Well, not really...

Don't worry (or, do worry), I'm not really quitting. I've just tried to write some semi-serious things here and then every time had to give up because I don't want any old random person to read them (I'm not delusional: I see the logs and people from all over read this thing... scary!). So you'll just have to continue living with sarcastic and shallow reporting of our adventures!!

Anyways, so here are some updates: we fly to Canada in just two weeks (crazy, no?). We have 2 Christmas parties next week (so exciting!!). We were going to go to Lyon this weekend for the Fete des Lumières but everything is completely full. We might go on Sunday for the day... but my bet is that we'll be too lazy. It's snowed here a few times. There's lots of snow in the mountains. People are skiing already. Maybe we'll go to Cambodia for vacation in the spring. This is old news but maybe I didn't say it before: we are registered for the Marathon du Lac d'Annecy April 21st. We'll have to train on Christmas. They've been painting the basement of the Chateau at Xerox so we haven't been able to play on the new ping pong table recently. What a major disaster. They might be done this week though. Our espresso machine ("Live an Italian Lifestyle at Home!") needs de-scaling. Poor thing. New research suggests (seriously) that we should drink as much coffee as we can (or like) until it affects our ability to sleep (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/11/the-case-for-drinking-as-much-coffee-as-you-like/265693/). I don't understand the most basic principles of statistics (this is not an update, strictly speaking). Apparently farms have something called a "duck house".

Blogging ain't for me

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well.
[The Snows of Kilimanjaro]

I think I'll start a diary.

Xerox in November

Torino

Time for a post!

Loyal readers: you have been patient and luckily for you it is Friday afternoon and the productive part of my brain has shut down for the week. I can't write the stuff I'm supposed to be writing about and I can't read the stuff I'm supposed to be reading about so instead I'll write some other stuff that seems to come more easily (since I don't have to do it).

Somewhat more formally, the pink part of my brain has temporarily (I hope) ceased to function properly and that is where work-related stuff is produced. The anterior amygdalactic protofusional undula umblumgata (the green part) is all that remains for now. Fortunately, that small part at the back (hence the "anterior" -- thank you neuroscientists!) allows me to still somewhat functionally be able to write some blog related stuff.

Summary of recent events

For the 4-day weekend last week we rented a car and drove to Torino, Italy -- site of the 2006 Winter Olympics. We also went with a friend of mine from work. We arrived on Friday around lunch time and had some lasagna and Italian beer at a local bar (local as in near our hotel). Bars in Italy are generally also like French cafés in that there's literally a BAR and behind it there's a big huge espresso machine and there are little tables. But also in Italy's bars they usually serve food for lunch (not necessarily dinner though). We then went to the Parco del Valentino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parco_del_Valentino) where we met up with our friend Clara (back story: Clara is my friend from when I went to university in Leeds. She is also our friend because Sandi met her when she came to visit me in Leeds and also we stayed with her in Italy and travelled with her when we came to Europe for my friend Brian's wedding in the summer of 2007. Also, she is our friend because when you're married then generally what happens is that all of your friends become your spouse's friends as well, except in the case when you really don't like a certain friend (or certain friendS) of your spouse's and then when they say something to someone along the lines of "we're visiting our friends" or whatever then you have to add in something passive-agressive-ish like "No. We're visiting YOUR friends" just to make it clear that due to you not being so crazy about the friend(s) in question, that/those friend(s) never made it past that cut-off where the friend of one of the spouses also becomes a friend of the other one. But, all that being said, Clara doesn't fit into this exception so it's very safe to say "our" friend.) So, we saw Clara and we took some pictures in front of the river (which I can't post here because I'm at work and don't have said photos.. oh no wait, I have one that I sent to Clara on facebook.. I'll go get that now [...] ok, back. Here it is:

)

After this, we took a long long walk to the sort-of city centre (only sort-of because it was allegedly the "ciocolaterie" district and not the full-on city centre but it turned out that it was pretty much JUST south of it as we discovered the next day) and went to a famous ciocolaterie. We got some chocolate (obv) and some cappucinos (in France if you want coffee with milk you get a café crème and in Italy you get a cappucino and they're almost the same thing. People [i.e. Americans or tourists in general] will often order a "café au lait" with the intention of getting a café crème and because this is so common they will generally be given a café crème anyways and everyone is happy and they move on. BUT, what a café au lait really is is a coffee with a LARGE amount of milk served in a cereal bowl and you would only ever have this at breakfast time. So, while you'll likely get what you want if you order a café au lait [if you actually want a café crème], you will be contributing to two things: 1. it will be very clear [although it already was due to your accent] that you are a tourist; and 2. you will perpetuate this travesty of incorrect naming and then if you ever really did want a café au lait [which you would almost, well, FULLY, never order because it's something you have at home -- come on people] then the person would just assume that you don't really want that and they'd give you something else, and is that what you really want?). After sitting around for a bit Clara had to go as she was in Torino on vacation with her family (she's not from Torino -- she lives elsewhere in Italy and I was just about to write exactly where but then I didn't because of that whole identify theft thing we talked about last time). Then, our remaining group of 3 walked around trying to find a good place to eat and we ended up going to a pretty weird place but it was fine..

