This Driver Is About to Have a Bad Time

This is a Google Maps street view of I-66 heading west, just past the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge and immediately after the "Lane Ends Merge Left" sign.

You see that dark Honda in the left lane about to drive over that dark line?

That driver is about to have a boneshakingly bad time.

A closer look shows why:

See that ridge in the road patch that looks like a very badly designed speed bump in the middle of the highway? That's exactly what it is.

It's been around for at least a few months. I first discovered it at night, coming back from a concert in DC. Since I don't drive into DC as much as I used to, I'd forget about it for a while, and then the next time BAM.

If I can figure out who to complain to, I'm hoping they can fix it; if not, we'll need to come up with a nickname for it, like Toronto's former "Humber Hump."

Requiem for a Mirror Snake

One of the characteristics of hoarders is the tendency to attach deep historical and emotional meaning to any object, no matter how mundane. It's why they can't throw anything out.

I'm not that bad (I think), but I'm a sentimentalist and keep a lot of useless stuff around because of history.

Case in point: My mirror snake.

It's a cheap stuffed animal I won from a crane machine during a high school Key Club leadership convention in the Poconos in 1988 or '89. Ever since then, it's been wrapped around the rear-view mirror arm of every car I've owned.

Yesterday, I had to move it ("it," since I never named it) to check the serial number on my EZ pass transponder. (FYI: The serial number is 11 digits. The number you get when you check your online account is a 7-digit transponder number, with a 3-digit agency code that's actually a prefix, even though it displays after the transponder number. The clever among you will note that this only makes 10 digits. You need to add a leading zero to the 7-digit transponder number to get to 11. None of this is mentioned on the web site.)

After 20+ years of temperature extremes and direct sunlight, it fell apart, splitting in four places.

I'm not that much of a sentimentalist that I didn't throw it out.

But not before taking a picture, and memorializing it in a blog post.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Back on My Back

I jacked up my back again last week. It's happened before, though I guess my recovery time has gotten longer. I was mostly flat on my back and chewing through Advil for about four days, and only for the past few days have I been able to walk around, albeit twisted up like a scoliosis sufferer.

The proximate cause was deadlifts, which is (*double-checks definition of irony*) ironic because I do deadlifts to try to strengthen my back to keep from throwing out my back. This sounds like a not-unmanly reason, though the weight was low and a previous occurrence was caused by coughing too hard.

Other causes:

* Generally poor posture:

* Wallet too fat: Seriously, this is a 3D-printed statuette from a scan of me and my dad (that my sister gave me -- we were visiting a makerspace at NYU she's part of).

We're sitting on a rotating platform and I'm leaning on him, trying not to wobble off. I noticed in the scan and on the statue that you can see my wallet bulging.

 

I have since switched to a bi-fold, but I might have to go for something even thinner and combine it with in a front pocket money clip. I don't see total front pocket wallet carry happening -- small frame = small pockets.

* General stupidity: My back was already sore before I went to the gym, but I went anyway, mostly because I needed to work my shoulder (which I just ended therapy for, but I still need to work). I should have listened to my body.

Anyway, while I was incapacitated, I couldn't really work sitting up, and I'm just not that productive on a tablet. Fortunately, my cable provider was doing a week-long free promotion for on-demand viewing of premium TV shows, which is great since I don't get HBO, so in about 2.5 days, I binge-watched:

* True Detective, Season 1

* All three seasons of Game of Thrones. (So I finally get the references everyone's making.)

It was great since I didn't have to get up from the sofa to change discs -- shifting positions was really challenging the first few days. (Seriously, hobbling around the house, I was leaning on walls and even using a jury-rigged cane made from 3/4" PVC.)

Yes, it would have been perfect, save for the increasing pollen count -- pent-up demand from the long winter. Every sneeze was... agonizing. And the anticipation made it worse -- there's only so many times you can avert a sneeze. It was kind of bad.

I'm mostly moving around now. I guess I should drop deadlifts and squats for a good long time and look into yoga and kettlebells.

