Seeping Matter

A couple of weeks ago I challenged blog and Twitter followers and Facebook friends to a pushup challenge.  After having read Stephen R. Covey’s declaration that “very few [people] can [do twenty pushups]” I was having a hard time believing that one, so I decided to collaborate with you, my reader audience, in a scientific experiment to see how well that statement applies to us.

Nineteen of you participated in the Facebook survey or told me  your results directly.  That wasn’t the kind of participation I was hoping for, but we’ll go with that anyway.

Here’s what we found out:

• The lowest number of pushups done by any participant was 10.
• The highest number of pushups done by any participant was 45.
• The median number of pushups done was 25.
• The average number of pushups done was 27.

It seems like a pretty even distribution.  Look at the chart below and you can see further evidence of this.  There’s not a lot of clumping at any given point, rather a fairly steady upward slope from 10 to 45.

If Covey’s assertion were true I would have expected one or both of the following:

• If not a clumping of people reporting results at around 5 pushups, at least a couple of respondents at that level
• A non-linear progression from the bottom toward the top

As it stands, the data appears to be a fairly representative sample, but one that doesn’t match Covey’s assertion at all.  Perhaps a number of people took the challenge and had results in the 3-8 range, but were not willing to post their results in the survey.  Or perhaps my circle of friends is abnormally fit (sorry, I don’t find that likely).  Or perhaps the people who frequent Covey seminars tend to be atypically unfit.

One final piece of interesting information.  We conducted this experiment at work.  Most of the guys on the team were good sports and dropped down to do their pushups in front of everybody.  On our team I know we have some people who are fairly fit and active, and some who are not (me).  We also have some young, energetic guys and some who are in the latter half of their life (me again).  Being young and being someone who exercises regularly seemed to help drive the number of pushups higher, which is really no big surprise.  However, the upper end of the scale was not populated exclusively by fit, young, exercising-types.  Furthermore, I know of some people who work out pretty regularly who slotted into the bottom half of the scale.

So it seems that exercising alone isn’t the only thing involved here.  Some might suggest genetics, which perhaps has something to do with it.  But I know of one case in these results where one guy outperformed a younger sibling, and in this case the younger sibling is the one who regularly exercises while the older one does not.  What about weight?  Weight is certainly a factor, but some of the people who put up high numbers are not exactly petite.

Truthfully, I would have to say some of the hardest results to explain were my own.  I managed 40 pushups, which frankly was no surprise to me — I’ve been able to do 40 pushups, give or take, for years now, and I pretty much figured that was par for the course.  I guess it is a bit better than average.  But I don’t work out regularly even though I know I need to, I’m not exactly svelte (let’s just say I’m more than just a smidgin over 200), and 40 years old.  Go figure.

Anyway, thanks for participating.  Look for another one coming up.

It takes about one year for my big toenail to grow back.

I’ve verified this on two separate occasions.  The first was in college, when we were having a killer waterfight with the girls who lived across the parking lot, and we were just about to enter complete domination phase when I smashed my big toe into one of those scallop-topped concrete edging stones and broke my big toenail right off.  It looked like normal a year later.  Then, last year when we hiked Maple Mountain, I broke my big toenail halfway off at the root and have been sort of managing that situation ever since.  It almost looks like normal now, and it’s been almost a year.

I’m sure, like me, you will not be surprised to know that I’m not the first to notice this fantastic phenomenon.

A quick search revealed that the ancient Yrgyuilf tribe also noticed this phenomenon.  Located deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle near the equator, the story goes that this simple tribe had a problem:  They could not tell time, because they had no seasons, being near the equator, and they had not noticed the sun yet.  They also owned everything they had.

One day the tribe elder had a revelation.  He called a tribe council.  ”I’ve figured out our problem!” he announced.  ”We’re all depressed and unhappy!”  A murmur ran through the tribe.  Yes! they thought.  I hadn’t realized it until now, but yes! I am depressed!  And  unhappy!

“Probably the reason we are so depressed and unhappy is because we own everything we have, and we don’t have a bunch of crap we don’t really need!” the crowd exclaimed.

“What will we do about it?”

“We need a reason to spend money that we don’t have, and go into debt, on a regular basis!” someone suggested.

“Hey yeah!  That’ll work!”

“But … but, when should we do this?”

