Running The Half

One of the things that I try to practice is change. I used to work for a guy who insisted that it was impossible to read a book or learn something new or change at all "at my age."

I think I'm now as old as he was when he made that statement to me.

It's not necessarily about him, because my choices are solely my own, but I believe it's important to not give up the fight to improve physically and mentally just because we're older. I'm not what I was when I was 20 or 30, but I do what I can.

I also believe that the best way to make progress on anything is to pick a well-defined goal and take frequent, small, incremental steps in the chosen direction. New skills are best acquired by accretion of lots of small, targeted efforts.

A year ago last June I wrote about starting to run seriously for the first time since I was in my twenties. I spent a year of doing half mile repeats on the road in front of my house, thinking more about pace, cadence, and form instead of distance. I ran the Manchester Road Race on Thanksgiving Day, as tradition demands, but that was the only long run that I tried. I kept it up faithfully throughout the mild, snowless winter. I was still injury-free and feeling good in June.

Now that I had a good base, I decided that I needed a new goal. At the end of that previous posting I wrote "I'm not trying to run marathons. I don't want to race or be competitive." I don't want to race or be competitive, but I've decided to try completing a half marathon.

I needed a plan, so I fired up Google and found a schedule that I liked. I put the plan into a spreadsheet and set the start date so that race day was Saturday 13-Oct-2012: the ING Hartford half marathon. Plan the work, work the plan. I missed one whole week to attend a family wedding, but I've been faithful with the rest of it. I've completed the first half of the schedule. Now it becomes challenging. I increase the length of the long run by a mile per week until I complete a 12 mile run the week before the race.

This is uncharted territory for me. I have a vague memory of a long run when I was 20 years old. I was living in my parents' house, home from college, when I ran into a friend when I was out for a run after work. I fell in with him for a long time. I asked him how long the route was that we were taking. He told me it was a ten mile run, but now I'm not sure. The six mile run I completed last Saturday might have been the longest I've ever finished.

My times won't impress anyone. I feel comfortable at a 9-10 minute per mile pace. If I can keep that up for 13.1 miles I'll finish somewhere between 2:00 and 2:20. The most important thing will be to finish.

It's not a fait accompli that I'll be able to do it, even thought I've registered and paid my money. My ankles, knees, and hips feel fine so far. I've had no muscle problems at all, not even stiffness or soreness on the day after running. But if something blows out or gives way I'll have to postpone it for another day.

I'm hoping that won't happen. I'd like very much to see this through.

I'm most curious about the mental aspect of running for that long a time. I've never experienced "runner's high." I don't know if I'll be able to handle the discomfort and pain that's an inevitable part of crossing the finish line. How do you stay focused when running for more than two hours? I'll find out.

If I can finish this, who knows? Maybe I'll find a full marathon training plan and just keep going!

I haven't been in a pool in two months. I'm going to go back, but I've learned that daily exposure to chlorine isn't good for my lungs. I'm going to continue to mix swimming in, but it might be just a once per week Masters swim with my friends.

After all these years of pounding out yards, the biggest surprise is that I could stop swimming and actually feel better.

The journey has been a pleasure. I've achieved my real goal: my lungs are feeling much better. I don't wheeze when I run. I recently had to see a doctor. They took my pulse and blood pressure, per usual custom. "Are you a runner?" the nurse asked me. My resting heart rate was 50 bpm; my blood pressure was 98/70. I was startled to see both, because they haven't been that low in a long time.

I smiled and said "Why yes, I am a runner."

What will that next objective be? Where else could I use some change in my life? I've got some ideas.

Advanced Communicator Bronze

I gave my tenth and final speech towards the Advanced Communicator Bronze designation two weeks ago. Our VP of education submitted the forms to Toastmasters International last week. They sent the e-mail telling me that the next packet was on its way.