MILFs, Banal Action, and Two Other Things About Turning 42

1. I have now been of legal drinking age longer than I have not

2. MILF porn is now "Age Appropriate Porn"

Nina Hartley, famous porn actress. Photo by Michael Dorausch, used under Creative Commons.

3. Career paths that are closed to me, in some cases by law (and by several years) include:

I can still become a redhead, though.

* Secret Service Agent
* US Military (all branches)
* FBI Special Agent
* Air Traffic Controller

Technically, I can still become an astronaut, though my degree is in the wrong kind of science, and the end of the Space Shuttle program means no more Payload Specialist opportunities. (Of course, there's always the hope that SpaceX or Virgin Galactic are hiring Orbital Social Media Specialists.)

4. The first page of search results for "Thoughts on Turning 42" turns up articles that are incredibly banal. And this entry does not appear to be a C-C-C-C-Combo breaker.

Al Qaeda Wants to Car Bomb Your Favorite Arlington Bar

This week, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released the 12th and latest edition of Inspire, their magazine for instructing homegrown jihadis in the West:

 
Their "Open Source Jihad" feature provides technical how-to's and tactics for using improvised explosives and other methods to inflict damage on the West. (Remember how people laughed at their first effort, "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom"? We stopped laughing after we found the Tsarnaev brothers may have used it to build their pressure cooker bomb.)

This latest edition is all about making car bombs, with detailed instructions on using propane and oxygen containers and Christmas lights.

For targeting, they including the following guidance: Target bars and restaurants in Arlington and Alexandria (as well as M Street), because they are frequented by high-profile personalities:

Apparently, Adams Morgan and the U Street Corridor do not yet rate as targets. Adjust your nightlife planning accordingly.

Also of note, apparently AQAP does not recognize the legitimacy of renaming the Sears Tower to the Willis Tower, and thinks the Air Force is based in Chicago.

Inspire is available as a PDF if you search for it; if your search skills suck, I would also expect Public Intelligence to post it soon.

If I Were President, by Joseph Loong [Age 12]

A recent visit to the deep archives at the Loong ancestral estate uncovered this document: a handwritten essay on the topic If I Were President, written by my 12-year-old, 7th-grade self in 1984.

It shows that I was basically a neocon with futurist tendencies. Essentially Newt Gingrich with fewer divorces:

If I Were President, by Joseph Loong

My pool pass from a year later, 1985.

If I were President of the United States, I would first build up the nation's defenses with modern weapons. I would then phase out the mail system with computer mail and use electronic credit cards to replace cash and change transactions, with no money involved. I would make a space-ground laser defense system to protect the U.S. from missile attack. I would also try to clean up the enviorment [sic] by planting thousands of trees and stop factories from polluting the air. I would install moving sidewalks and promote electric cars with built-in computers and cruise control, and also create American "bullet trains." Large, all weather, indoor farms would be built if I were President. I would also tear down all cities and towns, except for historical areas and build new, modern, fireproof, bombproof, and weatherproof houses and apartments. And, I would get the CIA and FBI to infiltrate the Communist countries, and eliminate them from the inside. Last, but not least, I would try to improve American health, diet, and state of living, and the economy, and eliminate criminals, radicals, and treasonous people.

[Teacher's remarks: "This piece of writing is very well done, gramatically correct, and well thought out. I am impressed with the [illegible] structure and use of words.]

---

Analysis

My teacher's remarks to the contrary, I'm chagrined by the structure of the essay, which is a pile of unrelated items with no paragraph breaks. Also, I cringe at the awkward shift to the passive voice I used to an attempt to take a break from all the "I woulds" I'm throwing around. (Had I known about bulleted lists in 1984, I would have been all over that.)

I also see three major influences:

1. Concepts lifted wholesale from the "World of the Future" books published by the UK's Usborne Hayes in 1981 (also published as an omnibus edition, "World of the Future", which you can see in its full PDF glory), and that I probably bought at a school book fair and subsequently devoured.

2. Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, aka the "Star Wars" program. It came out a year earlier, and I read every article about it that Time and Newsweek had to offer.

3. The House Un-American Activities Committee. Seriously, where did the bit about eliminating radicals and treasonous people come from? I sound like a John Bircher. Though I especially like that it's in the same sentence as improving American health and diet.

Actually, if you take the last two sentences and replace "Communist" with "Muslim extremist," I'm pretty sure it would fit in pretty well as a typical Free Republic post, and perhaps be featured in a speech at CPAC.

Ultimately, I'm disappointed because I thought I was further along by age 12. Then again, I was 12. Then again, that's how old Grover Norquist was when he says he came up with the idea for his "no tax" pledge. Go figure.

Thank You Racist Texans, for Further Ruining an Already-Ruined Night

It wasn't bad enough that I was at a local bar watching Duke blow a late-second-half lead to UNC (during the Snowchi-rescheduled game at Chapel Hill).

No, going out to the patio during a break in the action, I get to experience this:

The tail end of some anecdote, told by two visiting, self-declared Texans (who may have been friends-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, or merely random bar loudmouths), of a female acquaintance getting hit, with the abuser subsequently getting beat down (all wording paraphrased):

"There's two things down in Texas we don't stand for...

Men hitting women, and..."

Long, exaggerated look over left shoulder...

 [Oh, no...]

Long, exaggerated look over right shoulder...

"...Black guys with [at this point, I'd already started bailing for the door, so I missed the exact wording, though he clearly meant "white women"]..."

 "...which seems to be a thing down here..."

Seriously, I'm glad (not) I passed your philosophical paper bag test, but FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE.

If You Don't Hate Me Yet, The Next 90 Seconds Will Change That

Found this in my archives. It's an AOL jingle/song -- not sure if it was ever used anywhere. The style is equal bits Instructional Video Soundtrack and Bible Camp Singalong. Feels like it could have been the background music for a promotional video or the warmup for an all-hands meeting. [Update: A smob claiming knowledge of the particulars said on a Facebook comment, "That was from some message board group back in 1995 - it wasn't AOL sanctioned/created. eWorld was somehow involved but forget why."]



How long do you think you can last? The lyrics are really bad. Trust me, I had to listen in order to transcribe them:

[Chorus]
Take your time, go online
Come around and join the party
Take the key, and you will see
That it's fun to hang around.
Go America…
Go America…
Go America Online
[/Chorus]

Hurry up and check the system
And meet the people and start chatting.
Come on board, come to the show.
Let this family grooooow.

[Chorus]

[Keytar solo?]

You need some info so show you've got it
The World Wide Web will make it.
We're all waiting for new friends to be known to
And we hope it will be youuuuuuuu.

[Chorus]

Doesn't matter what problems you will get.
Our family will help you.
Doesn't matter how much time it will take.
Take your hands and break through.

[Chorus x 2, ends abruptly.]

---

If you've got ideas as to when the song was made or how it was used, leave a comment. Take your time, go online...

In a Post-Apocalyptic World, the Proof Is in the Pudding

[Mild spoilers for The Walking Dead season 4, episode 9, "After."]

In this episode, sullen Carl needs a haircut and eats roof pudding:

Photo: AMCTV. Pudding: Roof, chocolate.

How much pudding does Carl eat? 112 ounces. Seven pounds of chocolate pudding. (3.17 kg in non-Imperial units, also known in modern America as a "small.")

Here is the Amazon listing for a similar pudding offering. It contains 140 calories per 1/2 cup serving (actually 140 kilocalories, since an American calorie is larger than other nations' calories, which makes sense when you see modern Americans), or 3920 calories for the 28 servings in the can, otherwise known as a "snack."

It's still a lot of pudding. Put in the context of modern competitive eating, the Guinness World Record for custard/pudding eating is 2 pounds, 15 ounces (1.34 kg) in three minutes, set by American Donald Cunningham in 2010.

