consciousness of a young boy on a farm outside of Schomberg, Ontario. I think I heard when Martin Luther King was killed, but I had no idea who he was or why that was important.

So learning about it later, I have always wondered if I had been in the thick of it, would I have been on the right side. Maybe not marching to Selma, but at least not bad mouthing the people fighting for justice and freedom. And maybe, just maybe, offering them praise, monetary support, votes and doing whatever slactivism I could muster up. I mean, it seems to obvious now which side was the right side, but would it have seemed that way then?

And so I find myself looking at the current fight that’s going on by an oppressed minority, demanding the rights that they should have had from the beginning, and I think of it as “our” civil rights campaign, even though it’s not my civil rights I’m fighting for. It’s a chance to do something, so that in ages hence, I can say “yes, I did the right thing”. And so I am. Thanks to the New York Senate for finally passing this marriage equality bill. Thanks to Messiah Lutheran Church for becoming a “Reconciled” congregation. Thanks to the many ways, small and large that we’re winning this battle. We got to keep chiseling chunks out of the stone of ignorance.

Help me, smart people

This is how the v-rack is attached to the rack
This is my new v-rack. The connection is simple and strong, but it’s too simple for me. It doesn’t allow for access to my hatchback – I could probably get it open a tiny bit, but I’m afraid of the sharp edge of the square bar and what it would do to the glass of the hatch. What I want is either a quick and easy way to remove the rack entirely, or to undo the back clamp and pivot the whole thing forward around the front clamp, or even better, a quick and easy way to loosen up the connection once I take the boat off, so that I can slide the whole rack forwards so it’s not interfering with the hatch, and then slide it back and tighten it up again.

Some of the ideas I’ve had:

  • A quick release skewer from a bike. Not sure if I could get the size I want or whatever.
  • Something like a cable clamp, preferably one that goes over center and locks down really well.
  • Something like a cotterless hitch pin.
  • A plastic knob or wing nut to make it easier to unscrew.

Better ideas, or better explanations of my half-assed ideas above would be welcomed in the comments.

I’m back, baby

I paddled for the first time since my shoulder got bad, back in October. I didn’t go far, but that wasn’t the point. It was a chance to see how fit I am (terribly unfit), how fat I am (again, terrible – I couldn’t do up my PFD), how bad my shoulder is (not as bad as I thought based on experiments on the erg), how badly my technique has fallen apart (not bad at all), how bad my balance in the boat is (pretty bad – I nearly dumped several times and the boat was wobbling back and forth like a crazy thing).

I was also checking out the fit of my old rack on my new car. I originally bought this rack for my 2001 Corolla, and with the replacement of a couple of “Q-clips”, it has been on the Corolla, the Prius and now the CR-Z. It’s a little beat-up looking and the bars are ridiculously close together, but it’s on strongly enough that I can grab them and rock the car back and forth. I tied down my surf ski on top, and it actually held on pretty good, but then again I was only going a short distance on slow roads. I wouldn’t want to go anywhere other than Baycreek until I get my V-bars.

The last thing I wanted to check out was my new “million dollar” idea. I bought a coffee maker at the garage sale last month, and I cut out the “bubble pump”, a tiny one-way check valve that allows the hot water to flow up out of the reservoir into the grounds. I attempted to fit it in the venturi of the ski, figuring that would allow water to drain out at speed like it’s supposed to, but not to flow back in when you’re stopped, which is a pain in the ass at the start of a race. Unfortunately, I didn’t glue it in right, and water was flowing in around it. Even worse, it came out towards the end, and when I was getting out of the boat, I managed to lose it overboard.

Oh, that’s another thing I had problems with. When I finished, I approached the dock, and realized I was on the bad shoulder side. So I spun around (which unfortunately involved back-paddling on my bad side). But when I approached the dock, I still thought it felt a bit high. So I went to the other dock, the one the rental boats go in and out of. It’s much lower. I did my usual “sprawl onto the dock as the ski leans over on its side” ungraceful exit, but at least I ended up on the dock and not in the mucky water.

Overall, I probably paddled a little more than a mile and a half. I purposely didn’t bring my GPS because I didn’t want any incentive to go further or faster than I should. I had to rest a lot, but mostly because of how out of shape I am, not how sore my shoulder is. It feels easier in the boat than on the erg – last time I tried the erg, I was barely able to do 1000 metres (0.6 miles) in 200 metre increments. I’m going to try taping over some of the holes in the fan on the erg to see if reducing the resistance makes it more life-like at the slow speeds I’m paddling these days. But I tried to keep a good technique going while I was paddling, and I think that part at least hasn’t deteriorated too badly.