It took me two years to do it. I wasn't as crisp or diligent as I wanted to be. I chose two booklets with five speeches each. The first was Speaking To Inform; the second was The Professional Speaker. That second one was tough. Most speeches are 5-7 minutes long. The Professional Speaker has five assignments, and every one is 20-40 minutes long. I had a tough time writing and preparing for these. The difficulty slowed me down a great deal. But finally I slogged my way through.

The last speech was particularly challenging. I had to give a professional seminar. My two professions are mechanical engineering and software development. How could I manage that without losing my audience? Then my youngest daughter had a fine idea - why not talk about the Mandelbrot set that I wrote about back in March 2011? It gave me a chance to talk about sufficient mathematics to mention complex numbers. I presented some background about Benoit Mandelbrot, the mathematician for whom the set is named. I showed the Java code I wrote to perform the calculation. And then there was the payoff for all those who managed to remain in the room and not fall asleep: a presentation of the image itself.

It went very well, indeed. People were polite and feigned enthusiasm, even if they didn't feel it deeply. Some people thought I could have done a better job of tying the work and the image into real problems. Would they have been happy if I'd started talking about large eddy simulations of turbulent fluid flow? I was satisfied with how it went and my delivery. I felt comfortable and relaxed.

I was very glad to get it over with. It's motivating me to move on. I'm starting to think that perhaps I can achieve Distinguished Toastmaster status. Others have - why not me?

I think the secret is to write ten speeches out, rehearse them, and have them in pocket. Whenever there's an open speaking slot, I need to pounce on it. We have about 45 meetings a year. Each meeting has two speaking slots, so there are only 80-90 opportunities to make progress. I'd have to monopolize 11-12% of all speaking slots for an entire year to achieve my goal of earning Advanced Communicator Silver a year from now. It's a worthy goal.

Higgs Boson Announcement

So what's the big news story of the day? The divorce of Scientologist Tom Cruise and his third wife, Kate Holmes?

Yes, but there's also the announcement that data collected at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland has gotten over the five sigma hurdle. Scientists are saying they've observed a "Higgs-like" particle. The Standard Model says that the Higgs boson is the carrier for the Higgs field, just like the photon is the carrier for the electromagnetic field. It interacts with other particles to characterize their mass.

It's a big deal for science.

So how does this affect the unemployment situation in the world? What will this do to correct the banking mess that we find ourselves in? How will this affect peace in the Middle East or the US presidential election in the fall?

Sadly, it won't affect any of those things.

I'm happy that the flame of inquiry into the way the world works is still burning, in spite of the damping effects of anti-intellectualism, superstition, magical thinking, and religion.

It saddens me to think that this was the kind of thing that my country used to lead. We were the first to the moon. Science has been responsible for much of the economic activity that makes up our modern world. There are no modern computers, no Internet, no wireless communications without science.

The Superconducting Super Collider was envisioned in 1983 and cancelled ten years later in 1993. I'm sure that the arguments against it were "practical" and "serious" and "reasonable".

Part of the problem is that economics are finite. It's true that we can't afford to do everything we'd like. When resources are scarce, choices have to be made. Those choices reflect what a people consider to be important. You find a way to do what matters.

But we had no problem anteing up $3-4T for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Compare that to the runaway $12B that had been spent by the time the SSC was killed. Was the benefit of the wars worth the cost?

James Clerk Maxwell published his equations for electromagnetism in 1861-1862 when the US Civil War was raging. We still live with the ramifications of that war, but the effect of Maxwell and science on the way we live today is far greater.

We value adventures in banking more today. A lot of the quants who are cooking up exotic derivatives used to be physicists. I'm sure they make a lot more money working for Goldman and Chase. What a shame!

It says something about us that we prefer short term profits over long term progress in understanding how the world works. It's a reminder that the progress we've made in enlightenment and reason is fragile. It can always be rolled back by magical, short-term thinking. I'm glad that CERN is keeping us moving forward.

Einstein - His Life And Universe

I just finished reading Walter Isaacson's biography "Einstein - His Life and Universe." I didn't think I'd ever have to read another Einstein biography after "Subtle Is The Lord" by Abraham Pais.