The next day we did a little bit of "shopping" in the real city centre and then drove to Asti because we wanted to visit a nice little wine-producing village. But, it turns out that the actual town of Asti (Asti is a region of many towns but the biggest of the towns is also called Asti) is actually pretty huge and wasn't really what we were expecting but we spent some time there walking around and such and bought a few things and drove back to Torino. Now, here is where the story gets kind of interesting (well, not so much interesting as sad so if you're into schadenfreude then you're in luck.. well not even because the story has a happy ending [to spoil the ending...]). Anyways, so we're driving back and the thing is that -- just like France -- pretty much all of Italy's highways are toll roads. Every few minutes you're stopping and you're putting your credit card in the machine and your bank account's balance is getting smaller and smaller. But I guess that's the price we pay for nice big smooth paved roads. Now, we also didn't have any kind of GPS device as most people seem to have in this day and age. The iPhone can provide something of this sort but as were outside of France if I wanted to use it I would have incurred data usage bills that are out of this world. But we had a fairly good idea of where we needed to go. We knew we had to take the A6 at some point and when we finally got to it there was much rejoicing (we were worried we'd never find it) but that was short-lived because after being on the road for maybe 20 minutes we realized things weren't right because the whole trip should take no more than 30 minutes and we'd already gone much longer than that. So we deduced that though we were on the A6, we were heading in the wrong direction on the A6 AWAY from Torino, rather than towards it. The next possibility to turn around came when we arrived at a toll booth. When you first go through the booth you get a little ticket that shows where you started on the road and then when you come to the next one you give your ticket and it calculates how long you've been on the road for and therefore how much you need to pay. I took the ticket, and then saw that there was a ramp where you could turn around. I took the ramp, turned around, and then -- now going in the correct direction -- came to the toll booth from the other side. I put in the ticket and it said that it was invalid (I suppose that makes sense because I guess they don't expect you to turn around even though it's possible thanks to the special ramp). After about a minute or so (by the way these things are generally "unmanned" so it's all automated) some dude came on the intercom and started blabbing away in Italian. Our friend that was with us from Grenoble speaks Italian so they started blabbing and I presume she tried to explain what happened. She said everything's fine, just take that "receipt" that the machine spit out. I took it, the gate opened, and we were on our way! Less than 1/2 hour later we were back in Torino at our hotel and preparing to hit the town for dinner, etc. [Side note: in my excitement to tell this story I forgot to mention one of the most important parts of modern Italian culture. That is the aperitivi. We indulged in this magnificent idea when we were staying with Clara in Florence {security through obscurity} in the summer of oh-seven. Basically, from around 18h to 21h or so, aperitivi bars (most of them are this kind) set up a buffet of food which includes pizza, cheeses, meats, &c. and you buy some kind of apéritif drink like a Campari or Martini Rosso/Bianco and the drink costs like 4 euros which is pretty standard. BUT, included with the drink purchase is unlimited access to the buffet! It's an amazing thing and if I'm ever so unfortunate as to become really down on my luck and find it difficult to gather enough money to eat every day, I will do this, and I would offer this same advice to anyone who might find him/herself in the same situation: save up 4 euros, don't eat anything all day, go to an aperitivi bar, buy your 4 euro drink, and eat until you can't eat anymore. Repeat.] Back to the toll story though... Just as we were about to head out, we took a look at the receipt just to make sure that they hadn't charged anything on my credit card (I had put the credit card in just like a normal toll booth at first but I didn't seem to have been charged anything).. Well, it still appeared that I hadn't been charged anything, but the "receipt" was in fact an "Unpaid Toll Ticket" in the amount of 86 euros. This -- needless to say -- put a bit of a damper on the mood of the evening and got me not a little bit upset. We went to dinner though at a place that the hotel man recommended and it was fun.. an Italian place run by Chinese people so there was the tiniest Chinese Food twist to things. Anyways, the next day we went to visit the old Fiat factory that has been converted into a giant commercial shopping centre and we visited this place called Eataly which is a famous (I guess) grocery/restaurant. We had lunch there which was quite delicious and we purchased several Italian products to smuggle (thank you European Union) bring back to France (mainly wine -- not that there's anything wrong with French wine, of course). The whole drive home was POURING rain and it was quite painful in that manner and when we finally dropped the rental car off at the train station there was one final F-U from Italy for me: I had somehow forgotten my (yearly) Grenoble transit pass in the hotel room. So, because of those misfortunes I wasn't too happy about the trip in general but then things started to improve. First, I found out that I just had to pay a 7 euro fee to cancel my old pass and have them make me a new one. Second, I really didn't think we would get around it but I wrote the Italian Toll Company people an e-mail and my friend called them and they cancelled our ticket quite easily. So, then, gaining some perspective after the two (what I thought to be) major disasters were averted, I realized that it was a pretty good trip all-in-all.

This week has been a long week after last week lasted only 3 days so perhaps that may have contributed to the fact that the pink part of my brain stopped working around 16h. However, that week is now essentially over and it's the weekend! During the week there was a visitor to XRCE and he's some rising star from Cambridge but he's originally from Victoria! I went to his talk and I asked him afterwards if he was from Vancouver because he talks exactly like my friends from Vancouver and he said no good guess I'm from Victoria how did you know and I was like it's pretty obvious you west-coaster. This weekend we wanted to go biking since (as I think I explained recently) it's impossible to go after work due to the darkness factor but unfortunately again it looks like it will rain all weekend. So, I think we plan to do some shopping (!!) perhaps for xmas time for some of the very people that are most likely to be reading this blog (and by the way, if you're still reading: congratulations! If I were you I probably would have quit by now. Reading this must be infuriatingly exhausting!).

