Free Personal Checks, down with service fees

So in general you have to preregister for all bike races, otherwise they'll fill up and if you show up on race day you won't be able to race. Of course if you're a woman, or you're old, your race won't fill up. Nonetheless, it's good to preregister. There are two ways to do this. The first is the old fashioned way, send in a check. The second way is to use a site called bikereg.com which accepts a credit card and charges you a couple extra dollars for the service fee.

I hate paying the service fee, so I always do it the old fashioned way. However, I recently wrote my last check, so I checked the prices for new ones on my bank, bankofamerica's website. 10 dollars for 50 checks-20 cents per check. At that price it almost becomes worth it to go pay the service fee as you get instantaneous confirmation. However, I figured I could go to the bank and get some starter checks for free, which the bike race organisers would accept since they have no choice as they didn't put no starter checks on their flyers. However, this morning I was informed no such checks are available, but one can use the free online bill pay feature to have the bank print a check and send it through the mail to whatever race you're interested in doing. I still need to spend postage on the rider release form, but I consider it a victory for the old fashioned way and a defeat to bikereg's exorbitant service fees, which I hate.

Coincidentially, I happened to read Frank Abignail's book, The Art of Stealing, (he is also the protagonist of Catch me if you Can), and check fraud is quite easy to commit. Anyone can order checks from many different vendors with your account info on them and have them shipped to their address, not the address written on the checks. They need only a good look at one of your checks. They can then cash these checks at will on your dime. I suppose not having any checks at all thwarts this tactic.

Dreams of Googling Crushed...

So my Gemstone mentor sent my name along to Google as a potential candidate for their summer internship program. About two weeks later, I got an email from them asking me to schedule a phone interview. I was really excited, and psyched, until one night, very late, while cruising the Wolframm website to use the Integrator to do some electromagnetics problems, I happened across a copy of the Google Aptitude Test, along with solutions in Mathematica on that site. Suffice it to say, I went into the interview pretty freaking scared. It turns out, the researcher who had been interested in me had misinterpreted something I had in my resume. She is working on GooglePrint, which will have a massive database of searchable documents. I had had a job two summers ago reading and classifying astronomy journal articles, and she mistakenly thought that I had designed some system to do this automatically. Nope, it was actually pretty low-tech.

A week later, I get a rejection email. Oh well, I guess it was never meant to be. I am and will remain, an amateur googler.

Racing begins

Biking season has started, and I'm sad to say I am not really in the best shape of my life. I intend to get there though by summer. Nonetheless I've had some really good results. I've really improved my bike handling skills and I'm substantially more assertive in the pack. If this sounds like gobbly gook to you, imagine 80 riders on a one lane road all vying for position at the front of the pack, but not at the very front (the ideal position is about 5 riders back). Why all this nonsense you say? Well aerodynamic drag forces are the major retarding force in road cycling, and getting right behind another rider saves a tremendous amount of energy. So the plan is get someone else to do all the work until the end when you sprint for the win. Of course strategies get more complex, and riders take turns going into the wind and end up going way faster than they could alone. Ultimately you need to be smart, lucky, skillful, and strong to do well on a consistent basis. As you can imagine there's lots of bumping in such a pack, especially as we go round corners and such. I've really improved my ability since last year to take and give out bumps at high speeds through corners, and I'm pretty excited for the rest of our season. Also, the amount of g forces I can handle while cornering has increased, meaning that I can go a bit faster through corners, though it helps to have seen and tried them first.

So while my legs are not as strong as they could be, I'm working on the tactical side of cycling, which has some hidden benefits. If my legs were a bit better I'd be forced to race A's and the leader of the A team is like a spoiled child. He really doesn't know how to have fun racing the bike and is always yelling and throwing little fits. I could tell a countless number of astounding stories regarding his amazing lack of character, but suffice to say it's more fun not to race with him than to race with him. I suppose if I didn't have to leave my bike in college park over winter break I could have come back strong enough to be the leader of the A team, but that's not how it went, plus I'd have to be way stronger since I have way less experience and skills. I'm just going to work on skills and tactics, and my fitness should be good by summer. Then I can pick and choose my team mates, and hopefully race really hard with some deserving team mates.

In addition racing b's is quite a bit of fun, everyone is more laid back and easy going, though I'd rather be doing the A's kicking but there. Nonetheless, when you consider that biking is my recreation, I think the B category is the best one for me for that purpose. While I probably have the fitness and skill to get away with racing A right now, I think that would create more stress than the added prestige and pride would be worth. I'm already a bit close to a mandatory upgrade though and next weekend may be my last B weekend.

I've included some some links pictures to somewhat express what bicycle racing is like, though it really can't express the white knuckled frustration of being in a huge 80 man deep pack on a narrow one lane country road zipping for corners and vying for position.

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~jonesmd/PresidentsCriterium2005/
Mike Jones, renaissance man.

