Ottawa Trip

I spent a few days in Canada this week. Taking a break from some of my more heartfelt serious posts lately, I'd like to post about some observations from my trip to Ottawa, Ontario. I was in town to visit the office of a company that my company acquired a year ago. They're just now getting integrated, and it's a product line I wasn't very familiar with, so welcomed the opportunity to learn directly from them face to face.

Units

Canada uses metric, and the US uses archaic imperial units. As an engineer and scientist, I am familiar with many metric units. That is, I know 30 degrees C is hot weather and I have a good feel for centimeters. I can do some conversions quickly; for example  F=2*C+30 roughly (good enough for non-scientific work) and 1 Gallon is a bit less than 4 Liters. That's great when you're in conversation, but I found my brain is securely fixed in imperial units.

When I hopped in the car Tuesday morning, the gal on the radio said the temperature was "minus 25". (oddly they don't say "negative 25" as we do in the States). I couldn't immediately translate this to F, but I knew it was DAMN COLD!

Extending on this, the next night the unitless forecast was "-20 and 2-4 of snow". In metric, this is pretty darn cold, but only a bit of snow (2.54 cm is an inch). But in imperial units, if it was -20F outside and  you're getting 2-4 inches of snow, it's a much worse world!

I had to refill the rental car with fuel on the way back to returning it. Gasoline costs about 1 CAD / Litre. I have absolutely no idea how much that really is. The CAD to USD conversion is close, but fluctuates, and I don't have a good feel at all. While I like the nice round number of $1/L, it felt fairly expensive to me at the time. Turns out, it's really close to current prices in the States, a bit under $US 3/gallon.

So I was entertained by my complete lack of real-world unit conversions between metric and my imperial-based brain. (Plus I really like writing the word Imperial since it makes me think of Darth Vader sitting in a committee meeting defining units.)

Politeness

Canadians are renown the world over for being a polite people. I found no exceptions here in Ottawa. When driving, most people used turn signals, slowed down to allow others to merge, pedestrians followed the signals at intersections -- it was quite nice. Although I was warned by a local that this doesn't follow through all of Canada. Apparently drivers in Montreal are just as bad as in the US.

I ate dinner a couple nights at a bar, a lunch at a Tim Hortons, and dinner at the airport. All of the servers were more than friendly. The counter gal at Tim's had a heavy north-African accent and was very apologetic. We had some challenges communicating, not just because of her accent but because of the Canadianisms too. I had no idea what "double-double" meant when she was asking about my coffee. Turns out it means two sugars, two creams. I like my coffee black, and it was an entertaining thing as it seems this is a popular choice up north. Regardless of our difficulty talking to each other, it was a very friendly and kind two minutes.

The patrons at these establishments were also very kind from their interactions with each other (making sure people had seats and enough space) to striking up general conversations with strangers. Maybe I just met some nice folks and that isn't the total norm, but I'm happy to stereotype in this positive manner. I have traveled regularly all across the US and often sit in silence next to grumpy fellow travelers and deal with disgruntled servers just waiting for their next smoke break. It's a refreshing change of pace.

Cultural Mix

I was surprised by the international feel of downtown Ottawa. Many people were bilingual in French and there was an incredible mix of "minorities". I am not educated on the racial heritage mix of the area, but had presumed Canada to be full of Caucasians. This was an erroneous assumption on my part and found a very wide mix of skin colors and accents. Maybe that's just part of being in a city, although Ottawa isn't exactly a huge city.

The Girls

Something stood out to me with women's fashion in this area. Even in freezing weather, many women still wore skirts with leggings. It appears that wildly patterned and styled leggings is a "thing" up there. A broad mix of boots/shoes, leg warmers/skinny jeans, etc. was easily observable around town. When you wander NYC or Chicago in the winter, it seems everyone has the same dress code -- long black coat and the warmest thing you find in your closet. It was unexpected to see such flair in women's winter fashion, as well as an apparent complete disregard for the temperature.

The Highlander Pub

To get a little specific, I have to recommend this place if you're ever in town. Their vegetarian food options weren't anything to write home about (but it's a Scottish themed bar, including kilts, and Scotts aren't really known for their vegan dishes!), but the service, the beer, and their selection of Scotch was absolutely fantastic.