“Wait — isn’t that what Christmas is for?” someone asked.

The elder took control of the situation.  ”Excellent, everyone.  We’ve figured out what is wrong with us:  we are depressed and unhappy, and we didn’t even know it until now.  The reason we are depressed and unhappy is because we don’t have any debt or crap we don’t really need.  Celebrating Christmas will solve our problem, as it provides the opportunity to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need.  Only problem is, we need to know when to celebrate.”

A wise old man stepped forward.  ”Once,” he said, “I stubbed the crap out of my big toe and my toenail broke right off.  It took a long time to grow back.  We could call that time period, uh, a ‘year’.”

“We will celebrate Christmas every year by spending money we don’t have on stuff we don’t need,” said the tribe elder.  ”I feel happier already!”

As the council continued, they decided that each year, they would select a young virgin and smash her big toenail until it fell off.  When it had completely grown back, it would be time to celebrate!

It wasn’t long until they realized they could use similar logic for other measurements of time:

• How long after I sprain my ankle until it doesn’t hurt anymore?  One month.
• How long after I pull a tooth out of my head until it doesn’t hurt anymore?  One week.
• How long after I shave until my whiskers grow back?  One day.
• How long after I bean you in the head with this rock until your headache goes away?  One hour.
• How long after I prick my finger until the bleeding stops?  One minute.

Figuring out a measurement for one day took some time, as the young virgins in town didn’t seem to be growing their whiskers back.  After some deliberation, they figured that a male virgin could work.  It took a while, but they eventually found a male virgin that actually could grow whiskers back, and they celebrated because now they could measure days.

This worked quite well for the Yrgyuilf tribe for a while.  It created jobs as some people were in charge of rounding up the young virgins for timekeeping purposes, and others would regularly prick their fingers or bean them in the head with rocks in order to know things like whether it was time for lunch.

After a while, they started having trouble finding young virgins and also had to simultaneously deal with a significant teenage pregnancy epidemic, so they decided that perhaps any old person could be used for measuring time.  Surprisingly, experimentation showed that it worked about the same.

Eventually someone asked the question, “How long is forever?”  They had a hard time deciding how to measure this, so they eventually settled on three different options:

• If you bash someone’s skull in with a rock, forever is how long it takes for them to wake up.
• If you sever someone’s legs at the hips with a chainsaw, forever is how long it takes for them to grow back.
• If you impale someone through the heart on a sharpened post, forever is how long it takes for their heart to start beating again.

Since it was so essential to get this experiment right, they searched and searched and eventually found three young virgins to help them complete this experiment.  Unfortunately, it was about this time that the tribe pretty much disbanded.  Three of the original Yrgyuilf tribe members are still there, spraining each other’s ankles and pricking each other’s fingers and smashing each other’s toenails off and beaning each other in the head with rocks in order to measure time while they are waiting to see how long forever is.  They’ve stopped measuring weeks because they are all out of teeth and don’t know how to do it anymore.

The rest of the tribe members moved to the city and became dentists.

Faithful readers, if I have any, will recall how I blew out my knee upgrading my PC to Windows 7 about three months ago.  You probably think I’m joking but I’m not really.  I can promise you, the pain was definitely not a joke.

Finally on last December 4 I had orthoscopic surgery on my right knee to repair the torn medial meniscus.  When the nurse handed me the pictures after I woke up from surgery, it was pretty obvious why it hurt so bad.  See how that piece in the middle is folded over on top of itself?  Wedged there between the end of those two bones on the top and bottom?  Yeah, it is not supposed to do  that.

My right knee never hurt as bad post-surgery as it did pre-surgery, even right after I woke up from surgery.  It was certainly stiffer and more swollen and not as stable or strong, but it certainly hurt less.  Plus, narcotics.  This is one of the greatest advantages of surgery.

After a good month or so of limping around on a bad knee (before and after surgery), I started to notice some pain in my other knee.  Not even “some” pain.  A very specific pain.  It didn’t hurt very much but I knew the feeling — it was the exact same type of pain I felt in my right knee right before it blew out.

So when I went to see my doctor for the post-op follow-up visit, I mentioned this pain to him.  ”Is it possible to injure your other knee just because you are compensating for an injured one?”

“Yeah; in fact, that happens a lot,” he replied.

