Brad Seiler.com — Blog

Back Online

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Seiler) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:25:00 +0000

I just updated my website by adding a bunch of content. I hope to keep adding some more in the next few days. Yay for reviving dead websites!!

Global Warming Squared

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Seiler) — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 04:12:00 +0000

The politicians have done it once again. They have solved a crisis by creating a new one. Global warming is melting the ice caps so that soon enough all the sea ice in the Arctic will be gone during the summer. What should we do about it? Why fight over who gets to drill for all the fossil fuels buried on the arctic sea bed of course! Just last Thursday, Russia tried to make its claims to the underwater resources stronger by planting a flag on the sea floor. You know what that means. It means that the US needs a larger flag to put in its place. Just you wait; that will be the headline tomorrow, I'm sure.

When are we going to figure out that we can't just take all the carbon ever buried in the history of our planet and put it in the atmosphere. It won't be good for us. Our planet hasn't always been hospitable to our form of life, and it took a good long time for a bunch of microscopic organisms to make our atmosphere what it is today. After that, it took a good long time for organisms to figure out how to use all this potentially toxic oxygen to their advantage. If we mess all this up, it will take another good long time for another sentient species to come along and use our fossilized remains to screw it all up again, if that ever happens.

The time has come for renewable energy. Now. I'm no energy expert, but there sure are a lot of them out there, and if we just put them all in a room and told them not to come out until they have this whole mess figured out, we would be a lot better off.

I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings. Please go ahead and return to your regularly scheduled programing.

Ridiculous Bike Ride, Ridiculous Thunderstorm

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Seiler) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 03:05:00 +0000

I went on a bike ride today to rival the trip to Coney Island. It took me 2 1/3 hours to go all the way around the north end of Manhattan, starting on 15th street and the Hudson to 15th street and the East River, following the lovely Manhattan Greenway, which impressively seemed like almost 80% bike path. Mostly flat too, only a little bit of hill climbing in Washington Heights.

The path up the Hudson is beautiful. It feels almost like biking on the Charles, only the other shore seems like a world away. Up in the hundreds there was a whole neighbor it seemed out having some summer fun with food and sports. All up the trail are public basketball and tennis courts, and even a couple sports fields. Some places you are riding right next to the river, so that you could get off your bike and walk right to the shore, no fence. It gets a little dicey going across the northern tip, along Dyckman st. to a path along the Harlem river. That spits you out on St. Nicholas Ave. which eventually takes you to the East river again at 120th St, which you can follow passed Randall's Island and Roosevelt's Island all the way to 63rd before you get diverted to 2nd Ave.

I would have never thought I could do a trip like that. I just kept hammering away, and it is just so much fun you want to keep going and going. I probably slowed down a bit at the end, but I think I got a pretty decent workout out of the whole things. I am starting to enjoy cycling more and more. Maybe I try to do those early morning bike rides with the Harvard cycling team some time.

As of right now, I am witnessing one of the most amazing thunderstorms I have ever seen. There must be a lightning strike twice a second, with some of them producing intensely loud cracks of thunder. If you are outside in this, you probably should reconsider your priorities, but watching from inside it is just surreal.

I'm gonna try to get some rest so I can actually get some MUN work finished before the summer ends. Hope you all are having a good summer. There is only one month left, so enjoy it.

Long Bike Ride

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Seiler) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:13:00 +0000

Well, Wednesday was a rather adventurous day. Just check out my approximate bike route for a sense of how adventurous.

Coney Island was pretty sweet. Google provided the food and the rides, and I chilled on the beach some too. I have no complaints about working for Google, except that I only have a few weeks left.

Not much more to say. Today. One of my library books got recalled by HCL. That was nice of them. Now I have to mail it back. Arg.

Jury Duty Approaches

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Seiler) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 03:53:00 +0000

Well, my new jury summons finally came in the mail. The New York County Division of Jurors has asked me to appear in late august to serve as a juror. I had been called back in May during my exams and I requested one of those handy automatic postponements for after the end of my internship.

I'm not exactly sure what to expect from it. My dad has been called several times and usually gets dismissed because he is a lawyer, but he has had to serve on a trial once. I, however, and quite different from my father, since I am currently a student, I'm a bit of a political activist (including being a card carrying member of the ACLU,) and I am rather young. I don't know what they will think of my shoulder length pony tail either. Well, it will be an adventure that is for sure.