Grenoble Blog Contest Update

For those that read the last post, you will (perhaps) remember this little nugget:

Grenoble Blog Contest: write your own witty fun slogan for Bern and send it to me before the next posting and you could win a Christmas present from France

Unfortunately for everyone involved, not a single person submitted a single slogan (let alone witty or fun) to describe the city of Bern and therefore no one wins. Since not even a single person submitted even a single entry, you know that if you had just submitted ANYTHING you would have won. Keep this in mind for when the next contest comes up. Therefore, many of you may have to settle for a Christmas present from Italy (for Tom, this would kind of be opposite [as I understand it]. What I mean is, he would prefer an Italy present over a France present so winning for him would be an Italy present so maybe he'll get a France present anyways even though he didn't win the contest, but then that just kind of reeks of spite so maybe I just won't get him anything.. hahahahha just joking Tom [if you're reading this] -- you'll get something super cool I bet.

Triathlon Update

Nothing to report. We have become fat and sedentary.

Le grand froid

Le grand froid is back! The astute reader will remember that when we first arrived here nearly nine months ago it was in the midst of one of the most severe cold spells in recent European history: the grand froid! There was of course no snow in the city itself (as that only ever happens in the mountains) but it was pretty darn cold. But, here we are on October 28 and -- well, it's actually not that cold -- the grand froid (in a way) is (sort of) back (kind of). This is from our kitchen window this morning:

So clearly the city wasn't prepared for this and unfortunately our big marathon relay that was supposed to happen this morning was cancelled :-( ... I did go for a run later in the day though once the snow had calmed down a bit:

I know what you're wondering. You are wondering: "with that nice big river cutting through the city, why did he only run along it for a little bit.. like near the start on the north side and then just a tiny bit near the end there on the south side". (like a psychic, no?).. Anyways, since you've been wondering that I'll partially explain the reasons (yes, I said reasonS). First, we've been running along that #$%&*!@ river multiple times per week for months now. And man does it get boring; you gotta switch things up a little. Second, even if I wanted to run all along the river there are two sub-reasons in this reason of why I just CAN'T: (i) remember how it was snowing like crazy? Well there are some really nice paths that are literally like right ON the water (of course not ON the water but RIGHT beside it) and they are made of mud (sort of) and with this crazy snow and the melting and all that it would have been both insanely muddy and also super slippery and I would have most probably fallen in; and (ii) they're doing all kinds of protection contre les innondations along the riverbanks so in many of these places like just after I cross the river at Parc de l'Ile d'Amour over on the right there they've closed off the paths so they can work.

Catherine really wanted a normal blog post so I have to like be normal (or at least try) and maybe give some pictures and talk about what we've been doing and ... Well, maybe I'm exaggerating when I say that she said that she really wanted one but I told her that I would make one (a normal blog post) and then she told me today that she checked today and that there wasn't one there and so I had better get my act together and in fact she didn't even say that getting the act together thing but you know... Anyways, so what's been up in the land of the Alpes recently? Well, Sandi and I climbed a mountain (Le Grand Colon in the Belledonne) two Thursdays ago with my colleague who picked us up at 5 am and drove us to the "basecamp" (they don't really even come close to calling it basecamp). The summit is at 2400m and it was HARD! We were huffing and puffing like maniacs gettin up that thing trying to keep up with our friend who was just strolling along whistling a happy tune (metaphorically speaking). Our legs hurt like crazy for two days and remember we're like super human Ironmans (TM). Here we are in a super blurry photo at the summit (it is super blurry because it was taken with a phone and there wasn't much light and [most importantly] it was INSANELY windy.. like windy enough to easily knock you over [which it did on multiple occasions]):

By the way, this was WELL before the nouveau 'grand froid' and later in the day in Grenoble I was bustling around wearing a t-shirt having a grand old time in the warm French sun but it was freezing up there with the altitude, the morningness, and (mainly) the crazy wind.

Speaking of mountains and mountainous terrain (the connection is there) I was just in Lausanne and Bern Switzerland for work. It was fine but like most work trips that are for meetings (as opposed to conferences) I could have been anywhere and it wouldn't have made a difference since you're just in the meeting all day and then in the hotel and then in the meeting and then you go home and it's more of a hassle really than anything to travel but it was sort of neat to go to CH as I'd never been. The crazy thing about Bern (that I was able to observe) is that the city itself is very very different from Grenoble in that it is one hilly mo-fo. Grenoble is surrounded by tall mountains but the city itself is as flat as a pancake (side note: I made pancakes this morning with the Fanny Farmer Cookbook recipe and, as always, they were FAN-tastic). BUT, Bern is not flat anywhere in any way, shape, form, structure, or configuration (Grenoble Blog Contest: write your own witty fun slogan for Bern and send it to me before the next posting and you could win a Christmas present from France). I went for a short run in the morning time (so I guess you can sometimes do a few extra things besides work) and every direction you went was either way up or way down and even if you choose the way down direction you of course need to come way back up to make it back to the hotel to like shower and change and then head to the meeting. Funny story re the meeting (well not so much funny as sad and pretty typical everywhere): they had the Nespresso system (of which you, dear reader, are intimately familiar from my last ['weird'] blog post) and I'm seeing those things G-D everywhere. You know, each coffee you want introduces one huge puck of plastic waste to the world. Now, I can complain and complain but really I'm a big part of the problem (in a way.. wait for the conclusion..). You see, if they had had North-American "Tim Horton's" style urn drip coffee I would have complained way more and in fact wouldn't have had any (that shit is gross). But since Nespresso is actually proper coffee (to a certain extent) I had to have a bunch and I had to kill the Earth. They are so evil these meeting organizers.