Abraham Pais was a also physicist, a younger protege of Einstein's at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton. He knew Einstein personally; he was versed in the details of his work; he was uniquely qualified to write an intimate biography. His book is remarkable for its level of detail. Book publishers claim that adding a single equation, even one as "simple" and well known to the general public as , would reduce the readership by half.

If that's true, and knowing how rapidly converges to zero, then I must have been the only person on earth who ever bought and read Pais' work. Not only did he have plenty of equations, they included generalized tensors with sub-scripts and super-scripts proudly waving. I'm neither a mathematician nor a physicists, but I've taken a course that included generalized tensors. The presence of metric tensors didn't scare me away or detract from my enjoyment.

As much as I liked "Subtle", I think Isaacson's book was more fun and accessible. He made Einstein seem less like an intellectual, unapproachable deity and more like a real human being. I could appreciate him expressing his frustration towards the folks at Zurich Polytechnic for dithering about a job offer by saying on page 176: "The dear Zurich folks can kiss my..."

Einstein was a man of great humor. He was quite a hit with the ladies - divorced once, married twice, and amorous with a few more. He loved music, especially Mozart for his violin. He was detached from people, yet he had friendships that lasted his entire life.

Walter Isaacson is a terrific writer. I enjoyed this book very much. It makes me want to grad his Steve Jobs biography as soon as possible.

Running Again

It's been too long since my last post. I've got a lot of pent up stuff to write about. I'll certainly improve on my poor showing so far this year.

Part of my problem was being away. I spent part of April in Ireland. Sounds like a post waiting to happen.

Another problem is that today is a perfect, beautiful, late spring day that makes it impossible to stay inside for long. I did well running throughout the winter and spring. I've stuck to half mile repeats on the road in front of my house. I try to pay attention to cadence, rhythm, breathing, pace, and staying relaxed. It's gone very well. I've had no injuries. I can actually say that I've enjoyed running! That hasn't been so for thirty years or more.

It was cool and sunny this morning, with perfect blue skies after a day of steady rain. I decided to head out for a run before lunch. I decided to go for a longer jaunt instead of half mile repeats. There's a route going in the other direction that has a long, gradual hill for the first mile, followed by a right turn and a mile of flat running with a hill at the end. I got to the end of that and took another left and kept going. Buck Road is a pretty one-mile stretch that ends at Route 66. The first three miles went very well for me. I kept up a consistent pace the whole time.

I was tired on the way back. The downhills that helped me on the way out were my enemy on the way home. Potential energy had to be paid back. I walked a couple of times, but nothing excessive; just enough to catch my breath. I finished the six mile run in a decent enough time for me. It wouldn't impress anyone to post it, but in the immortal words of Mark Logan: "Finishing is winning."

I was pleased to finish off such a long run in fine style. I never would have guessed that I'd still be able to run in impromptu fashion on a nice day at my age. We'll see how I feel tomorrow. It'll be a good sign if I recover well.

I started learning how to run again on 20-Jun last year. I've managed to keep it up the whole year through. I hope I can build on that over the next year and get strong enough to take it to another level.

The Sales Training Speech

I'm speaking at my Toastmasters club again tomorrow. I'm working my way through The Professional Speaker series. It's five speeches, each of which are 15-20 minutes long.

Tomorrow's assignment, the third in the series, is the Sales Training Speech. I'm supposed to be pumping up the sales troops for a company. I've chosen Astrum Solar as my company. I'll be throwing red meat to my sales force to get them to sell solar collectors.

This book is driving me crazy. The typical assignment book requires 5-10 speeches, each 5-7 minutes in length. I feel like I'm working hard to get to my Advanced Communicator Bronze designation. When I complained to one of our Distinguished Toastmasters about it, he told me that the book used to be 20-40 minutes per speech. Another of our three Distinguished Toastmasters managed to get through the more demanding version. I shut my mouth and sucked it up after hearing that. Fifteen minutes doesn't seem so bad.