I'll make a full post on HP&DH as soon as I have had a chance to really pull my thoughts about it together. There is a lot going on in this latest and last volume, as those who have read it will know, so it isn't exactly easy to formulate a solid opinion about all of it right away.

In other news, I have decided to start biking to and from work (don't worry, I am going the long way home to get some exercise, not just biking 4 blocks each way.) It is slightly more challenging to ride a bike in NYC than it was in Cambridge, since there is a traffic light at every intersection here. But that is what the bike paths on each side of the island are for, right?

Well, we are coming to the end of July, which means that the first rays of school will be rising in the east soon. I hope that everyone is having a relaxing summer. I know that I am sure enjoying it.

Apple Wins

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Seiler) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 04:19:00 +0000

I just thought that I should point out how much Apple wins. On Thursday I stopped by the apple store and bought some bluetooth input devices and an ipod shuffle. Well, turns out that even though the bluetooth mouse looks like the lame old one button mouse, it in fact can tell the difference between clicks on either side of the mouse! I'm a little surprised that the default behavior is to treat both kinds of clicks the same, but you can set it up to work any way you like.

Well, time for another week of work at Google. Just so all of you reading in facebook land know, I am doing fine after my accident yesterday. Sore up and down my right side from where I hit the ground, and maybe a little whiplash, but the helmet protected my head from any injuries and I didn't lose consciousness or anything, so I anticipate no further consequences of my little mishap.

Small Accident

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Seiler) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 02:15:00 +0000

Seems I had a small accident today. My ATV came back from being serviced this morning good as new, and I've already managed to bang it up, lose a fair bit of coolant, and bang my self up a bit in the process.

Some background before I explain further. I have always been a bit of an outdoor enthusiast, having been a Boy Scout for many years and doing various summer trekking trips and such. My parents own a house near Albany with a few dozen acres of land attached to it, along with a fair number of trails. We got a ATV so that we could navigate and explore the trails, clear logs and fallen trees, and most of all keep the trails clear of ferns which grow all over in the spring and summer. The ATV does a rather good job of crushing the ferns to indicate where the trail is. I also rather enjoy driving the ATV through the trails, as it is somewhat exciting.

There is one trail that goes up a fairly steep hill, although the hill isn't steeper than the ATV can usually handle. I've gone up it dozens of times before. There are two different paths up the same hill that go to the same place, and I opted for the one more covered in ferns, so that I could clear them out of the way and make the trail passable on foot.

Half way up the hill, the metal frame that protects the radiator came in contact with a tree stump that had been hidden by the ferns. From looking at this afterward, it seems like it hit with a good deal of force, because the left side of that frame, which is made of fairly strong metal, is rather deformed. The force of the impact launched the front wheels of the ATV up in the air, and the rear wheels, still in contact with the ground, pushed the vehicle to what felt like almost vertical.

At this point, I remember letting go of the handlebars and failing back onto the ground, and then making my best effort to roll down the hill as fast as I could. Once I felt that I was a safe distance from where I had hit, I got up to see the ATV on its side to the right of the tree stump and quickly scrabbled over to hit the kills switch on the engine. My ATV seems to leak fluid when it isn't right side up, so various unknown liquids, probably including gasoline, started leaking out onto the forest floor.

I had a radio with me and I called my dad back at the house. While he and my mom and uncle came out to help me, I rigged up a simple pulley system with some rope and tow straps. Once they arrive, we were able to use the 2:1 reduction and some brute force to right the vehicle and somehow I got it started. I drove it the rest of the way up the hill and back to the house without any more incidents, and inspected the ATV some. The back truck bed which we just had replaced is bent out of alignment again, and the front watertight storage space has a rather large hole where the plastic is missing. The front frame is banged up as I mentioned before, and one of the headlights is slightly misaligned. Other than that, it seems to have survived rather well.

