Thoughts based on a recent Fargo Forum opinion piece

In the December 30th edition, in an opinion letter titled "A ‘tired’ defense still valid", the author argues that weaponry is needed to protect freedom from government-imposed tyranny and goes so far as to imply firearm owners might have to rebel against a government that tries to implement arms controls.

Tyranny is defined as: cruel and oppressive government or rule.  There are existing restrictions on gun possession.  For example, Title 18, United States Code, Section 922 (g) & (n) prohibits felons from possessing firearms.  At the same time, the 8th Amendment guarantees Americans will not be subject to cruel or unusual punishments.  It is a short logical leap to conclude a government that implements firearm control is not automatically a tyranny.  Put away your plans for armed revolt; we don't need them!

The Jeff Cooper line of thought made sense in an isolated, post-revolution, frontier community where a small conspiracy of armed perpetrators could use force to inflict their will on a small unarmed population.  That model does not scale well to a country with over 300 million people spread over nearly 4 million square miles of land, with widespread deployment of modern electronic communication systems, law enforcement agencies, and a justice system that works pretty well most of the time.

I am reminded of a conversation with a USMC veteran who told me the most potent person in an infantry platoon is not the rifleman.  It is the radio operator.  Our best defence against tyranny is not a handful (or even a large number) of citizens with rifles.  It is several hundred million well-informed citizens who speak up if they see something wrong and make good choices about who they elect to office.

Subterranean cycling and a bit of word-play

Three weeks ago, I arrived in North Dakota after an uneventful drive from Boulder, CO.  The new job started right away, and I'm finally getting into a somewhat stable weekly routine.  I've even found a coffee shop where I can sip tea and use the complimentary WiFi to check e-mail, read news, and compose new blog posts.

This image of the North Dakota flag was copied from Wikipedia, a fantastic source for information about most everything you can think of.

 Yesterday we had some snow fall in the afternoon with a little accumulation overnight, so when I got up this morning, I became a subterranean cyclist.  I filled up a bottle of water, unfolded the rollers in front of the TV and stereo in the basement, started a DVD from Netflix, and rode tempo until the credits ran.  Oofda!  When spring comes around, I think I'll either be reasonably fast or have hung up the bike and quit.  On the plus side, the probability of being hit by a motor vehicle while riding in the basement is small, probably in the same neighborhood as the probability of being hit by an aircraft.

Towards the end of the week, I managed to make two jokes that were generally well-received.  The first was at work Friday afternoon when a system engineer miss-typed and assigned a project requirement to "menufacturing".  I pointed out that is where one would go before opening a restaurant.  Then on Saturday morning grandma asked where a bus, parked in the mall parking lot, was from.  The side of the bus read Beaver Bus Lines.  I concluded, "It's from some dam place."  Beaver Bus Lines is a charter bus tour service based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

The tea in my cup is running low now, and it's about time for lunch, so I'm going to log off and find some food.

New Jersey

Not the state (I drove through there for the first time last June; a story for another time) but what I picked up this past Friday at track cycling nationals in Carson, California.

Last week from Thursday through Sunday, USA Cycling hosted the 2012 elite and paralympic track nationals at the Velo Sports Center at the Home Depot Center.  I raced a pair of individual endurance events from the elite program, and then piloted tandem for Chester Triplett, a visually impaired cyclist based in North Carolina.

In order, my schedule was as follows:
Scratch race qualifier and final on Thursday
Paralympic 4km pursuit on Friday
Points race qualifier and final on Saturday
Paralympic 1km time trial on Sunday

I rode small gears for the scratch races on Thursday, did just enough work in the qualifier to make the final, and then treated the final as a hard opener to make my legs primed and ready for the pursuit on Friday.  The scratch race final wound up being rather fast, with the field splintering inside the last 20 laps (of of 60 laps total for the 15km race).  I finished 12th place out of 24 starters, with the dubious designation of being the last-placed rider who was on even laps with the eventual winner, Ian Moir.