A friend of mine is fond of saying that everyone should have three jobs in their life: manual labor, customer service, and selling. I've done manual labor. Does working in a grocery store count as customer service? I've never come close to selling. This will be as close as I'm likely to get.

My goal is to finish off the last two speeches before the Toastmasters year closes on 30-Jun-2012. If I can do that, I'll have achieved Advanced Communicator Bronze status. It'll be another rung on the ladder. Can I make it to Distinguished Toastmaster? We'll see.

Here's the text of my speech:

The Professional Speaker Project 3: The Sales Training Speech

(The company is Astrum Solar, a company that installs photovoltaic panels in the area.)

Solar energy has had a long, successful history. The sun has been delivering 5900 times the amount of energy that humans consume today every day for the last five billion years! A small fraction of what’s produced – just 0.016% - would be sufficient to satisfy the current needs residential, industrial, commercial, and transportation energy needs for every individual on the planet.

The source has been holding up its end of the bargain. There have been no outages, no equipment failures, no CEO mea culpas, no angry customers.
It’s the harvesting end that’s fallen short. Fellow sales professionals, I’m here to tell you that the sales process is an integral part of breaking the stranglehold that fossil fuels have on the hearts, minds, and checkbooks of consumers. It’s time for us to recognize the crucial part we have to play in changing our energy production and consumption habits.

How are we supposed to do that, you might ask?

Before I go further, let’s talk about how not to achieve this goal. Let’s look at arguments that have been made in the past and see how they’ve failed.

Solar energy was a very hot topic forty years ago. The United States experienced significant disruptions in oil supplies in 1973 and 1979. There were lines at gas stations. Prices skyrocketed. Consumers were looking for any technology that could deliver them.

If that wasn’t enough, we had the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979. Wouldn’t such an event, one that ended the construction of new nuclear plants in the United States, make a low-cost, low-risk alternative seem more attractive?

Alas, this has not been the case. Solar energy continues to grow slowly, but it still delivers less than 10% of total consumption.

You can make appeals to serving the greater good. Individuals can use the sun to capture energy for power and heat in their home, cutting down on their reliance on public sources.

Our reliance on imported oil would be reduced. Imagine how different the world would be if we didn’t rely so heavily on oil for our energy needs! Wars to guarantee our supply would be a thing of the past. The transfer of wealth to oil-producing countries would end.

We could continue to spur economic growth without worrying about the amount of carbon dioxide we pump back into the atmosphere. Concerns about climate change and environmental impact could be decoupled from the Hobson’s choice of ceasing all economic activity.

These arguments seem pretty compelling, don’t they? Do you see solar collectors on every house? No! Are oil tankers being converted into cruise ships in the Arabian Sea? I don't see them. The appeals to the greater good have not made a dent.

They were true forty years ago. The fundamental story has not changed in all that time.

Why have customers not been persuaded? Why isn’t solar energy more popular with consumers?

Initial capital costs are relatively high. No one is going to lay out a lot of money to buy equipment that won’t pay back in twenty years.
There’s a well-established infrastructure in place to transport heating oil, gas, or electricity to our homes and to make it usable.

Affordable…proven…reliable technology.

There’s a chain of contributors that must work together to change this industry:
• Scientists need to be hard at work in their labs, driving the efficiency of photovoltaic materials up above 10% while keeping costs low.
• Engineers need to be hard at work taking progress in basic science and designing it into robust, affordable systems.
• Machinists and assembly workers need to be hard at work plying their crafts to create high quality, affordable products.
• Field service personnel need to live up to expectations as partners and representatives of Astrum Solar.

All these things are in full swing, but they don’t mean a thing unless we can make the case to customers that it’s in their best interest to make the switch from electricity generated by centralized power plants.

Do you see a theme here? What are the two things that our customers want?

First, they want energy to be affordable. Heating oil is currently around $3-4 per gallon; prices are relatively stable. A homeowner using oil to heat their home can predict what their heating costs will be for a given heating season.