Here's a link to their website: www.thehighlanderpub.com, which includes pictures of the bar. If you enjoy Scotch, sit at the bar and have a chat with Dave the bartender. He really knows his stuff to a T. On both evenings, once I made a selection, he turned around, thumbed through some random book on the shelf, and handed me some written details on that specific Scotch. His knowledge is unsurpassed in my experience. I really enjoyed a 12 year old Arberlour, but had some difficulty describing it. The adjectives Dave pulled out were spot on regarding the flavor, the body, and the after taste. Further, he's just a downright pleasant guy and very chatty when he wasn't running around keeping everyone satisfied.


In all, I had an enjoyable few days visiting our office up there. I kind of hope to get back there again, but preferably in the summer months. Direct flights are limited, and I drove 2 hours south to Dulles for a direct flight. I won't be doing that again, and in fact will likely just drive the 7 hours next time. In the end, it works out pretty much as a wash in terms of time and cost - plus then I'll have my Jeep up there for the snow!

Dodge Magnum

I'm thinking I should start doing little reviews of the cars I rent. Or maybe not. But I wanted to comment on the Dodge Magnum that I drove around Houston last week. When these were first released, I really liked the idea. Rear wheel drive, lots of power, unique look. They got some bad reviews on rear visibility, which is to be expected. And in the end, no matter how cool you think it might be, it's still a Dodge.

Anyway, I had a few comments on the garden-variety rental version I had. This was a standard automatic 6 cylinder (no Hemi for me).

PROs:

• A good amount of power. Stomping on the pedal got you moving fairly quickly.
• Roomy interior - lots of leg and head room in the front, the rear looked good size, and the trunk seemed to be accessible. Not huge, but better than either a sedan trunk or a hatch back.

CONs:

• Poor driver's seat. No lateral support. Taking a normal turn at highway speeds means you start to roll out of the seat. You shouldn't have to grasp the steering wheel tighter to stay seated. My old TBird had nice side bolsters that kept you in place and that was 10 years ago!
• Lame handling. Good power, but the back end is where all the power is and the weight isn't. Hit the gas on a turn and you feel it get awfully squirrelly awfully quickly. That's a bad combination - especially with a little wetness on the roads. It didn't inspire confidence as a go-fast car, that's for sure.
• Rear window sucks. First, it's is horribly small, with all these pillars all over the back cargo area. Visibility is bad. But what's really laughable is this little tiny windshield wiper they stuck on the back. The window there is somewhat vertical, so a wiper may be required in low-speed, heavy-precipitation driving. But the glass is very wide and very short. With this limiting aspect ratio, they stuck a very tiny wiper there in the middle. The edges don't get cleared at all -- you just get this little peephole in the middle of the window. Either do it right or don't do it at all. I wouldn't have missed it during the rain if it wasn't there; I would just turn on the rear defroster and deal. Otherwise, if you have to stick a wiper back there, put two. Or one big one mounted on the side. Something, anything, better than what ended up there. It was just silly embarrassing to turn this thing on in traffic.
• Ignition location. What's wrong with the steering column anymore? If you're doing something fancy with fobs, okay, move it around and be stylish. But this one was flat against the dash behind the steering wheel. A good place for the various fog light or other switches, but it housed just the ignition all alone. Along the steering column this rather ugly but necessary area is hidden away most of the time. It's just ugly there. Negative style points and no added convenience.
• Cruise control stick location was poor. The wipers and turn signals were located on one stick on the left side of the steering wheel (no on-wheel controls). And the cruise control was on a smaller stick, slightly further back and slightly up. More than once my first day in the car I hit this little tiny twig with the typical force of a turn signal and I thought it would break. Just a poor design choice. What's wrong with the other side of the steering wheel? I hope this car has an option to put all this on the steering wheel, then it's not an issue. But it just harked back to old cars with 3 or 4 different wands poking out of the steering column.

I could nit-pick some more. The wiper controls were counter intuitive. You push the headlight switch to toggle the fog lights, but it wasn't clear at first how to turn on all the interior lights. The arm rest along the door was in the wrong position. The gas tank lid was kind of flippy floppy and not clear how to open. Do you push it to pop? There's no dent to indicate you just pull it, but that's how you got it open. Cheap.