On Friday, Chester and I put a big gear on the tandem, affectionately nicknamed The Battle Tank and warmed up for a 4km pursuit.  We opened up the first kilometer of the ride a little faster than optimal, but were able to throttle back our intensity and settle into a pace we could sustain for the duration of the race.

Mid-way through the race, we caught Kevin (and pilot Robert) which clinched the win.

We ended up posting a 4:37.7 in the pursuit.  We were both quite satisfied with that time for our first pursuit together.

On Saturday, I was back on the single bike for a points race qualifier in the morning and final in the evening.  The qualifier went smoothly.  Like the scratch race, I rode patiently and did just enough work to make sure to qualify for the final.  The final was 160 laps of high intensity suffer-fest.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Also like the scratch race, I intended for the points race to leave my legs primed and ready for the 1km time trial on Sunday.

The kilo was early in the afternoon on Sunday, immediately following the team sprint event for the women.  A picture of our kilo start is shown below.

Kilo starts are hard on tandems.  Chester and his former pilot broke a bike once doing a standing start like this.

Our final time in the kilo was a 1:11.0; not what we had hoped for.  However, there were quite a few easily-identified areas where we could have done better, so there is plenty of low-hanging fruit to pick for next time.

On Monday I hit the road from LA and drove across southern California, through Las Vegas, cut the corner of Arizona, across Utah, and back into Colorado.  There was a closure on I-70 in Glenwood Springs, so I was forced off the road and took a little down time before completing the drive to the front range.  Now I'm back in Boulder for a short window before taking off to my next adventure with the new job in North Dakota.

Back on June 25th, I drove from Washington DC to Boston in a day, and in doing so traversed New Jersey on the New Jersey Turnpike.  I think I like this new jersey better...

To quote Hannibal from the A Team: I love it when a plan comes together!

Hackfest!

Last night I attended a hackfest at Quick Left in downtown Boulder.  Teams were given SparkFun Inventor's Kits with an Arduino Uno starter board and some sensors and transducers with which to build projects during an evening of hacking fun.

A trio of web developers from New York and I formed a team, but they took off early to have a bite to eat and attend a tequila tasting, so I pressed along on my own.  We set out to build a system that would use a light sensor (eventually two light sensors) and a servo to track the position of a flashlight.

After about two hours of work, it was working!  See the video below.

I spent the last 45 minutes or so tweaking the code to smooth the motion of the servo and light sensors by adding hysteresis and a delay after writing a new position to the servo before re-starting the main loop (and re-reading the analog values from the light sensors).

With more time, there are a handful of straightforward improvements to be made:
- Add gain to track faster when the light is moving quickly.
- Build a more symmetrical light guide (something not pieced together with a slip of paper and scotch tape).
- Perform a more careful calibration of the light sensor circuits.
- Add some signal conditioning to the light sensors to take advantage of the full input range of the ADC (analog to digital converter) on the Arduino board.
- Refine the servo control to improve motion stability and device reliability.

Some of the other teams had a lot more software/application development background than I did, and put together some really neat projects.  I think my favorite was an R/C car that was driven by an Arduino that interprets text messages.  Anybody could send a text message with an 's', 'g', 'l', or 'r' (for stop, go, left, right) and make the car drive around.  I think they tied for 3rd place, but if the judging were based on positive audience reaction, they would have been the clear winners.

All in all, it was a fun evening and a nice introduction to the Arduino platform.  I anticipate some interesting projects in the future; making the Arduino work with other circuitry, sensors, and actuators to do interesting things.

If any of the other hackfest participants find their way to this blog, please do feel free to leave a comment or shoot me a message if you need some awesome hardware added to your next project.

New job

Last week I accepted a new job with a company in North Dakota and will be re-locating in October.  It will be a significant change from living in Boulder, but I'm ready to move on to the next chapter in my life (and career).  After a couple years of splitting my efforts between cycling and trying to be an engineer, I am going to put bike racing on the back burner and turn most of that effort towards engineering.