This coming week (starting tomorrow morning -- well, I guess for most calendars that we're all used to it started today but generally I think when you're a working man [or woman] you think of the 'week' starting on Monday) is only a 3-day week! Thursday (November 1st) is a French holiday and the good people of Xerox are giving us Friday so we get a 4-day weekend. How about that? So we very well might go to Italy but we're running into some snags in the preparation process.. You know, where would we stay? Where would we go? How would we get there? Who would we go with? What would we do in the place that we decide to go? Etc &c and cetera and so forth.

Imagine for a minute that you are an identity thief. For whatever strange, sick, twisted, deranged, ugly, hideous, awful, terrible, destructive, vengeful reason you have decided that you wanted to steal my (or a person's, more generally) identity. You bastard! But, probably I am making your job (aren't I the nice one here?) that much easier by giving you all this information about myself? You (damn you, by the way) know where I work (I wrote it above several times), you know where I travel to, you know what I look like, you know my e-mail address, blah blah blah. Anyways, so that makes me a little nervous about writing all this stuff on here. Since this blog is like so popular and all, there must be thousands (millions?) of you IT's (NY Times style apostrophe on acronym.. don't worry) out there and I'm pretty well doomed. But, since now you know that I know that you know that I know (etc), I think we can all safely assume that there will be no theft of anyone's identity going on here, wouldn't you say? (Oops; sorry Catherine: I just remembered that you were hoping for a normal blog post and I may have just veered off the road a little with that one.. but I was really only doing it to make sure that I continue writing blog posts for you and all the fam without having to worry too much about those evil IT's).

More normal news: we saw Skyfall today! SWEET MOVIE! Now that was a JB film in its finest. Not Casino Royale caliber in my opinion, but very very good and clearly -- CLEARLY -- way better than Quantum of Solace (what a disappointment that was!). I won't give anything away of course but it was very different from a JB film I thought but still quite quite quite good and entertaining and all that. But here's something crazy from our foray to the cinema: I was just about to call Tom (in fact I did) because I saw a billboard-type affiche thing that had Tom Cruise (in case of ambiguity: I was about to call Tom D.) on it and it said "Jack Reacher" on it and I was like NO WAY! Anyways, so I did call Tom (D) but he wasn't there and THEN before the JB film started there was an actual preview for the JR film and it really is true: Tom Cruise is playing Jack Reacher! RIDICULOUS! Reacher is supposed to be like 7 feet tall (at least) and is supposed to be a HUGE guy.. that's like one of his MAIN PRINCIPAL NUMBER ONE characteristics.. And they get Tom CRUISE??? Doule-U, Tee, Eff. I'll still go see it though.

23 Degrees and Windy

Clouds in the mountains, but no snow right now. There was snow -- a ton of it -- but it appears to have melted. Lots of greenery; maybe they're evergreens. Too windy though. Some trees have no leaves at all but some have nearly all of their leaves (like the close ones that you can see well enough such that you know that they're not evergreens they just haven't lost their leaves yet). You can see some buildings on the mountain and you imagine it's some village and they lead a very simple life. But it's probably cold up there (at least colder than here). Clouds have shifted but still remain principally over and around the (those) mountains. Other mountains' areas remain clear. In fact, clouds are everywhere now. Throat clearing (ALL the time; all the time throat clearing). Finger tapping; mouse scroller scrolling (very rapidly). E-mail alert pops up, you click on it, it's nothing important. Wind appears to have died down. Oh no, wait, it hasn't. It's even stronger than before. Why are those big thick clouds sticking around that one peak? Must be some (hydro)meteorological/atmospheric explanation. La Cialdian Espresso packs (7g) make a single tiny coffee and contain (throat clear again with heavy sigh afterwards) I dunno... guessing here... probably 3 tons of plastic to throw away afterwards. Nespresso (you know them) is probably more evil than Ikea, Wal-Mart and Bain Capital all tied into one (well, maybe don't include Bain). Window is open and papers flutter but don't fly off the desk.. not enough therefore to say something. Real damage has to be done otherwise you're just complaining for nothing. But if you just let things go until something happens then eventually something will happen. It's like saying you're fine not wearing a seat belt until you get into a car crash: following my fiery broken-neck induced car crash death, I will then begin wearing a seat belt. Clouds have shifted slightly and ambient cloud cover in general remains stable; it's no brig- (very loud throat clear) -hter than it was before. The sun is not directly visible but one could locate it by finding the brightest spot in the sky (or being minimally-versed in [children's-level] astronomical sciences). Wind is so heavy that it's loud inside. Forms (mouse scrolling heavily from several locations) need to be filled out. Draft being saved. The probability of a child being abducted in the US from the street is less than 0.000000001 % and of those about half end up dead. In attempting to reduce that number to 0 parents over-parent by (inter alia) driving their child to school introducing more cars on to the road and thereby increasing the likelihood of car accidents and the child mortality rate increases to higher than it would have been if the kid had taken his/her chances with the kidnappers. Not allowing them to walk/ride to school also increases (loud cough) the number of fat kids / diabetes and more kids die too. Sandi says: people who read this are going to think you're weird!!!