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~neilg/cyclingearlyseason2005/index.html
all taken by me, so none of me, also some pretty bad ones.

http://www.wvu.edu/~bike/navy_pics.html
has a sweet video of me off the front coming out of a 180 degree downhill turn(b race).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/niels_olson/
not too much good stuff

http://community.webshots.com/user/rando31337
plenty of good stuff

random others worth looking at:
http://www.woofdesigns.com/WDsomething.htm

C men only(not me):
http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=6wi23q.7imrbamb&x=0&y=-b6zriy

all pics of my race:
http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=6wi23q.2msq25oj&x=0&y=-u7dqft

Note, our three girls are doing an amazing job and took first second and thrid in their first race. I'm looking forward to the point where they start racing women's A and really challenge themselves. I think they're still a bit hesitant to move up, but a few more sweeps and hopefully they'll look for the challenge of the A feild. No chance they'll sweep that this year though, not as long as a certain UVA girl shows up. She was competeing in the men's B feild in a hard road race with plenty of hard climbing which ended up dropping all but 17 men and her. Though to be fair, she did cheat by using the oncoming traffic lane to advance, and should have been disqualified right then and there as the oncoming traffic lane is not blocked off. I think they'll still see plenty of good finishes in the a's though.

Also of note, we have two c riders who look like they will be quite good as well. One won the road race, another got third in the criterium this weekend. Looks to be a good season.

Updated Baleros Records

Standard method:
3/7/05 - Alan - 47 in a row.
J-method:
3/7/05 - Joey - 12 in a row.

By the way, this game is called "emboque" in Chile, where I bought it a craft fair in the town where my grandmother lives.

Pasta Dinner

So last week I agreed to host a Pasta Dinner Friday evening to prepare ourselves for the first race. I made all kinds of plans to get my carless self to the grocery store and to put together a terrific menu, as certain cyclists can be extremely hard to please-some even get the label "pre-Madonna." At this point I'm thinking I need to make something great everyone will enjoy to foster a good time and prove myself as some of the other members really look down their noses at me, for I tend to eat a lot, and I'm not very picky. To a pre-Madonna, someone who is not picky is someone with really bad taste so I think this is why not very many people had RSVPed. This also may have had to do with a statement in the invitation about habaneros.

Then, Thursday evening the best looking girl on the cycling team reminds me that she is planning on making tons of baked ziti, and can bring some Cesar salad too, and that I don't need to do anything. She puts this on our cycling forum and our listserv and bam, all of a sudden lots of people are free to come. We filled my little apartment and had a great time shooting each other with the various nerf guns our apartment keeps a stalk of. The only down note was that not having checked my email all day I didn't clear enough room for all the guests to sit, but I think everyone made do and had a good time. I think she really made the party a success.

Moral of the story:Beautiful women who can cook are great. Especially for parties.

You WISH you had this

So we were pretty happy with the television we've had in the living room of the apartment all year. Unfortunately it suddenly developed the annoying property of showing VH1 on every single channel. Needless to say, we were force to replace it. But there's no need to get rid of the old one! Instead, I rigged up a cable splitter with some paper clips and electrical tape (fancy, huh?) and stacked the two. Best of all, since they are both Magnavoxes, they can be controlled with one remote. The mute button toggles between sound on one and the other. I think it's pretty sweet, except for the fact that no one in their right mind would actually want to watch VH1.

Disc wheel covers Update

So the university of maryland sign and graphics shop was so kind as to donate 4 18"x 36" blank corrugated plastic pieces to my disk wheel project. All I had to do was ask. I'm going to ride by home depot tomorrow and pick up some velco, and hopefully the project will be under way. more pictures later.

University of Maryland Reservations Office seeks to deny student groups first amendment rights

Last semester officers of the Students for Life club were denied use of Mckeldin mall for a little cemetary of the innocent demonstration.
I have been able to reserve Mckeldin Mall on behalf of Students for Life, but not without the reservations office, in particluar Steve Adams, telling me I had no right to do so. However, each time I show him the Guidelines on Demonstrations and Leafleting he suddenly remembers one can reserve McKeldin Mall for such things. I am therefore publishing this link for posterity. Look for the following text:

Special Guidelines for Scheduled Demonstrations
Recognized University organizations, full or part-time students and current employees of the University who wish to schedule a demonstration, rally or equivalent activity, may request the space through the regular reservation procedure. Any such request must be made no less than one business day in advance of the activity. The Office of Campus Reservations will respond promptly to any reservation request. In the event a request is denied, an appeal may be made to the Vice President for Student Affairs who shall respond promptly to any such appeal. Demonstrations will be permitted at the following locations, unless another University department or organization has previously reserved the space: McKeldin MallEngineering FieldSouth Chapel FieldHornbake PlazaStamp Student Union (South East Plaza)Nyumburu Amphitheatre
Demonstrations may be held at other locations on campus with the approval of the Vice President for Student Affairs on a first-come, first-serve basis after an assessment that such demonstrations will not otherwise interfere with scheduled University use or fail to comply with the guidelines applicable to all demonstrations.

It's really irritating that he denies our first amendment right while letting other groups reserve it no problem, for the day after we requested the mall some group protesting something in the middle east got the mall without hassle. Someday maybe someone will report this to the vice president for student affairs as perscribed in the guidelines, but as long as Mr. Adams is cooperating why let some other bureaucrat's bias mess up our club's plans.

For the record such statements as "Mckeldin is public domain therefore no one is supposed to really do things on it at all" or "they just changed the policy and now events will only be held on Hornbake Mall" are total BS.