I'm going to keep this short, in hopes of getting back into the habit of posting regularly.  The idea is to keep posts shorter but more frequent.

Before heading to North Dakota, I will make a trip to California to compete in the 2012 paralympic track cycling national championships as a tandem pilot for a visually impaired cyclist from North Carolina.  We will compete in the 4km pursuit and 1km time trial.

After having a later start to track riding this year compared to previous years, I took a while getting my track legs going, but am feeling pretty good now.

In the tradition of including a picture or two with each post, here are a pair of wildlife pictures I took in the last week or so:

The neighbor's cat is totally relaxed, even in the presence of three deer (there was one standing to my left when I took this picture) and a nerd.

I rescued these raccoons from the dumpster a week ago last night.  They had climbed in looking for food but then couldn't climb out.

April Fools!

I have quit my job as an electrical engineer, given up the bicycle, and joined the circus as a professional cotton candy eater.  Ok, that's not true at all.  Read on for the real story about what I've been up to.

After a couple months of schedule filled to the point of overflowing with non-stop activities, I finally decided to sit down before dinner tonight and compose another blog post.

This is not going to be another picture-less blog post.  However, the picture is very recent (taken 3 days ago), so comes near the end of the post after I describe what has been going on since January.

Since last time, the Navy/Coast Guard had another camp in Ventura, CA for the Wounded Warrior Games team.  I attended the camp, again as a dual-role coach and civilian athlete, piloting tandem for blind riders.  A couple weeks ago, sad news arrived.  Due to a late withdrawal from the competition, there were no longer enough riders signed up for the tandem race, so that portion of the event was canceled for 2012.  I suppose that means Dan Peters (who won last year) gets to hold on to his championship title for another year before having to defend it.

In February, I traveled out to California to watch the paracycling track world championship event at the Home Depot Center velodrome in Carson.  There were some absolutely impressive rides, both from Team USA and foreign visitors.  I was perhaps most impressed by a couple of riders who each had only one arm and one leg, yet still rode remarkably fast.  Also of interest to me were some of the C5 (least disabled category) riders who would have won medals at the US Elite Nationals (able-bodied) if they were US citizens. 

Related to the tandem riding, for the last several weeks I have been making trips to Colorado Springs each weekend to pilot tandem for one of the blind resident athletes at the Olympic Training Center.  In addition to the tandem riding in Colorado Springs, I have also begun piloting for a blind US Marine Corps veteran living in Castle Rock.  Doing two tandem rides in a day is rather tiring, but terrific training for whatever happens on the bike later in the season.

At work we have been plugging away at synthesizer development.  At the moment my workbench is covered with an array of prototype circuit boards and mechanical housings.  The individual boards have been turning on nicely, and we're now into the system integration phase of the project.  The next couple weeks will be exiting as we deliver the first prototypes to a preferred customer.

This week President Barack Obama visited the University of Colorado at Boulder, the first time an acting president has visited the university.  He gave a speech about the upcoming changes to federally backed student loan interest rates, and delivered a message that higher education is not just about an individual's success but is an investment in the future of the community (and country) where that individual lives.  He encouraged all the students to take their degrees, go out, and be hard-working, productive contributors so that the investments pay off.

After the speech, he walked around and shook hands with various people in the audience.  The venue (the Coors Event Center) was filled nearly to capacity, so I didn't have a front row spot.  Having long arms, though, I was able to give/receive a handshake.

The bald Secret Service agent is wondering why my suit matches his.

Normally I'm fairly cynical about politicians, but I liked the message the president delivered on Tuesday.  With elections coming up later this year, the visit was most certainly an attempt to drum up support before the campaign season starts in earnest.  Nevertheless, I'm glad I was there.

End of 2011, Start of 2012, and a Trip to Navy Base Ventura County

That is a warm doggy.

