The Double Helix

Last night I finished reading my third book of 2010, The Double Helix by James Watson. James Watson along with Francis Crick discovered the double helical structure of DNA in 1953, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962. The structure of DNA, with the sequence of nitrogenous bases (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine) coding for the chains of amino acids that make up protein is at the root of all life (at least all life that we know of), so this was a pretty amazing discovery. It was an excellent book, and even though I knew how it would end it was still suspenseful to read about the race to be the first to determine the structure. It was pretty short (220 pages) and a fast read, highly recommended to anyone who has an interest in science.

There are some great quotes in this book, one of my favourites being: "One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.". I think this is an excellent point, as some people seem to think that if an individual has some letters after their name (MD, PhD, etc.) then everything they say is true, even if it is not in the subject area in which their expertise lies.

The sunny skies of yesterday have been replaced by clouds and rain today, so it looks like another day of working on bathroom trim for me.

Weight: 162.4

Sunshine and dry roads

This morning I had the job interview that I mentioned yesterday, which seemed to go pretty well. It had the format of a graduate school qualifying exam, with me standing at a whiteboard and four people seated around a conference table asking circuit questions that I had to work through. I think it went pretty well, though it is always hard to think when there are four people staring at you. It can make you do funny things, like try to use Laplace transforms to show that a step voltage applied across an inductor leads to a linearly increasing current (a simple time domain integration would have done the job with much less effort). I guess I'll find out in a few days whether they were sufficiently awed by my frequency domain antics to ask me back for another interview.

The interview didn't last as long as I had expected, which worked out well since it was an amazing sunny day here and that meant I could get out for a great road ride in the sun (see photo on the left, paying special attention to the blue sky). It was super fun to ride my bike again, I haven't done much riding lately since I have been mostly skiing, but as long as it is warm and dry the riding will probably be way better than the skiing, so I might as well go where the money is! When I arrived home from my ride Roanne was just completing the puzzle, and I was lucky enough to capture this exciting moment on camera.


Weight: 163.2

Job Interview

It turns out that the meeting I had with a company on Thursday was just a pre-screen to see if they wanted to do a full interview, but apparently it went well because they asked me to come back for a full interview tomorrow. The company is called Synapse, and they do contract electronic/mechanical/industrial design for a number of large companies, some of the more interesting ones are Nike, Philips, and MSR (Mountain Safety Research). It seems like a great place to work, they have a great office space right downtown with an in-house half pipe and climbing wall (seriously), and indoor bicycle parking as soon as you get off the elevator on their floor. I am pretty excited at the possibility of working there, so hopefully the interview goes well.

The rest of the weekend after my big ski on Saturday was pretty quiet, Roanne and I just hung out around the house working on a puzzle, reading, and baking delicious cookies. Hopefully I don't eat all the cookies this week and bomb my weigh-ins!

Weight: 162.4

Skiing on slush in the rain

Yesterday morning I woke up early to do a ride with the cycling team that I will be riding for this year (Hagens Berman Cycling, to be pronounced in a thick German accent). After my alarm went off I sat up, looked out the window, saw that it was raining, and then rolled over and went back to bed. Such is my dedication to winter cycling training.

When I finally arose from my slumbers, I decided to try skiing in the pass in hopes that it would be snowing there instead of raining. I headed out to Cabin Creek, and was pleased to see that it was a wet snow falling. Unfortunately, the new snow seemed to have the consistency of glue, making for really snow skiing. The only upside was that I felt like a real hero on the downhills, since I didn't have to deploy the snow plow techniques I usually use to scrub off sped on some of the downhills. Eventually the snow turned to rain, which actually made for faster skiing, I guess skiing in slush is faster than skiing in packing snow.

I still ended up having a good long ski, completing 4 laps of the "bread and butter" loop (this name is borrowed from Markez, who uses it to describe his favourite loop up at Cypress). The bread and butter loop heads out and back on the "Road" trail, then does a full lap of the Viking/Berg course with the Mt. Ozbaldy loop thrown in for good measure. The lap is 12.3 km long, a map of it as plotted by my GPS is shown below:


It is really fun skiing, with a good mix of twists, turns, and climb. Here is an elevation profile of the loop, according to my Matlab processing of the elevation data from the GPS it was 1240 feet of elevation gain per loop.

So, my four loops put me at 49.2 km for the day which is a respectable total, and made even more so since the conditions were so slow and it ended up being just over 4 hours of skiing (in fast conditions it would have been closer to 3 hours). Anyways, any day out skiing is a great day no matter what the conditions, so I drove home with a smile on my face.

After I arrived home Roanne and I spent the late afternoon and evening working on a puzzle. At this point I think Roanne is really looking forward to being able to get out and be active after her treatment is over, she has been able to maintain a pretty normal life in terms of going to work every day, but has had to really scale back her physical activity since the chemotherapy makes her feel so tired. I think to celebrate the completion of her treatment, we will go to Italy and ride a Gran Fondo, but more on that later.

Finally, let's tally my weekly weigh-in average! I definitely had a good week, starting off really strong with some all-time records and then slowly creeping back up (as the effects of the canoli that Fras and Car fed me wore off). Yesterday I was 163.0 and this morning I was 163.2, so I definitely need to turn it back around for the coming week and hopefully hit 161 again. My weekly average was ... 162.5! Tremendous! The only downside is that it is going to be hard dropping down from that for the coming week, wish me luck!