As for me, my only injuries were a bruised hip where I hit the ground on the initial fall, a small
cut under my chin from the helmet strap, and a small sore on my tongue from biting it. I'm still a little bit shaken up, although I have to say that putting it all down in writing has helped calm me down somewhat. The situation was potentially rather dangerous, because if the impact hadn't been to one side, the ATV could have fallen straight back on top of me, which would have been a whole new world of injury. All told I would say that I have been fairly lucky, and I will probably be much more careful about riding through the ferns in the future. This is probably one of the most dangerous experiences I have had in my life, but I guess that isn't really saying much. Well, I'm alright, and I think the only lasting harm may be some lingering fear of going up that hill again... which may not be a bad thing.

I Got Indexed!

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Seiler) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 02:52:00 +0000

Sweet! I have been indexed. Check out the results for "brad seiler", and you will see that I have now reclaimed my place as the top result! And no, I didn't do anything on the inside to change anything.

I was at the Yankees game today. Which went 13 innings before the Yankees lost :(. This is shaping up to be a bad year for the Yanks. Meh.

While I was pondering the game while I was there, I wondered what about sports makes it so that you can build a massive stadium and have all these people turn out and really care about what is going on.

If you tried to put on a play in Yankee Stadium, no one would come (or maybe they would for the novelty, but you couldn't fill the seats 6 days a week for months at a time.) A play has a lot to do with facial expression so I guess it makes sense that you wouldn't want to see a play from the Tier level, but even if you used it as a Megachurch, I doubt that you could fill the seats 6 days a week with different people every day. Perhaps it has something to do with the element of chance involved. It does seem to have always been in human nature to want to see events with uncertain outcome, going back to things like the gladiatorial games or the chariot races. It just seems odd that so much time and money and energy is invested in playing games of skill where the outcome has no value.

Part of it may be that sports like baseball are something that we can all relate too. This may explain why few people watch sports like fencing, where it is hard to grasp the sport without years of practice and training. Everyone as a kid learned to play baseball, and it doesn't require much thought to enjoy a game, so people without intellectual backgrounds are more likely to enjoy a sporting event than a play or even a musical, where you still have to appreciate the art involved. Unlike religion, sports don't require that you follow certain teaches to come and partake, only that you like to watch the game. It takes people away from their desk jobs and florescent lights. Perhaps that is what makes it so appealing as a weekend activity, particularly in the summer.

I hope that you have enjoyed my rambling, particularly if you are still reading by this point. I am still trying to figure out what if anything I should be writing about, so thank you for sticking with me as I try to find my muse.

Less Than Stellar Launch

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Seiler) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 06:13:00 +0000

It happens to the best of us.

Despite being in Google's employ (at least for the time being) my website isn't being indexed. Take a look at my search results if you don't believe me. I guess I am just not an interesting part of the web.

Well, I think that I shall start with a more traditional blog post, talking about me and the things that I do. For the sake of the innocent, I plan to refer to people by their first initial. If you know who I am talking about, then you will be able to figure it out. Otherwise, you should be able to follow along. If I have a naming conflict, I will figure something out on the fly. Yay for flying.

Teaposy !!!

Anyway, I had an excellent time at E's birthday celebration on the 4th. There was much tea (including a teaposy!), merriment, and I finally got to see D for the first time in a while! She seemed a little tired from getting back to life in NYC, but none the worse for her journeys. I also think that having now interacted with E's boy friend G for the second time, I can say with more certainty that he is a wonderful person and that he is good for E. (This is not to say that I didn't think this before, but I now I actually have my own evidence on which to base this opinion.) E also wins the amateur dessert chef award for her cake and soda bread (should that be one word?)

For the first time ever I was criticized for not ending a sentence with a preposition. Seriously. My boss told me that it just made the document more confusing, and he was probably right, although clearly he understood what was going on, and even he will admit that the usage is correct. I am not a stickler for this, but when I am writing a formal document and the opportunity presents itself to keep things crisp, I try to make the effort with the stricter elements of style.

Anyway, I am going to try to catch the old-timers game tomorrow, to which (tehe) my dad has tickets. I'll make some sort of report on it if I feel that it merits a comment.

First Post

noreply@blogger.com (Brad Seiler) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 05:36:00 +0000

Hey everyone,

I figured that my website could become a little more useful if I blogged to it. I know, I know, how dare I abandon my pure XHTML coding ways for blogger, but I like it. More will come when I decided what it is that I want to put here. Consider this a placeholder of sorts. I seem to use many of those.