Goodbye G&M!

The G&M's online paywall will go up on October 22nd (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-globe-to-roll-out-metered-paywall-as-industry-shifts-to-digital-revenue/article4612259/) (click quickly if you want to read it without paying!). This will allow you to read 10 articles per month for free or pay $20 CDN per month to read everything (including Margaret Wente's plagiarized pieces and all of the Enbridge / Conservative Party propaganda).

If ANYONE thinks that this will be a viable business model for them, please tell me. If you answer in the affirmative, I also have a plan: send me $20 CDN per month and in return I will send you plagiarized articles from the Ottawa Sun (I'll download them and then change a couple of choice words and say that I wrote them). Additionally, I will send you Stephen Woodworth (Kitchener MP!) anti-abortion pamphlets bi-monthly. For an additional $5 per month I will send you any sports scores that you're interested in from tsn.ca and I'll throw in some reasons why corporate tax rates are too high. Finally, for the low-low rate of $0.50 per day, I will both (a) e-mail you a reason why global warming is NOT happening (one per day -- some may be repeated, however); and (b) re-tweet any message of your choosing to my (guaranteed) at least 10 followers.

The G&M's paywall will not last more than 6 months. If it does, I will be astonished. How do you NOT fire Margaret Wente? Forget the plagiarism, how did they not fire her when she suggested that a shooting happened because of Quebec's language laws?

lyon, xmas time [angsty teenage version]

we have 2 go 2 lyon this weekend to run in this race. ugh. it's so embarrassing. we're only doing the 10k when there's also gonna be a mary and 1/2-mary going on at the same time. people in the real and half-real races are gonna see us and laugh. it's all the government's fault. plus i have 2 get all this stupid pointless work done. people who give me work  just don't understand how hard it is and how much time it takes. it's like they hate me! what did i ever do to them? none of my friends have to do this much. it's sooooooo unfair. and i heard that the new maps on the new iphone is totally subpar compared to the old maps but if i don't get one then like NO ONE will even look at me. thanks a lot apple! ugh.

plus i had 2 buy these tickets to come back to france after xmas time but since work doesn't pay me enough (what's wrong with them?) i had to use airmiles which i hardly even had enough of and plus i had to pay the taxes on the tickets so how is that even a reward? soooo lame. and like my mom is totally paying the taxes for me as a mega xmas present but like it's still a personal affront to me from this stu00pid company to make the whole tax paying thing an issue in the first place. and airmiles sucks so bad that there are no flights through airmiles from toronto to lyon until the 8th of january so i have to take all these vacation days from work so i can't use them for more important things later like totally going to see [young person band] in paris in march. it's like the lamest thing ever.

and my work got us tickets to go back at xmas time a long time ago but i also have to take vacation days for that because i tried to change the date to after the vacation starts but there's no possibility to change these tickets to when i want them because all the lame-ass planes are full at that time. what another crappy company. it's like everyone is going out of their way to make my life hard. and we probably won't even fly 1st class. major losers!

After the Ironman!

Camping in the Belledonne

Good morning/afternoon/evening/[middle of the night]/[very early in the morning] long suffering readers (due to the Poisson-distribution nature of the posts on this blog where the lambda parameter has probably shifted downward over time making the mean/variance dynamic [over time] and therefore very difficult to model, I think). However, we're back. All new adventures, all new episodes, all new pictures. In fact, the blog has new financial backers that [content removed after disagreement with new financial backers --ed.]

Since Ironman training is over we now have time to actually do things. Of course, we haven't take the time to get to know anyone so doing anything really social is still out of the question. But, we like each other well enough so we can do fun things together. Last weekend we went camping in the Massif de Belledonne. It's one of the 3 mountain ranges that surrounds Grenoble and the biggest of the 3. In fact, the other 2 (Chartreuse and Vercors) are only part of "pre-Alps" (lame) but Belledonne is actually in THE ALPS. Crazy, no? So we took a bus up to around 1100 m to the town/ski resort of Chamrousse and started our hike into the woods there. Here it is actually:

(that's the town in the background after having walked a bit up further into the mountain)

Sandi tackling some giant rocks

Cool view

Our spot by the Lacs Robert

Preparing dinner

Preparing to eat dinner

Camping wine accessories

Reflecting lake -- cool eh!?

Grenoble in the background

IM Sweden / Canada

In DFW's Infinite Jest, Don Gately -- a recovering Demerol addict, "more or less professional" burglar, and present counselor at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House -- has been chosen as kind of an "avatar" (in the James Cameron sense) for the genius avant-garde film director J.O. Incandenza's wraith (J.O. is dead from committing suicide by microwaving his head) so that after death J.O. can take care of some unfinished business. Well, it's not fully an avatar in the JC sense because he doesn't fully take over Gately's body and control it completely, but in some ways it's close because J.O. is giving Gately thoughts that Gately can't always tell are not his. Anyways, Gately doesn't realize at first that he's been having thoughts that are kind of "planted" in his head by the wraith but he has clues such as the fact that words that he'd never heard of before start appearing in his thoughts (e.g. "embrasure"). But the wraith (J.O.) eventually explains to Gately that his (Gately's) "best" thoughts are not actually his own but were put there by J.O. As explained in Chris Hager's undergraduate thesis (http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/thesisb.htm), Gately's not really troubled by this but in a sense he's actually reassured:

[this explanation] appeals quite a bit to Don Gately, probably because throughout the novel his brain-voice has demonstrated exceptional -- if syntactically imperfect -- thoughts to readers, but Gately consistently refuses to think of himself as anything but stupid

So what's the point of this story? Well, there isn't really one (surprise, surprise) but I do hope that some very clever wraith decides to visit me during my defence on Friday morning. I have yet to receive any comments from the external reviewer (which must obligatorily be sent 7 days prior to the defence date) so I'm a bit worried that it's just so terrible that he hasn't bothered. The most likely explanation is that he's a lazy/busy (both) professor that can't really be bothered with it.

Recent News

As any semi-serious reader of this blog will know, we recently completed the inaugural Ironman Kalmar Sweden. Sandi did really amazing finishing in about the top 1/2 of all competitors and about the top 1/4 of all women with a time of 11:28. I didn't fare as well with a poor performance on the run but finished with a time that I'm happy(-ish) with: 12:30. Here are some really nice pictures that Thony's friend Marcus took:

I'll be coming to Canada tomorrow as you also likely know. See you soon!

Off to Sweden...

6 months of training are over; our race is in 6 days now and we leave for Sweden in just a few hours. The worst part of the trip is over -- we packed up our bikes over the course of several hours yesterday and they're ready to go:

I think that for most people, you might feel that you're 'ready' for a race but you know that you could have always done more. No different for us. I look back and think of a ton of things that we "should" have done or that I wish we'd done more of or differently but that's not the case so... oh well! Overall, though, I think we're essentially as ready as we can be (or at least will be this Saturday minus the problem that I'll have with sleeping before!). 

We've been getting lots of carbs:

Having fun at a beach bar in Juan-Les-Pins

Biking / training hard:

After arriving to the top of l'Alpe d'Huez (1h20m bottom-to-top)

Done some race practice:

After the "Villerest Aquathlon Longue Distance"

And gotten our nutrition products for the race together:

A whole bunch of processed sugar

 Now I'm off to pack...

Democracy (not really France related)

Although I don't write here that often, it's fun to have somewhere to write things that I think about every now and then knowing that someone will read them.. Maybe it's not fair though because I know that the big fans of this blog are Moms who mainly want to see pictures and hear what we've been up to. So, when I'm about to write about something entirely "non-France" related, I will alert you with a NON-FRANCE BIOHAZARD WARNING such as this:



And so, here we go...


Actually, before I really start it just occurred to me that this is even tangentially connected to my research at work and therefore it sort of is France related but really only very tangentially so the biohazard warning remains... Nevertheless, I will frame it within my work.


So one of the things that I'm thinking about through work is how to involve more citizens in the democratic process. A democracy isn't really a democracy unless the citizens discuss, deliberate, and -- maybe most importantly -- get the results of those deliberations to the decision makers -- the government. Unfortunately the scale at which our societies operate are such that this never really happens at all. In the US, for example, pretty much no one has any say in anything because you can choose either blue or red and when it comes down to it, there ain't much difference. It's a similar thing in Canada but maybe (?) not as stark.. Anyways, people can be involved however if they participate in the decision-making and deliberation process. We now have tools (the Internet) that allow most people to share their opinions without much cost (in terms of actual money or time or effort). The problem then is that those opinions don't often make it to the decision makers. So, we're working on ways to automatically learn what people are saying, about what, and distilling those opinions into shorter summaries and then presenting that information to law makers.


Ok. Everyone knows that the full ideals of democracy have never really been attained. But if you read about Kant's arguments for why democracy is, well, good, a lot of it surrounds peace and avoiding war. In The Better Angels of our Nature, Steven Pinker writes:

More important, democracies tend to avoid wars because the benefits of war go to a country's leaders whereas the costs are paid by its citizens. In an autocracy "a declaration of war is the easiest thing in the world to decide upon, because war does not require of the ruler, who is the proprietor and not a member of the state, the least sacrifice of the pleasures of his table, the chase, his country houses, his court functions, and the like. He may, therefore, resolve on war as on a pleasure party for the most trivial reasons." But if the citizens are in charge, they will think twice about wasting their own money and blood on a foolish foreign adventure. [p. 166]

What a cynic! (not). Two things: (1) if Americans really could choose (not just red or blue) would they have decided to not go to war "for oil"? Remember that most democrats voted for the war in Iraq; (2) even if they had a full choice and it was clear that the "non-elite" would be paying with their blood (or their children's blood) and wasting what is essentially their money would they have decided "differently" (differently in quotation marks because they really never decided). The elites would just convince them that it was the right thing to do... Look at the Tea Party in the US run by a bunch of rich guys and the rhetoric that they output and the things they have these people believing...


Anyways, I know I'm a fairly incoherent writer but I thought that these really idealistic views of democracy are just so far from what we're seeing that it's super interesting (and sad) to see how far we are from those ideals...


One other thing. Kant also argued that a democratic government will only wield its power when it must to safeguard the rights of its citizens (again see p. 166). This is one of the factors that Kant explained makes democracies built around nonviolence. But ignoring the violence angle, it's so clear that this ideal is very far from the way that governments actually act. The examples are all too obvious even -- especially (?) -- in Canada right now.