If the high-end SRT version also comes with a major suspension upgrade, it might be worth considering. But it's still kind of hard to justify that much $$ just for the Hemi name. After all, it is still a Dodge.

Google Maps' Street View

I read a blurb on Google's Street View not that long ago. I then went to New York to stay at a hotel that I knew where it was, but had never stayed there before. So I needed parking information and was doing my regular old "search parking" around the area. But then I noticed the little "Street View" box and started playing with it. Within seconds, I found the scene pictured above -- a parking garage right around the corner (basically under the hotel). Not only did I find what I wanted, but I could also see it so I'll recognize it driving down the street. Pretty freakin' cool. To be sure this was tied to the Sheraton, I called their desk and asked about parking, to which I was told about a garage on 52nd street -- exactly the one I found. Even cooler.

Since then, the thing has gotten very popular. But not so much for finding directions, but for picking apart all the random daily life scenes caught by the camera car driving through major cities. Here is the top 15 sightings.

New York, New York

I'll be heading up to New York tomorrow. I think it's been almost 6 months since my last visit there (maybe September?), so it's definitely been a while. I got out of a mid-February conference I usually attend (and I'm still happy about that since they got snowed in that week!). I'll be staying at one of my favorites - the W Hotel on Lexington. The conference I'm at is down at the Grand Hyatt, but that's an easy walk. Now that the weather has cleared up, I'm looking forward to the drive up mid-day tomorrow with the top down . The drive back on Thursday night might be less pleasant with some rain in the forecast, but it's always easier driving home.

And going home Thursday is really the sad part. For the first time in 6 years, I'll miss my son's birthday. To make things worse, his mom has to work late that day too, which means the whole thing will be a big confusing shuffle. I missed the morning of his birthday last year as I was coming home from this conference via a meeting in Jersey City, but was home by dinner time. I'll be leaving NY after dinner this trip, so might not see him at all. Next year I'll have to send a proxy to this conference. I had a chance to go to Seattle instead to spend Tuesday at Redmond and that would have probably gotten me home in time for his big day, but I really didn't want to fly across the country and back for a single day of meetings. Of course, I'll be calling into a couple of those meetings from my hotel room Tuesday evening anyway. Sometimes there's just no escape - but it sucks worse when you let down the people around you.

Americans

When I travel, I spend a lot of time in airports and restaurants (or worse airport restaurants). Recently we ended up at the local mall on a Saturday. I like to observe people in these places - a general cross section of the American public.*

What I have seen the last couple weeks is interesting. Primarily I'll review some observed eating habits. Looking across the mall tables in the food court is very revealing. The ages represented vary from high-school kids to elderly but one thing was consistent. If you were thinly built you were eating sveltely - often Subway, but possibly Chinese or some other small meal. On the other hand, if you were of a 'robust' build you were eating much differently: super-sized McDonalds, two huge slices of stacked Sbarro pizzas, huge steak sandwiches. At restaurants, it's similar. Those who least 'need' a dessert are the most likely to order one (along with appetizers!) while those on the thinner side will have a salad and entree and still leave feeling stuffed because the portions are so large.

I don't have enough evidence to draw the logical conclusion. Are people fat because they eat like this? Are people thin because they don't? What if all the chubby people of America started eating salads and a single meal for dinner? What if all the skinny people had a fried appetizer, a salad with fatty dressing, a full entree of red meat and then some obscene dessert?

Spending three days in a row eating hotel breakfast, deli sandwich lunches and typical restaurant meals (no desserts) and I really felt like crap. A bloated pig. I would have been embarrassed to take my shirt off at the beach after the trip. And really, nobody but me would probably have noticed the difference. How can people rationally walk around with 30 pounds of fat hanging off their gut? Or 80 pounds?

Obesity is a real problem. Except for the 1% of the population with a real health condition, the rest of these people are just lazy. Too lazy to exercise. Too lazy to eat right. Too lazy to care. Then again, I've never seen an obese 65 year old....


* I know it's not a perfect cross section because you're narrowing the field to people who travel by plane, eat out at restaurants or visit malls. This excludes certainly the poor and to a lesser extent the very wealthy. But I'll submit that it is a 'decent' cross section of middle-of-the-road Americans.