“Well, I’m thinking my other knee is having the same problem.”

He checked it out and, yep, torn medial meniscus in my left knee.  So, exactly two months after my previous surgery, I had orthoscopic surgery on my left knee on February 4, 2010.  It’s a good thing, too; you can easily see here that the meniscus is torn.  It was just a matter of time before that loose stuff caused a real problem.

I’m pretty much a pro at this by now, and me and my orthoscopic surgeon, Dr. Kimball, are pretty good friends by now.  He’s a good doctor and a good person.  I don’t think he killed his wife.  He says the one-armed man did it, and I believe him.

I wrapped up phase two of the second fuel mileage experiment last Friday, anticipating a trip to Roosevelt where I would have to fill with gas and forget the receipt (which I did).  Luckily I ended the experiment ahead of time.  Here’s the results:

• Miles driven:  463
• Fuel used:  17.863
• Average MPG:  25.92

This seemed pretty much the same as the fall-off I’d seen in fuel efficiency the last time I did the experiment, so I looked into it a bit further.  Actually it is amazingly similar.

A funny thing (only sort-of related, but worth discussing):  After I got my 350Z, my director decided to show me up by buying a brand new 370Z.  He even let me drive it, and it is definitely a better car.  But karma is real, and he got his first speeding ticket in his new 370Z only a few days after he bought it.

Anyway, he said that he really wasn’t going that much faster than anyone else on the road, but he was singled out because of his car.  It appears that having a sports car will make you more inclined to get a ticket, not only because it is so easy to speed, but also because our policeman friends are more likely to pull you over in a sports car.  It isn’t that they are discriminating against sports cars so much as that they are choosing to enforce the laws more stringently against sports cars simply because they are sports cars.

Anyway, it appears that in a sad twist of fate, there’s an irony of sports car ownership, which is that I actually have to drive SLOWER than the other people in order to avoid getting ticketed, even though that lifted 4×4 that just blew by me at 85 is definitely much more poorly equipped to negotiate the freeway at those speeds than I am in my 350Z.

No matter.  It’s still a blast to drive it.

Just wrapped up week one today.  Week one was (trying to) drive the normal speed limit everywhere I went.  Here’s the results:

• Miles driven:  453
• Fuel used:  16.62 gallons
• Average MPG:  27.25

Like I expected, not as good as my Grand Prix.  But much better than I thought.  27.25 is not too bad for a 3.5L V6 tuned for performance.

Stay tuned for the results of week two, which is driving like a normal person, i.e. 70-ish in a 65 on the freeway, not 65, etc.

I have a new car so I guess it is time to do the fuel mileage experiment again.  I filled up with gas this morning on my way to work so today is a good day to begin.  I’m going to try to only go the speed limit for a whole week.  I’m not sure if I can do it, but I will try.  Next week I will drive like a normal person.

Mileage to begin:  74055.

It is probably worth noting that I don’t expect the mileage to be as good as in my other car, the 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix.  Mostly what we’re trying to figure out is how much more it costs to drive like a normal person versus driving conservatively everywhere.  And also, if I can even stand to do it.

Stay tuned.

I manage the Mozy Windows Client engineering team, and not long ago I sent out a meeting request that began thusly:

Guys,
We shipped 1.12, which means we are awesome, and shipping 1.12 and being awesome is something worth celebrating.

Now, before all you fairer readers get offended, I’m allowed to address my local team with “Guys” because all of them happen to be men, which is NOT the case with my extended team (hey Seattle peeps).

Anyway, I took my team to the movie today to celebrate releasing Mozy 1.12, and being awesome.  Most of my team chose to see “Taken,” but Pancho preferred to see “Race to Witch Mountain,” and since I didn’t care and didn’t want Pancho to be alone, I went to see that movie with him.

And it wasn’t bad.  For one thing, it has The Rock in it.  The Rock’s screen name is Dwayne Johnson, and he is one of the greatest actors ever, where “greatest” means “biggest and strongest.”  In case he reads this blog, let it be known:  The Rock, you RULE!  Freaking RULE!  Please don’t beat me up!

However, I hadn’t realized that you would have to know so much about the computer game Starcraft in order to understand “Race to Witch Mountain.”  And this may also make the movie more geeky and make more geeky people want to watch it.  Plus, probably a lot of them will wonder why the movie seems to be poking fun at the space alien convention – but that is another story.