Second, they want access to energy to be reliable. Sitting in the dark and cold won’t do. Breakdowns must be rare. When they do happen, there has to be a person on the other end of a phone line who can quickly sort out the situation.

Affordability is a function of large economic forces that are outside the control of the company.
1. We can’t control the price of oil.
2. We can’t wave a magic wand and make a scientific breakthrough happen.
3. We can’t change the fact that the sun doesn’t shine on rainy days.

But we can influence how our customers perceive Astrum Solar. It’s our job to tell them that this is a reliable company. We need to educate them about the fact that our products can provide power with a degree of reliability that matches or exceeds that of traditional power suppliers. We must engage them as a trusted partner, one that will stand behind the product and make right any breakdowns in a timely way.

Do you remember fall of 2011? I do. I’ve lived in my house for a long time. The worse power outage I’ve ever experienced prior to last year was the three days without power after Hurricane Gloria back in Sep 1985. For almost thirty years I’ve been able to count on power and heat in my house without fail, except for a few odd hours.

That clean record was sullied in the last six months. I had to endure not one, but two nine-day periods without power! Thank goodness both happened before winter had set in. My pipes would have been in real trouble if temperatures had dropped below freezing. Repair crews were already having trouble keeping up in the relatively mild fall conditions. Can you imagine having to repair a state-wide failure of the grid in sub-freezing temperatures or in the midst of a blizzard?

When my power was finally restored in November, my first thought was prevention: How could I ensure that this never happened again? I went out and bought a gas-powered generator and had a transfer switch wired in, but it seems like a temporary solution.

I think it’s time for something more permanent. It’s time to install solar panels at my residence that will supply electricity sufficient to meet my needs and even allow me to sell excess back to the electric company.

So how can we help?

We need to address affordability.
• Sales people need to work with field service personnel to properly size equipment to meet the needs of each individual household, taking into account special features of each site.
• Sales people need to inform customers about all available energy conservation programs. Minimizing power needs makes the installation’s job easier. Most customers can benefit from better insulation in attics and weather stripping in doors and windows.
• Sales people need to explore every subsidy from federal and state sources that might defer portions of the economic burden of installing solar equipment.

We need to address reliability.
• Sales people need to educate customers about warranty agreements that guarantee the uninterrupted operation of their installations.
• Sales people need to ensure that field service personnel are partners with customers to instill confidence and ensure reliability.

One day I was walking on a beach where the tide had gone out. The sand was covered with starfish, left behind by the sea. I encountered a small boy who was walking along, bending down from time to time, and throwing a starfish back into the ocean. I watched the boy throw starfish after starfish, yet they still stretched out on the sand as far as the eye could see. I went up to the boy and said, "Give it up! There must be thousands of starfish washed up on shore. What difference can you possibly make by throwing them back?" The boy looked at me without saying a word, then he picked up another one and threw it as far as he could. It landed with a splunk! "I made a difference to that one!" he replied.

We can fulfill that grand, large-scale goal of moving this country to a sustainable, independent, renewable energy economy. But we’ll have to do it one customer at a time. We must make Astrum Solar a trusted partner whose reliability exceeds that of traditional power suppliers. I urge you to be the public face of Astrum Solar. Our future, and more, depends on you.

New Haven Bound

I got a message from my wife this afternoon: our youngest daughter was officially notified that she's been accepted into the Ph.D. program at Yale. She'll matriculate in the fall to begin work on her doctorate in biophysics and biochemistry. She'll graduate in May from the University of Connecticut with both her Bachelors and Masters degrees in molecular cell biology. It only took her four years to get both.

She went to visit New Haven Thu through Sun last week. She loved everything about it: the students, the professors, the programs, the campus. It sounded like everyone was enthusiastic about what was happening, and there's a lot going on. We thought it might take a few weeks to hear the final decision, but one of the professors - the one she most wanted to work with - called her personally to tell her that Yale hoped she would come.