No Dancing! ???

According to recent news, there's a ban on "Social Dancing" in New York City. It's a prohibition-era law apparently now being enforced by the "Cabaret Division" of the city's consumer affairs office. Remind you of an old Simpson's episode, or what? It's hard to gather from the AP reports exactly what is going on here, but it seems that under the guise of protecting neighborhoods from too much noise the city wants to close some doors. So their way in is to require licenses for dance clubs, which allows them to limit where they are and when they operate.

But what problem are they really trying to solve? Here's a quote from Mayor Giuliani from the CNN article:

It's a quality-of-life issue, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani says.

"It's a good thing," he adds. "And if we were to move away from it because there's some pressure, because a couple of high-profile places are putting the squeeze on, you're going to see real difficulties in the neighborhoods in the city."

It's already being tested in court by a place called the Gotham West Coast Swing Club. My mind in the gutter as usual suspected they were the ones the city was targeting due to some ethical issues (read "swingers" here). But this is a real dance group with an interest in something close to the Lindy Hop you've seen in lots of old movies. So this is just an interested party working to keep doing what they're doing without going to the city for a license.

I have to assume now that there are some very specific neighborhood spots that the city is upset with, but have no other means other than enforcing an odd 80 year old law that disrupts enjoyment for a much wider group of the community. I'm interested to see this enforced.

Flying (or not)

A couple quick stories:

* A friend was flying to Houston too, but didn't have an indirect flight, stopping through Cincinnati. Basically on their approach there the pilot announced "we're going to fly around in circles for a while until the flaps start working." And that's what they did, and luckily the flaps did work. But they didn't land until all the runways and everything was cleared out of their way. He missed his connection, but only by a couple minutes -- they knew he was coming, knew the status of his flight, and left anyway instead of waiting 5 minutes. Scary. I've had my share of mechanical issues (starters, radios, etc.) but always on the ground (knocking on wood!).

* The TSA now allows creams and such through security, but only in see-through baggies and less than 3 onces. I knew better, but went through with a 3.5oz aerosol anyway. But I didn't count on the attitude from the prick working there at Houston, Concourse E security, about 6:15 pm CDT on 10/26/2006. I of course didn't say anything then. Retorting to a TSA person nowadays is tantamount to making fun of a cripple in a wheel chair trying to get up a curb. What annoyed me wasn't so much that I wasn't allowed to keep the item, but the way the guy approached me. I had my clear bag in the bin with my laptop, all flattened out and not trying to hide anything. He saw the spray and obviously knew how big it was, and that 3.5 is larger than 3. But it's the way he acted that annoys me so much. It was all smug with a "hold on a second, let me check this one" and then pulling out and reading it like he had never seen it before, though a very bad acting job. And then telling me that it's too big and I can't take it through. What a prick. I know it's too big, but he knew it too. Don't act all surprised and condescending like he just discovered something we both didn't already know. The better action, and maybe if TSA spent 10 minutes training their people how to deal with the public (which they do 100% of their day), they would know this, would be to say directly: "I noticed that can there, and it's 3.5 oz. You have the option to check your bags, of course, or I can throw it away here, but you're not allowed to bring that through". Don't be a prick about it next time. I wish I had gotten his name. And if you don't think the next time I'm carrying on bags I'm not going to have the same 3.5 oz canister with me, you don't know me very well

M.I.T. CSAIL building

A very strange place. We had a meeting there on Tuesday and got an unofficial tour. Officially, it's the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and it's functional as a lab. But it's one of the strangest buildings you'll ever find yourself in. Apparently the idea is to now really know if you're on an inside wall or not. So lots of sunlight, but apparently some acoustical problems too. I have a bunch more pictures from my Treo, but it looks like you're only allowed one picture per blog. So I'll probably just add a few more on future slow days.

Boston

I do have pictures of the new stuff for the Mini, but it'll have to wait a few days. In a couple hours, I'm picking Weaze up from work and we're driving to Boston. Kind of a long drive for a couple days of meetings, but work pays for gas and I don't have to worry about flying/airport security for a another week. Ciao.