Lee.org

(This was supposed to be posted in the summer of 2013 but it got stuck in my Drafts folder. Actually, I want to write many many more good things about Minnesota and tighten up the writing here but I figure it’s time to just let this post fly)

How I Spent My Summer or Life on a Northern Minnesota Island  

Megan and I spent the last 2 weeks on a privately owned island with friends that may have well been family.

Located roughly between the triangle between Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, and Duluth in more ways than one, we had a tremendous vacation.

The island was formed by glaciers some twenty thousand years ago, stretching long and lean eleven hundred feet north-south and mostly 100 feet wide, but bulging out to almost 500 feet east-west at the northern proboscis.

Megan and I got in a lot of living on our trip!

• The surprisingly glorious Mall of America
• Sailing near Canadian waters with Don & Craig
• Swimming in Rainy Lake
• Kettle Falls boat trip & lunch (fried walleye and a Reuben!) & touring with Robin, Becky and Lucas
• Working on the Review Islands with Robin & Bob, getting a tour of historic Mallard Island and Ernest Oberholtzer’s legacy
• Playing dominoes & Set & Settlers of Catan
• Shooting Star gazing on the dock with family
• Being the last car in the Ranier Days parade!!
• Getting a tour of the house & garden of Sarah & Don’s place in International Falls
• Seeing Don Johnson’s Memoir Books of life on Rainy Lake at Coffee Landing… and then seeing the originals in the house on the island
• Megan saw Planes with Sarah, Don & Billy
• Great food: spaghetti with homemade sauce, tamari chicken, cold quinoa salad, pancakes, frittata….
• Sunsets seen from the Happy Shack
• Getting a tour of the (1,000′ x 200′) island
• Looking for blueberries on the island and only finding sour mini cherries
• Billy saying “there’s water on the floor in the bathroom” (uh oh!), “I’m not talking at you!”, “That’s my moon… you can look at it…”
• Living in the “1st cabin”
• A giant spider with egg sack living in our outhouse
• Dockboy Lee! – cuz he’s often the first one to the dock when a boat arrives, to help bring stuff up the hill
• Stomping trees with Chris
• Getting 10-12 hours sleep per night!
• Chickens doing their job with their vuvuzelas for our breakfast

I ordered eight sensible gifts from Cards Against Humanity for Abigail for Hannukkah. The gifts were AMAZING! Really. They were inspiring, thoughtful, absurd, touching… just amazing!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Abigail isn’t Jewish, she’s a toddler! She welcomes presents from all religious and secular sources.

The first 3 nights were, of course, socks! You can’t have Hannukkah without lots of socks. Each pair came with nice, hand-written letters from dads. I don’t know whose dads but they were obviously lovingly written. Sensible as they a gift, they were unfortunately too large for Abigail’s tiny feet.

The fourth night held a Cards Against Humanity US Treasury Inflation Protected Securities Fund and a letter about the value of being thrifty! They friggin’ sent Abigail a dollar in an interest bearing account to keep safe! It’s like they were helping her open her first bank account! Yes, it’s a real dollar in a real account. The redemption information is on the back.

And here’s a photo of the tuppence bank scene in Mary Poppins for reference :-)

Here’s a snapshot of her investment portfolio. As you can see, since investing in November, her $1 has already turned into at least $1.00024645!

Then things started getting cray-cray. For the fifth night of hannukkah, they made Abigail a supporting member of NPR through WBEZ Chicago! So many firsts! So she’s like really a member of NPR now!

Next up, they gave the Chinese workers that actually print Cards Against Humanity a week of paid vacation. This might sound a bit odd but those folks live in the kind of place where they literally didn’t have a procedure for filing for vacation. The note explained how the CAH folks had to “buy” a week of nothing and then tell the workers to go home. It was accompanied by photos and thank-you cards from the people that work there. That is such a beautiful thing. There was also an awesome letter from “Josh’s dad” about the nature of gratitude. You can read more about it here.

Day Seven: This is when shit went off the rails. Stolen from their website:

We used the money for the seventh night of Hanukkah to purchase Tête de Faune, an original 1962 Picasso. The 150,000 people who subscribed to our Eight Sensible Gifts for Hanukkah now have a chance to vote: should we donate this work to the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, or should we laser-cut it into 150,000 tiny squares and send everyone their own scrap of a real Picasso?

Again, a link. As of this writing, they haven’t gotten back to us about the fate of the Picaso. It included a hand written letter from “David M.’s Dad” about the nature of culture.

Last and greatest, they made Abigail king for a day! Well, strictly speaking, she will be king for exactly 3 minutes. They bought a castle in Ireland and are letting each of the 150,000 people that bought in have their turn at ruling it! Yes, it’s a real castle. Though it’s rather modest. No hot water, no heat… not even a roof. But it is a certifiable, verifiable castle! You can read some of the proclamations of prior kings here!
Abigail’s turn at rulership be August 4th, 2016 10:06am-10:08 Central time. Look for some big changes!

Here’s a local copy of the manual for the Britax Advocate car seat. One of ours was manufactured 8-2015, the other 10-2015. We own one for each of our cars. There are good instructions and videos on how to install it on the Britax website.

Nerd alert: Here’s my latest attempt at hypermiling in our 2012 Prius C. I was stuck in 30-50 mph traffic on 880 North for a while on a trip in December. I went 11.8 miles averaging 80.4 mpg.

A friend asked me some advice on what books to get for school. Here is my school book advice:

I have thought a lot about books and tried various things. Here’s what I do these days.

I buy all the required reading at the very beginning of the semester from Amazon. I figure that I can sell it back on Amazon if I want to keep it and only lose a little bit. That strategy has worked out well… low stress and generally inexpensive. Only a few times have I been stuck with a book that has a new edition, thus devaluing my book greatly. I figure that if I am trying to save $100 by not getting a book, and that is getting in the way of a $70,000/year job, my priorities are in the wrong place!