The International Federation of Competitive Eating (aka Major League Eating) does not appear to have a record for pudding, though records for  similar substances include:

Cheesecake
11 pounds (176 ounces)
9 minutes/Sept. 26, 2004
Sonya Thomas

Cranberry Sauce, Jellied
13.23 lbs (211.68 ounces)
8 Minutes/Nov. 22, 2007
Juliet Lee

Grits
21 lbs (336 ounces)
10 minutes/Sept. 29, 2007
Patrick Bertoletti

Ice Cream (Vanilla)
1 gallon, 9 ounces (137 ounces)
12 minutes
Cookie Jarvis

Although in this landscape, 112 ounces with no time limit wouldn't appear to be competition-worthy, keep in mind that Carl's character is 14 years old, and has devoted little to no time to the training regimen necessary to be a contender at this level of competitive eating
.

Sweater Made in Non-Existent Country

I wore a sweater today. It has an odd, black-on-blue tiger stripe pattern that  always looks wrinkled, made worse because it's just a little too big and stretched out lumpily.
 
It's an ugly sweater, but only mildly so. It won't win any Ugly Sweater contests. It's acrylic, which makes it practically moth-proof and only slightly uncomfortable. I've had it a long time.

Look at the label:

Mommy, what is the yellow tiger doing to the black tiger?

Le Tigre* was a brand popular in the late 1980s. Positioned, perhaps, between Guess and Polo. Something you might find at a Chess King.

Also note that it is "Made in Yugoslavia," a country that disintegrated in 1991.

Here is my recreation of a 1980s-era portrait photo (the jeans are 1990s, and perpetually on the edge of the "donate/dispose" pile); put a sepia-filter on it and it probably wouldn't look out of place on Internet K-Hole [NSFW], though I never rocked a haircut like that (also the last one of 2013) back in the day.

*This is not a Community reference.

Good Halloween Costumes Don't Need to Be Explained. (This Was Not a Good Costume)

This year, Halloween costume inspiration failed me, so I decided to go topical and timely -- a personal first. (Continuing the trend from last year's pun costume, also a personal first. At this rate, next year's costume will be a t-shirt with "COSTUME" written on it with magic marker.)

The NSA has been on everyone's mind of late, so when I saw after an instructional video on how to make a cheap parabolic microphone, I decided to combine the two elements.

Construction of the mic was fairly straightforward. I couldn't find an umbrella hat like the video shows, and after fruitlessly hunting for the right mini umbrella (and ruining one), I decided to just go with a plastic bowl.

I also bought an MP3 voice recorder (which I've been meaning to do), as well as a cheap lavalier mic and some cheap faux-retro headphones from teenybopper hell 5 Below.

The key element, though, was the NSA parody t-shirt, which I bought off of eBay from a print-on-demand outfit:

Unfortunately, even though I bought it 2 weeks ahead of time, I learned it wouldn't arrive until after Halloween. (I just got it today.)

So, as fallback, I shifted the focus to an "eavesdropper" based on Gene Hackman's character, an audio surveillance expert who works for the government, in the 1974 film The Conversation ("Based on" since I don't think he actually uses a parabolic mic in the film. He also plays a very similar character -- possible the same one -- in 1998's Enemy of the State):

  

Add a white shirt, wide tie, brown suit, and a 64-cent fake mustache, and wallah voilà. (The glasses should really be horn rims, but whatever.)

Out and about, people got the eavesdropping part, though nobody knew the movie reference. And the mic is functional, though the parabolic effect is barely noticeable compared to just using the bare microphone.

Also, here's the formula for determining where to mount the microphone:

Depth from bottom of dish = [Dish diameter]² / 16 * [dish depth]

For this setup, x = 11² / 16 * 4.5, or 1.68 inches.

Ranch Dressing Is Not Supposed to Be Brown

Found a bottle of ranch dressing in the back of my pantry that was old enough to drive, but not old enough to vote.