Anyway, here’s the lowdown:

• Sara and Seth are aliens from outer space.  But they don’t look like aliens.  This means they are obviously Terrans.
• When everyone consults with a space alien expert, he describes aliens as “praying-mantis-like.”  It is apparent that he is only familiar with Zerg aliens, and assumes that since Zerg are aliens, therefore all aliens are Zerg.  Which is a reasonable assumption to make, although anyone familiar with Starcraft knows how false this is.
• There is also another alien.  Now I don’t mean to spoil the movie, so let me just say he’s an assassin trying to kill Sara and Seth, and that is pretty much the whole plot.  I probably spoiled it.  Eh.  Anyway, by the end of the movie it is quite clear that this alien is a Protoss.

So if you are thinking about going to see “Race to Witch Mountain” (which you should, so The Rock doesn’t hunt you down and beat on you), you should read about Starcraft first – and then you’ll be ready to fully enjoy the movie.

Oh, and by the way – if you know C and C++ and are awesome, you should talk to me about working at Mozy.

Week two of the fuel mileage experiment has ended. Here are the results of week two:
Mileage: 273.1 miles
Gasoline Used: 9.862 G
Miles per gallon: 27.69

So this week, with the same assumed $4/gallon, it cost me $39.45 to drive those 273.1 miles, for a cost of 14.44 cents per mile. As expected, this is higher, but only slightly higher, than the 13.77 cents per mile cost of driving at the speed limit. Also, as expected, I’m getting slightly lower fuel mileage, 27.69 mpg compared to 29.05, a difference of 1.36 mpg.

Assuming my average times to work are accurate, here are the raw costs of driving back and forth to work for one week, and going nowhere else:
Total miles, one way: 23.3
Total number of one-way trips: 10
Total miles per week: 233
Slow driving time, per trip: 25 minutes
Slow driving time, per week: 250 minutes
Fast driving time, per trip: 22 minutes
Fast driving time, per week: 220 minutes
Time savings for fast driving: 30 minutes/week
Slow driving fuel costs, per week: $32.08
Fast driving fuel costs, per week: $33.66
Cost savings for slow driving: $1.58
Per hour compensation for slow driving: $3.16

Wow. $3.16 per hour. That is how much I am compensated for driving slowly.

Now, I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Yes, but if you drive the speed limit, you won’t get a speeding ticket, whereas if you are speeding you run the risk of getting a speeding ticket.” True. That will throw off the calculations.

For fun, let’s figure out how often I would have to get a speeding ticket in order to compensate myself at minimum wage for driving the speed limit.
Minimum wage: $6.55
Less current slow-driving compensation: $3.39
Per-week difference: $1.70
Assumed cost of a speeding ticket: $100

Using these numbers, if you got a $100 speeding ticket more frequently than once every 59 weeks, it would make up the difference. That’s not quite one speeding ticket per year.

Of course, you don’t have to stay within the speed limit to avoid getting a ticket; you just have to stay under the “real” speed limit, whatever that is. For the record, I’ve never had a speeding ticket yet, knock on wood.

Is this too soft for this website? Can we just allow it to be here because it is scientifically interesting? How’s that?

Anyway, a full rainbow, even a faint double if you really look hard enough. Ok, maybe not, but trust me, it was there. I know, it required three pictures. I guess apparently I need a wide-angle lens.

I’m conducting a fuel mileage experiment for the next couple of weeks; in fact, I just finished the first week. Here is the experiment: At the start of week one, I will fill up the gas tank, then drive conservatively everywhere I go. No speeding, and no jackrabbit starts. Then I’ll record the mileage, refill the tank, and drive like I normally do.

So week one is over. Here’s the results:
Mileage: 262.8 miles
Gasoline Used: 9.046 G
Miles per gallon: 29.05

Assuming a price of $4/gallon for gas (which is a bit low but pretty close), that means it cost me $36.18 to drive those 262.8 miles, for a cost of 13.77 cents per mile.

Also, the average time to work (23.3 miles) is about 25 minutes, versus about 22 normally. So I’m saving about 1/2 hour of time per week driving my normal way. How much am I paying for that 1/2 hour? We’ll find out next week.