To sell on Amazon: I generally match the lowest price and it usually sells within 2 weeks. I ship USPS “Media Mail” which is usually about $3-4 instead of $8-15 for Priority Mail. Pay for shipping online, wrap the package, then walk into the post office, CUT IN LINE, set the package on the counter and say “my package is all set. Thanks.”

After I’ve bought the book, I find a PDF version as a personal backup. I leave this on my computer, this has been very useful for me as I study during my long commute. There is some question as to the legality of having the paper book and a PDF backup but this definitely isn’t a settled matter.

See a wonderful new drone firework artform!

With all this talk about drones being scary, here is a glimpse at the future of art!

Skip to 43 seconds
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/drones-beethoven-intel-world-record_5693ae9de4b0a2b6fb70b843

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Why Sauron Is Secretly The Good Guy In ‘Lord Of The Rings’

I’m a big fan of Cracked After Hours videos. At first I thought this would be their standard “pretty funny” but they really knocked it out of the park with this one. Come be a fan with me:

Steep Streets in San Francisco

I came across a blog post mentioning the steepest streets in San Francisco. When Charlotte and I lived there, there was one favorite steep street that I loved to drive down… I’d pull up to the corner of 22nd and Vicksburg in my Sebring, put down the top (drizzle or shine!) and look at the magnificent view. Then I’d slowly pull the car up the edge of the cliff; you couldn’t see any ground in front of the car any more. We’d pause there, on the precipice and I’d ask, “Ready? Set… Go!” I’d give it just a bit too much gas and we’d lurch over the edge! For a second you weren’t sure if we were flying or falling. It was wonderful!

I looked at the list and can say that the street I found was one of two contenders for “best drivable hill” in the city.

Filbert between  Hyde and Leavenworth ties our favorite street in steepness (31.5 degrees) and has a pretty darn good view. See it here!
Ripley and Peralta has the same steepness but the view is meh.
Baden above Mangels is steeper but it’s just a driveway. Disqualified!
Nevada above Chapman is another driveway with no view.
Prentiss between Chapman and Powhattan is another driveway!

Here is our view  at 22nd and Vicksburg.

Just over the edge.

Here are the two blog posts I saw with all the hill info.

And just so it doesn’t get lost, here are the contenders:

The Steepest Streets In San Francisco, For Real
1. Prentiss between Chapman and Powhattan (37% grade)
2. Nevada above Chapman (36% grade)
3. Baden above Mangels (34% grade) *
4. Ripley between Peralta and Alabama (31.5% grade)
5. Filbert between Hyde and Leavenworth (31.5% grade)
6. 22nd between Vicksburg and Church (31.5% grade)
7. 24th between Grand View and Fountain (30% grade)
8. Kearny above Broadway (30% grade) **
9. Holyoke between Karen and Woolsey (30% grade)
10. 25th above Grand View (30% grade)
11. Jones between Union and Filbert (29% grade)
12. Dwight above Goettingen (29% grade)
13. Folsom between Chapman and Powhattan (29% grade)
Source: Stephen Von Worley.
Notes: Ties are broken by the length of maximum slope.
* Crude, single lane pseudo-street, ** Grade unconfirmed.

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Annoyingly Incomplete Research Breeds Annoyingly Alarmist Message

I saw this article at ExpandedConciousness.com

“Why You Should Take Your Shoes Off Before Entering Your Home, Backed By Science”

It opens with:

While it may be commonplace in most Asian countries, the cultural norm of taking your shoes off before entering your home has yet to catch on in Europe and America. In Asian cultures it’s easily understandable as to why people remove their shoes before coming into a home as their meals are typically eaten on mats on the floor, and they sleep on rolled out futons at night.

A new study has researchers suggesting that maybe we might want to be more aware of what exactly we’re bringing into our homes via our shoes.

Bacteria in the home — Research conducted at the University of Houston found that 40% of shoes were carrying around the Clostridium difficile, or “C.diff”, bacterium. Infections caused by C.diff are highly resistant to antibiotics, which can lead to difficult and lengthy recovery times for anyone who becomes infected. C.diff is also able to survive in most areas of the household, including toilets, tops and surfaces, and wherever floor dust is found. Ready to take off your shoes yet?

Kinda scary, right? I’m always going to take my shoes off at home so me and my baby don’t get sick!
The trouble is, the article intentionally sensationalized and misrepresented the results of the research.

I read the research paper. The data and conclusions of the research did not match what the article implied. To paraphrase, the research said, “C.diff can get you sick. 1/3 of all our samples in homes had that bug on them. 40% of shoe bottoms had it, 30% of bathroom surfaces, 30% of floor dust.  Wow, that’s a lot… we think… maybe.” And that’s where they left it.

So my takeaway is: don’t lick the bottoms of my shoes, the floor, or my toilet. Thanks for the tip, guys.

If they had compared  rates of contamination in the different areas of the house, they might have come to some great conclusions.  For example, maybe people that have shoe bugs are more likely to have bugs elsewhere in the house (IE, maybe people track the bugs in on their shoes) . Or maybe not. They’ve got the raw data, why didn’t they crunch the numbers?

They didn’t have a control group. They said that floor dust was contaminated, was tabletop dust contaminated too? Maybe if they had tested silverware, frozen pizzas, and kitchen tables they would have had the same 30% contamination rates. But we’ll never know because they did bad science. I know all about bad science, I did some just last month.

Frickin’ grad students and their research projects.

Frickin’ sensationalist websites and their fear mongering.

You can find the abstract (a short summary) of the research here. You can find the full paper via a library that has access to scholarly journals. I used my San Jose State University library access.