I have never been one to claim the accomplishments of my children as my own, and I'm not going to start now. I will say that I'm so happy for her. It's a well-deserved opportunity that she's worked hard for.

She's always had an unusual focus. Even as a young child, she could play happily by herself for hours. (Until her beloved older sister came along with other alternatives.) She loved puzzles; she sought out jigsaws that would challenge an adult, let alone a child. She was ambidextrous. She would pass the crayon from hand to hand as she colored pictures. She finally settled on her left hand for writing and preferred status, but it was touch and go for a long time.

She was quiet and reserved. She chose her words carefully and thought before she spoke. She still does, but now the words and ideas pour out of her at a faster clip. She's a confident woman these days.

She's always been a fine student. She "gets it" with math and science. I used to ask her if she needed any help with math when she was in high school. I learned right away that she didn't need my help. It was always a conversation about a topic that we both enjoyed. She would talk to me about problems she was given more as a courtesy to me than a plea for aid. She knew that it made me happy.

I've had the pleasure of repeating that experience throughout her undergraduate career. I swim on campus on Friday nights. I'll call her every once in a while after I'm done and ask if we can get together. We'll hit a dining hall or Starbucks, grab some tea and dessert, and I'll hear about everything she's doing in the lab and the classroom. Sometimes it's chemistry; other times it's quantum mechanics, math, computing, physics, or something else like a one-credit class in weight training. It astonishes me to hear how well she understands what's presented to her. She has a way of digesting the message, internalizing it, and making connections well beyond the context in which it was presented.

She is a biology major at the University of Connecticut. At the end of her freshman year she researched professors on campus and solicited them for a job in their lab. She found Robert Birge and sent him an e-mail. Did he accept undergraduates to work in his lab? He said it was rare, but told her to send in a resume anyway. He took her in and gave her a thorough grounding in research and how to conduct herself in a lab. Dr. Birge, his wife, Connie, and his team of graduate students have been so generous to our daughter. She worked without pay in the lab that first summer, but they found funds to support her after that. They've been the best mentors and examples imaginable.

I feel so fortunate to have the children I do. I wish I could point to some thing or another that my wife and I did that made this happen. Maybe I could bottle it or write a book to out-do a tiger mom.

I believe it's a combination of factors: genetics and the good fortune of peace and enough prosperity at home to meet their needs. After that it gets fuzzier. We read to them a lot when they were small and beyond. It is a common sight to see one family member or another draped on a chair or couch in silence, reading a book. The house is still full of them. We had television around, but it wasn't the 24x7 bombardment that is cable today. We didn't forbid television, but it didn't crowd everything out, either. We've never had video games; still don't. We had a computer in the house when they were young, but the Internet wasn't the distraction it has become. There were no cell phones.

They played a lot by themselves. We have an infamous book of games that they wrote together when they were small. ("The Queen Game" was a special favorite.) The rules included stuff like "If somebody gets hurt, don't cry or we'll have to go inside." Some of them make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, but they're funny to read today. They had a lot of opportunities to use their imaginations to entertain themselves. They played with other kids, but they spent a lot of time with each other, too.

My wife is an educator, so she's always been on the same schedule as the girls: home in the afternoon when they returned from school, able to spend lazy summers at home instead of being shipped around to camps. Quality time with children cannot be scheduled. You're either there when they're ready to spill or you're not. Being at the kitchen table after school with a snack put my wife in perfect position to hear what was on their minds. I'm glad that one of us was able to be there. They're lucky to have had her: she's so attuned to them, always knowing just what to do.

They weren't home schooled. We sent them to public schools, where they had more than a few outstanding teachers, such as Mark Logan, Jason Courtmanche, and Madame Bender, and that made a great difference.

Both our daughters are a great mix of mind, body, and spirit. They're just terrific to be around. I'm grateful for the vantage point I've enjoyed. It's a great show to see.

Yale, you're in for a treat.