The best-when-purchased-by date was November 8, 1996.

The dressing was very brown. Naturally, I opened it. It smelled like... dust:

 

Nov. 8, 1996 was 3 days after the 1996 US presidential election, when Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole and Ross Perot to win his second term. It was also a Friday.

This bottle of salad dressing is significantly older than a previous find, my pre-9/11 Raisin Bran, which only went back to August of 2000.

Okay, I admit: I'm actually lying about all this.

There were two bottles. (The other had a sell by date of December 1996.)

Slugs Having Sex and My Dislocated Shoulder

I thought the most disturbing/disgusting thing I was going to see on Thursday night was these two slugs mating on my wall:

 

Instead, it was looking down at my left shoulder after I dislocated it sliding into third base during a kickball game.

The *POP*

The details are mundane. We were at our usual fields; I was lead-off hitter and got onto first because the fielder dropped a slippery line drive, and advanced to second on the overthrow.

Two plays later, I was running towards third. The ball was already heading to the third baseman, but I had a chance, so I slid.

I was on my left side. Partly because I was headed directly at the girl playing third and I was trying to slow down, but mostly to support myself, I put my left arm down.

*Pop*

I've never dislocated anything (that I can remember -- I have to ask my mom... when I eventually tell her), but it was obvious what happened. First off, it hurt, and second, it looked like I had an extra joint in my shoulder.

After a few fruitless tries to get pop my shoulder back in (I knew where it was supposed to be, but had no idea how to get it there), my teammate Mike drove me to the ER at Inova Fair Oaks Hospital (after a few tries to get to an urgent care - I was pretty useless as a navigator).

The Treatment (and the Photo)

It was pretty empty, so they got to me immediately after I signed in.

After getting my history taken, and having to admit to several people that this was a kickball-related injury, the doc saw me. He was going to put in a line for anesthesia, but I pooh-poohed such decadent indulgence, so they just numbed it a little with some lidocaine.

Here I am waiting for it to kick in. That extra bump... that shouldn't be there:

The fixing of the shoulder was a much more gentle and gradual process than what you see in the movies, and it didn't hurt at all through the lidocaine. They just sort of rotated it slowly until it *popped* back in.

The rest of it was just x-rays and post-discharge instructions. Here's a video I took while they were wheeling me to x-ray, featuring nothing of consequence save light, relieved banter:

I was hoping for a steadier, dolly tracking-style shot, but I guess I didn't do a very good job bracing my phone. (Nerves and all. Incidentally, the YouTube shaky image correction made my feet ripple and sway in a disconcerting way, so I ditched it.)

As I was waiting for the X-ray results, my teammates, who'd won the game without me (barely), and who were in the waiting room, came in to visit. DeAnna took this photo:

The Aftermath

That's about it. I have a prescription for Vicodin, but I'm sticking mostly to Advil and frozen vegetables (topically applied). I'm advised to wear the sling for a few days, and have a followup with an orthopedist.

Oh, and my season is probably over.

I'll probably have a few followup thoughts about healthcare at some point, but right now, I'm just happy that I can move my arm.

Recent Dumb Things: Clearing the Cache

This week, I purchased a hardcover copy of Spook Country, the second book in William Gibson's Bigend Trilogy. (Or is it the "Blue Ant" trilogy? As far as I know, there isn't an agreed-upon nickname for the one that starts with Pattern Recognition and ends with Zero History.)

Of course, today, as I was digging around on my nightstand, what did I see? My previously purchased copy of Spook Country:

  

I will add this volume to my collection of redundant media, which, as I've written before, usually refers to buying CDs that I already own.

Come to think of it, there are a few other new additions to that category -- I did a CD Cellar run a few weeks ago, and picked up Bjork's Volta, which I was pretty sure I didn't own because I didn't remember the distinctive cover art.

I was wrong:

 

Pictured alongside the Bjork are some other redundant purchases from the short- to mid-term past: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Belle & Sebastian, and Florence and the Machine. (This is also why can never again buy any Stereolab CDs.)