Man it feels good to be back.

My new car

After the crash last week, I was of two minds. I was worried that with that amount of damage, it would take them a ton of time to fix it, and it would never drive right again. So, I was kind of hoping that they’d total it. But that lead to another problem – thanks to the earthquake and tsunami, the supply of Priuses (Priuii?) was way down, and thanks to the fact that the US car consumer has the attention span of a goldfish and gas prices are high this year, demand is way up as people who stopped buying hybrids last year when gas went under $3 a gallon are now buying hybrids again. So I started looking at other cars.

And this is what I settled on, a Honda CR-Z “Sport Hybrid”. It’s not as efficient as the Prius and it’s not as big as a Prius. But it’s got a lot more bling. And possibly because it’s aimed at a weird market (not many people looking for “sporty” are looking for hybrids and not many people looking for hybrids are thinking “sporty”), our local Honda dealer had several in stock.

Downsides:

  • Not much room
  • Low to the ground, so hard to get in an out of
  • Really bad visibility over shoulder
  • Worse fuel economy than the Prius
  • Most importantly, the roof might be so short that it won’t provide much support to a kayak rack. I’m definitely going to have to get a V-rack, although Scott Stenberg suggested I get a trailer instead

Upsides:

  • Has Econ, Normal and Sport modes. There is a huge difference in throttle response and even steering tightness in Sport mode
  • Bluetooth
  • GPS
  • USB connector for iPod, displays the track and artist information on the display
  • Voice command for the Bluetooth and the GPS
  • 6 speed manual transmission
  • In Econ mode, it gives you information on how well you’re driving, including little “achievements” to shoot for. It’s like Farmville for cars.
  • In Sport mode, it is seriously fun to drive!

Yeah, I think I’ll pass

As an hourly rate contract programmer, I feel it necessary to always keep my eye on the local tech job postings, and apply for anything that looks interesting. Because there is no job security in my position, my goal is always to be ready to take something else either before or as soon as possible after my existing job ends. That means not just looking to see if there is anything better than what I’ve got now, but also making sure my resume is still attracting attention and making sure my interview skills are honed and practiced.

I’d never take an interview just for the sake of an interview, though. I always intend that if the job is sufficiently good, I’ll take it. (But “sufficiently good” will vary depending on how much I like my current job and how secure I feel in it.) It just wouldn’t be fair to the other people to waste their time just for the sake of practice. But because you can’t get a full sense of how good a job is just from a description on Monster or LinkedIn, though, you may not know if the job is one you’d take until you’ve been there and talked to the other developers and managers about the project. That’s especially true if you’re going through a head hunter because they try to hide details from you so you don’t bypass them and apply directly. (I’ll bypass the rant about the time that the head hunter hid the minor little detail that the job was only open to US citizens until after I’d accepted the job and handed in my resignation on my current job.)

I saw this ad on LinkedIn. It was pretty vague, so I asked about it. The person gave me a few more details so I sent her a resume. The only problem is that their main line of business is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Management). That’s a bit of a red flag – there are two ways of doing SEO and SMM, the ethical way, and the “spam every blog and forum and Facebook and Twitter with links to your site” evil way. So I knew I’d be spending any interaction with them examining them minutely for any sign of which side of the fence they sit.

I got an invitation to an interview. Ok, I hadn’t noticed before that they are in Buffalo, not in Rochester. That’s not a deal breaker, but I’m not happy about it. They also sent a “Employment Application”, and it’s a typical one you see from certain companies that look like they wrote it for every position in the company from janitor to CEO. I find it slightly insulting to be asked if I have any “Special skills” with checkboxes including Word and Internet Explorer as special skills. As far as I, or just about any other software developer in the world, is concerned, the only special skill you need with IE is how to use it to download a real browser. Again, not a red flag, but annoying.

And then I got to the “Consent and Disclosure Form”. The form asked for permission to produce this “investigative consumer report” for processing my application. It said “the report may include, but is not limited to, searches of … financial or credit agencies; criminal history information… and motor vehicle records”. It authorizes them to do this report “now, or at any time while I am employed by the Company”.

I wrote the HR person back and said I’m not interested in signing away those sort of rights to a company before I’ve even talked to them. She insisted that they wouldn’t actually do the search until after they’d made a conditional offer and accepted it, and said that they wouldn’t actually look for credit information or motor vehicle records. To which I replied that if they don’t want those rights, don’t make people sign papers giving them to them, and reiterated that I wasn’t coming to interview with them.