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Maybe I'll need another icon to say something like "end of non-France stuff". If I had one, it could go here. We're having major headaches setting everything up for getting our bikes to Sweden... we should have done Ironman Grenoble instead! (too bad it doesn't exist). Tomorrow I will run some experiments where I'll get interns to tell me which summaries are better.. hopefully they'll choose the ones that my system generates. Yesterday we went for breakfast before work to a place we really like called Pain et Compagnie in the city centre. They make everything there (all sorts of different jams and bio breads, etc.). After that we walked through the book store because it was faster to get to my bus for work and I'd wanted to buy Borges' other collection of short stories el Alelph (or l'Alelph in French) and we just happened to walk by the south american literature section and there it was and I got it.. How about that... Sandi also got new fancy Specialized bike shorts the other day so now we can match in another facet of our outfits (we have matching running shoes, sandals, t-shirts, etc... it's very embarrassing! :-) ) Our coffee machine is sad because Sandi is making us not drink coffee or alcohol until after the race. So sad (but I might cheat). Bed time for me now (can you tell?).. good night

Almost Sweden

We head to Sweden in 2 weeks and have our race in just under 3 weeks -- August 18th! It has been very very hot here (theme of the summer) but in my opinion this is much better than very very cold. Work has been good but very slow with many (most?) people away on vacation for several weeks in the summer. Also, France basically shuts down for the month of August with many (most?) restaurants, bars, services, and shops closing entirely for most -- if not all -- of the month. Without knowing it (or I guess in a way we had no choice due to the timing of the race) I'll be taking my vacations at the same time as the rest of the country.

Our friends from Peterborough R & S were here recently and we drove down to the Cote d'Azur; we stayed in Juan Les Pins in Antibes and it was (believe it or not) almost as hot there as it is here (not quite though). This past weekend Sandi and I ran 33km on Saturday morning and then biked 165km on Sunday (even though we were supposed to do 200, it then became 180, and then we decided "what's the difference?" and went home because it was too hot and we were tired). Tonight we'll swim 4 km and then from here on in it should be a bit of a 'taper' as we begin resting our bodies for our race. However, we hope to ride to Alpe d'Huez (and of course up it) next Saturday if the weather is nice and then hopefully go swimming outdoors somewhere on the Sunday.. maybe we'll take the train to Annecy. That's one of the main things we haven't been able to do as much of as we would like -- open water swimming -- because not having a car makes it quite difficult. There is somewhere in Grenoble but it's been so hot that the tiny dirty crowded lake is even warm feeling WITHOUT a wetsuit and the wetsuit practice is what we need because it requires a lot more shoulder strength than without... Could be a disaster but hopefully not...

Until our race is over we will still probably not have very exciting news to write about. Most of our time is spent training and eating because you sure need to train a lot to get ready for this race and you sure need to eat A LOT when you're doing all this training. Perhaps afterwards we'll become more interesting. Or maybe we'll just watch a lot of TV. Or maybe I'll become a workaholic staying at work all night long (not likely). Or maybe we'll sign up for some kind of group where we have to speak French all the time so that when we come back to Canada it will actually seem like we were in France. I suppose the possibilities really are endless, but we'll probably just sign up for another one right away.. hahahahhah NOT

Whatever you say Lady!

Coming to Canada

Defence is scheduled for the morning of Friday, August 31st! I will arrive in Toronto on Thursday the 30th around lunch time and I'll leave Sunday the 2nd of September in the late afternoon. Whirlwind trip!

Break from work

This past Saturday was exactly six weeks to Ironman Sweden. We 'celebrated' such a day by biking 185km in the Vercors mountain. We went further than we had gone before and made it all the way to the Col de Rousset where we had one of many snack breaks. The climb up to the Col is 6.2km long from St.-Agnan-en-Vercors with an average incline of 5.2% and maximum of 8.5%. The climb is rated category 2 following the Tour de France ratings where they range from HC (Hors Catégorie -- the most difficult) to Category 4 (the easiest). After the snack break we went ~100m further up over about 5 km to the 'outlook' point where we reached our highest yet in France -- about 1370m. The climb that always starts the bike rides from Grenoble into the Vercors is from Sassenage (essentially Grenoble) up to Villard-de-Lans which is nearly 20km long and goes from 200m to 1100m. This is a Category 1 climb. Our legs were VERY tired by the end of the day. In addition to the litres of water and gatorade that we consumed plus lunch in Lans-en-Vercors and other snack breaks including entire boxes of cookies and family-size bags of chips, these are approximate averages of consumption per product per person:


-- 3 Coca Colas (/person)
-- 3 coffees (/person)
-- 1 red bull (/person)
-- 3 chocolate bars (/person)
-- etc.

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Last week I spent in Brussels for a project kickoff that I'll be a part of. The kickoff was unfortunately not very exciting as it entails a lot of meetings about not very interesting things and it does not entail very much free time. I did get to enjoy some Belgian beer, however. I hope that the actual work on the project and its results will be infinitely more interesting than the meeting itself was.