Hard at work

You may have noticed that I haven't posted any home improvement updates to my blog lately. That isn't to say I haven't been hard at work on them, in fact, quite the opposite. On Tuesday I installed the door in our main floor bathroom (I won't post a photo of that until I have installed the trim, for full effect), and I thought I would dedicate this posting to the progress I have made in the three days since (including the work I hope to get done today).

Since we live in an old house, nothing is quite straight and this is especially true for the floors. They slope up to the outer wall near the back, and this meant that when I installed the door I had to have a gap under one of the side jambs to make the top jamb level. This in turn meant that I would need to fill that somehow before the door trim and baseboard trim went on, and that is what I have been working on for the past few days. Here are the day-by-day progress reports:

Wednesday: I managed to cut a few small blocks of wood to the right size for fitting in the gap.
Thursday: I purchased some wood glue and glued the blocks together.
Friday: Today if all goes well I hope to glue the "block module" in place under the door jamb.

Pictured at the left is the block module partially in place under the rogue side jamb. What a productive week! Some of Roanne's congratulatory comments seem to imply that I could be accomplishing more with my time, but I think she is just secretly jealous of my productivity. And just think, I might have been able to do even more if it hadn't been sunny all week and I didn't have to fit in a 3 hour roller ski session each day!

Weight: 162.8

Band of Brothers

Last night I moved one step closer to fulfilling resolution #6 on my list of new years life resolutions, by finishing my second book of 2010: Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose. The book is a historical account of an American company of paratroopers, and follows them from their training to their first combat jump on D-day at Normandy, and throughout the rest of World War II. The book's strength is it's historical accuracy, it is pretty amazing reading some of the anecdotes knowing that they are all true. However, in my opinion this painstaking historical accuracy was also the book's weakness, since at times it seems to get bogged down in the specifics of exactly who did what at what time, etc. I can see why the author did it, since if I was a participant in these events I would want to see my name show up where it should, but at times it made for a less enjoyable read. One other complaint is that the author uses a lot of military acronyms and jargon which are completely unfamiliar to a civilian like myself. It would have been helpful if there was a military primer at the start explaining the difference between a battalion, a company, and a division, and also a glossary where all of the acronyms are defined. Those things being said, it was still an excellent read (and a quick one, good for my resolution!) and I would recommend it.

One other piece of news that is pertinent to a new years resolution: I actually have a job interview today! I had gotten so used to submitting resumes and never hearing anything back from anyone that I almost fell off my chair when I read an e-mail from someone telling me they might interview me. A few days ago I was scanning monster.com for job postings, and I noticed they had a list of recommended jobs associated for my account; Job #2 on the list of recommendations was a posting for a Warehouse Driver in Spokane, WA. This was a bit disheartening, since I had been under the assumption that a PhD in Electrical Engineering qualified me for a higher level job (no offense meant to any warehouse drivers reading this, I'm sure your training was equally intense). At least they asked for "PC Skills" in the posting, I'm pretty sure I picked those up somewhere along the line.

Anyways, the position I am interviewing for this morning (or at least meeting with someone from the company, I'm not sure if it is a full interview) sounds like a great job: the company does really interesting work, the location is perfect (right downtown), and they even have a climbing gym in their headquarters. I don't want to write too much about it since who knows what will happen, but it is at least a step in the right direction towards fulfilling resolution #5 on my list of new years life resolutions.

Weight: 162.4
Body Fat: 5.2%

Race planning II

After unveiling the first part of my winter racing schedule last week with the announcement of my plans to participate in the Gatineau Loppet on Feb. 21, I think it is time to announce the next part of my racing program: on March 13 I will be racing in the Wasatch Powder Keg, a backcountry ski race in Salt Lake City. I will do the race with my friend Mike who I worked with at the University of Utah, also an avid skier/climber/cyclist. Those of you who have skied with me might be thinking: "What is this muppet doing entering a backcountry ski race, he can barely ski!". To that, I say "Touche". It is true that I am severely lacking in the downhill skiing skills department, but I am hoping that my uphill fitness and patented "survival skiing" downhill style will allow me to reach the finish line in one piece. The race is 14.4 km long, with 5 climbs totaling 5000 feet in elevation gain. At the very least it will be a great day out in the mountains, so I am really excited.

Other news (from the "Things that actually matter" department) is that Roanne had her 5th chemotherapy infusion this past Monday, and is doing really well. The first 4 injections were a mix of two drugs (Adriamycin and Cytoxan) that apparently have more side effects than the drug used for the last 4 injections (Taxol). So this past week was Roanne's first Taxol injection and so far she is feeling far better than she was after the A/C injections. That is to say she is now getting up at 5am to head into work, rather than the 6am rising time she has had in prior weeks. Roanne is pretty amazing/crazy, even while undergoing chemotherapy she clocks more hours of work than I ever will (in the event that I do at some point in the future have the misfortune of finding gainful employment). The only time off she has taken during this whole ordeal has been one day when she first heard the news, and every other Monday since chemotherapy started since the infusion and accompanying doctors appointments take the better part of the day.

Anyways, back to stuff that has no real-world significance: this morning I had another record setting weigh-in, Huzzah!

Weight: 161.4
Body Fat: 5.0%