Over the holiday break from school, my sister took care of her boyfriend's dog, pictured above.  During dinner one evening he burrowed under a jacket to find a nice warm place to hang out.

Between Christmas and New Years, I made my way back to Boulder, this time by airplane rather than automobile.  It saved time, but I did miss out on the Motel 7 in Wyoming.

Upon returning to Boulder, I made some last-minute preparations for my "Drink Like the Brits" New Years Eve party.  The event went off as planned, from about 4:00 to 6:00pm (5:00pm Mountain Time is midnight in Britain) with a handful of friends coming over for English tea, ales, ciders, and Scotch.  To give things a Colorado spin, I also had guacamole, hummus, salsa, and various chips and crackers for dipping.

My fridge looked a bit like the front of a Tesco store before the party started.

On New Years day, I embarked on an interesting physical challenge.  I attempted to walk approximately 33 miles from downtown Denver to my apartment in Boulder.  Having inappropriate footwear doomed my effort after about 27 miles.  However, I expect this challenge and I will have a re-match sometime in the not-too-distant future.

The first week of January, it was back to work drawing, building, and testing circuits.  Some prototype RF (radio frequency) filters returned from fabrication, so I tested those, and then assembled a table-top phase noise measurement system to verify performance of some amplifiers that needed to ship to customers.

These filters are all GND from a DC perspective, but to RF, do all kinds of cool things.

Phase noise measurements can sometimes be a real pain in the neck, but this time the system came together nicely and the measurements went as smoothly as I could have hoped.

Last Thursday, I made my way to Denver to catch a plane to LA for the next of (hopefully many more) adventures of 2012.  I was invited by the Navy Safe Harbor program to attend a training camp at Navy Base Ventura County, helping to prepare a group of athletes for the Wounded Warrior Games to be held in Colorado Springs in early May 2012.

In the Wounded Warrior Games, veteran athletes from each branch of the armed forces (Army, Navy/Coast Guard, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command) compete in a variety of individual and team events to lay claim to the Ultimate Champion (individual) and Chairman's Cup (team) awards.  Last year, I joined team Navy/Coast Guard as a tandem pilot for a blind cyclist.  We won the gold medal in the 30km tandem road race event, and now have our work cut out for us to defend that win in 2012.

After waking up to a low of 6F in Boulder on Thursday, I was greeted by temperatures in the 70's in Southern California.  It felt luxurious!

A park at Navy Base Ventura County (NBVC) neighbored the apartment where I stayed.  And there was no snow in sight!

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were all full days characterized by early mornings, long training sessions, short meals, and activities continuing into the evenings.  The athletes were all pushing themselves and each other, which was great to see.  The level of energy and enthusiasm was contagious.

I hope everyone looked in the same direction when the real photographer took his pictures.

The camp participants were a mix of athletes who competed in the Wounded Warrior Games in 2011 and new athletes who are hoping to make their Games debut in 2012.

My workout on Sunday afforded a chance to do battle with a very large truck tire.  There was no clear winner.  We both wound up lying on the grass.  I, however, did eventually walk away.

On Sunday afternoon when the cycling sessions were complete and the bikes were all stowed in the storage facility, I did some training of my own.  Being mid-January, I'm in the middle of doing lots of hard workouts which don't involve the bike at all.  In this case, I rolled a tire, the difficult way, down the length of a football field.  Then I went to a pull-up structure and did 25 pull-ups.  After that, I ran two laps of the track and called that a round.  After five additional rounds, both the tire and I were lying on the grass, neither of us feeling particularly motivated to move.

Monday was another early day, with travel back to Colorado being the primary activity of the day.  While walking through LAX on my way to check my bag, I saw a sign (pictured below) that amused me.

Will a teamate serve a hot beverage if my baggage is lost?

I'd like to meet a teamate some day.  Hypothetical question: if I hand up tea to riders from my club as they pass through the feed zone in a road race, does that make me a good teamate?

Now I'm back in Boulder for a while, until the next adventure.