Other interesting news is that I may finally have a date to defend my thesis! If some things can be sorted out, I may come back to Canada on August 30th to do the defence on Friday the 31st. It looks like an external examiner has been found and most people are available. Unfortunately, we also need someone who is familiar with my work but from within the university and NOT in our department. This was easy as there was someone from the math department who was on my advisory committee but he will be away during this time. Hopefully a suitable replacement can be found and this date can be confirmed soon because then I can buy a ticket asap before the prices are too insane. If the date works it should be perfect because it will be after the race and all the training and I won't have to worry about missing training days or wrecking up my body from jet lag and lack of sleep!

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It is really nice to have our friend Thony staying with us. Last year he was visiting us in Guelph at essentially the same time when we went to Peterborough and did the Half Ironman race. This year's Ptbo 1/2 IM was yesterday (of course we didn't do it this time). Last year we watched the Tour de France on my computer screen over the Internet with a pixely broadcast that would intermittently cut out. This year we're watching it in HD on a big TV so that's pretty nice! We were of course cheering for Ryder but after the big crash on Friday he was injured and so had to withdraw and go home for some rehab. He plans to be back for the Olympics though so maybe the extra rest will do him good. I haven't chosen a new person to cheer for yet but yesterday's first successful breakaway was pretty exciting and the stage was won by a 22-year-old French rider which must have been pretty amazing for him.

Back to work...

The Long History of the Espresso Machine

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/design/2012/06/the-long-history-of-the-espresso-machine/

Addendum

I'm currently reading an excellent book by Steven Pinker called "The Better Angels of our Nature" (http://www.amazon.ca/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/0670022950). I say excellent because it's thoroughly enjoyable to read and his observations and comments on human nature are incredibly interesting. I'm not done the book yet but his thesis that violence has declined (for numerous reasons that are difficult to summarize [the book is very very long for a good reason] but mainly have to do with Hobbes' leviathan social contract theory) has me convinced. There's a review on Amazon (you can see it following the above link) that says he misses the boat completely because violence against animals has increased so much that species are being wiped out at a faster rate than ever. While that's true and it's definitely a problem (obviously) I don't think in general it can be lumped in with 'violence'. It's unfair and the elimination of species is clearly the result of human actions but it's not violence in the traditional sense. The food/meat industry could more closely be claimed to be violent (we're literally killing more animals than ever because more people can afford to purchase meat and more animals are being born for the purpose of being killed and overall there are more people in the world) but this is really a book about violence against humans and human nature. Not to ignore the animal problem but really, I totally digress... Really what I wanted to note was this amazingly succinct passage that really captures the problem with religion:

"A broader range of unverifiable beliefs is the temptation to defend them by violent means. People become wedded to their beliefs, because the validity of those beliefs reflects on their competence, commends them as authorities, and rationalizes their mandate to lead. Challenge a person’s beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile. No one gets upset about the belief that rocks fall down as opposed to up, because all sane people can see it with their own eyes. Not so for the belief that babies are born with original sin or that God exists in three persons or that Ali was the second-most divinely inspired man after Muhammad. When people organize their lives around these beliefs, and then learn of other people who seem to be doing just fine without them—or worse, who credibly rebut them—they are in danger of looking like fools. Since one cannot defend a belief based on faith by persuading skeptics it is true, the faithful are apt to react to unbelief with rage, and may try to eliminate that affront to everything that makes their lives meaningful." (p. 140)

There you go.

Busy month

After a solid week of 30+ degree temperatures today it's a much more tolerable 25 degrees or so and raining. The rain is actually nice because it has also helped things feel cooler and although I typically enjoy the hot weather this is really nice right now. So, I have to write something because just yesterday (or perhaps the day before?) I quickly posted that due to the weather it was too hot to post!

While most of my blog posts have been written from the 'we did this' vantage point (i.e. the past) now I'll write about what 'we will do'. July will be busy. We have a ton of training to do with just about 1.5 months to go till the Ironman but we're starting the month off with a complete day off. We slept in and then watched the Tour de France all day long. Tomorrow things will get busy though and likely won't calm down for a while. Sandi has her 'formation civique' which is a day-long course where she'll learn about the organization of functioning of the French state and the fundamental principles of the French republic including (of course) liberty and equality (they don't mention fraternity in the letter...). This is part of her resident requirements which for some reason I don't have to do. After work (and Sandi's formation) we'll then run 30km! The next morning I'll go on a bike ride before taking my bike to Vélo Dayak (a bike store in Grenoble) to get a 'check-up' while I'm in Belgium. After that I'll take the shuttle to the Lyon airport and then spend a few days in Brussels for the European Project "FusePool"'s kickoff. This is a project that I'll start working on and this meeting is to discuss how the project will proceed and to get to know the other people that will participate from other companies. To read more about the project see http://www.fusepool.eu/

On the Thursday night before I return, our friend Thony will arrive from Sweden. He's visiting for a week where we'll have a "training camp" in preparation for our Ironman in August. We'll also drink a lot of coffee and watch a lot of Tour de France. We would like to go see some of it live but it will likely be too far away when he's here to be able to. The Monday after he arrives, Sandi will also start her job as a teacher at an English camp. After Thony leaves at the end of the week, we'll have a weekend (which will include hours and hours of biking and running -- and maybe some swimming) and then on the Tuesday our friends Russell and Sarah will arrive from Canada. While they're here we will spend the weekend in Nice and also visit Monaco.

On a recent bike trip in the Vercors mountain we stopped for lunch in La Chappelle en Vercors. Here we are enjoying some fine duck and Coca-Cola products:

Too hot to write

Current temperature = 38 degrees Celsius.