Some of you may think that the act of buying CDs (even used, as I usually do) is the true "dumb thing," with online music players with the built-in cataloging and such, but I like having the media as the ultimate backup.

While I'm clearing out the cache of dumbness, here's one from last week -- do you know the sound a lithium camera battery makes in the dryer, after it's been through a wash cycle in the side pocket of a pair of cargo shorts?

It goes *ka-clunk* *ka-clunk* *clunk* *ka-clunk* *clunk*

I realize the visual is similarly lacking, but here it is anyway:

Lastly, to close out this edition, here's an oldie that I've never mentioned -- a slightly melty rice paddle after it fell out of the dishwasher rack and onto the heating element:

It looks... diseased. (But it still works.)

Interactive Map: Results of 334 Fairfax Health District Restaurant Inspections, July 2013

In July of 2013, the Food Safety Section of the Fairfax County (Virginia) Health Department conducted 334 restaurant inspections for establishments in Fairfax County, including portions of Fairfax City and the City of Falls Church.

For my final map project in "Maps and the Geospatial Revolution" -- a massive open online course (MOOC) from Coursera -- I made an interactive map visualizing the results.

Click the screenshot to view the full-size interactive map, or scroll down to see an embedded version and read more about how and why I created it:

Results of 334 Fairfax Health District Restaurant Inspections, July 2013

View Full-Sized Map

Finding the Data

The Virginia Department of Health uses HealthSpace, a Canadian company with a US subsidiary, to publish its restaurant inspection results.

It's not particularly user-friendly. There's no site-wide search -- you have to first know the locality you want. (Note that the Richmond Times-Dispatch already has a searchable Virginia restaurant inspections database that pulls from the same data, so my version was just a learning exercise.)

Once at the proper locality, you can search by restaurant name. You can also browse the list sorted by inspection date, though it's easier to view just the frame showing the results (adjusting the count and start attributes in the URL to approximate date ranges as needed.)

For my map, I scraped the data manually (and painfully, with a lot of clicking, copy-and-paste, and search-and-replace) from the Web site; added city names; converted the street addresses to latitude and longitude using a web tool; then added violation counts, the July inspection report, and the URL of each restaurant's facility inspection history record. Then, I exported everything to a CSV file that I imported as a layer in ArcGIS Online (where I have a free public account).

Next time, I'll use a scraper. (Note: Learn how to write a scraper.)

What You're Seeing

The restaurants are represented by circles, with graduated colors showing the number of critical violations for each restaurant. The color categories are divergent, following natural breaks: Bluer symbols have fewer critical violations; redder symbols have more critical violations; and neutral colors represent the average.

Clicking each symbol will pop up a window showing the restaurant's info and number of critical and noncritical violations from its most recent inspection. Also, clicking "More info" will link to that restaurant's facility inspection history (where you can find the results of previous inspections).

Scrolling down will show the full report from the July inspections -- the line breaks and formatting got lost along the way, so they're a little hard to read.

(This version of the map incorporates feedback I received during the peer review process -- the basemap uses a simple gray background which makes the circles easier to see than with the satellite image basemap I used before.)

Final Notes

Note that any single inspection is just a snapshot of that restaurant, so check the inspection history link to get a fuller picture.

Also, "critical" violations can cover everything from handwashing failures and rodent droppings, to lacking an onsite Certified Food Manager or menu labels warning about the health hazards of undercooked ingredients. (See more info about critical and noncritical violations, and a FAQ about the inspection process.)

Government transparency and open government are other interests of mine, so this was a chance to try my hand at taking government data and visualizing it into a map. Nothing as fancy as what you might see presented at Transparency Camp (there are much fancier story map templates, but with 334 results and not a lot of time, I stuck with a basic visualization).

Lastly, since I did everything by hand, don't expect any future editions. (Check the Richmond Times-Dispatch if you want to search for a particular restaurant.)