The Day I Almost Died

Yesterday I crashed into a tree and probably totaled my car. I was heading to the gym around 11am and it had been drizzling all morning. When I made a slight left on E. Bayshore, my tires lost traction and my car turned left. I over-steered to the right, causing my car to do a 180 that took me onto the embankment to my right. I collided with a metal fence and a tree, damaging my front bumper, driver door, and rear of the car. Luckily, I was not hurt and the impact was probably at 5-10mph.

As I was sliding out of control, the only thought that really went through my head was "Oh shit, I might die." This has probably been the closest I've been to really hurting myself, and surprisingly, I didn't think very introspectively about anything. A part of me said, "No, I want to live," but I felt the outcome of the situation was beyond my control - I was at the fate of my car and the surroundings I would run into. Guess I'm more existential than I thought.

I'm surprised I'm not more shaken up about the situation as a whole. I probably have to pay a ton to get a new car, but part of me is excited about change in my life. Guess that's me and my optimism about any situation.

Moody Road

For my bike ride today, I headed south on Foothill Expressway to El Monte Road and then Moody road. After making the turn into Moody, I actually turned off onto Altamount, and rode that up about 500 feet before thinking that I had gone the wrong way and turned around. That little detour was tiresome, but when I went down the hill I was able to get up to 39mph, the fastest speed in recent memory.

As for the ride up Moody, it's pretty easy. Low grade climbing, if you could even call it that, for the first few miles, and then finally a pretty steep uphill for a mile. You then get dumped off on Page Mill, which I took down at a fairly fast pace and then rode back home.

All in all:

The Route

27.06 miles
14.6 average mph
39.0 max speed
842.0 calories burned
1:51:07 time


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What the heck Cardinal's

The St. Louis Cardinal's, once 1 game out of first place, have now gone on an 0-7 losing streak. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I really really hope they make the playoffs, but after this past week, I'm not sure they deserve it.

King's Mountain -> OLH

With Wilmot gone, today I went on the longest bike ride I've ever been on. Starting from my home in East Palo Alto, I made my way on Sand Hill and climbed Kings Mountain Road to Skyline. Kings Mountain was pretty grueling, since it was all uphill, taking me almost an hour to climb. The ride between Skyline and OLH was awesome though, allowing me to reach up to 35mph as I flew down the road. By the time I had gone down OLH and hit Alpine, I was pretty tired, never having ridden this far. Luckily, the route back was flat and easy, allowing me to hit (almost) 40miles on a single ride.

Stats:
39.97 miles
13.4 average mph
35.2 max mph
1343.9 calories burned
2:58:22 time

The route

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=2265+Pulgas+Ave,+Palo+Alto,+CA+94303&daddr=Garden+St+%4037.466880,+-122.134630+to:37.462255,-122.134495+to:University+Ave+%4037.443620,+-122.163910+to:Alma+St+%4037.446590,+-122.170720+to:Sand+Hill+Rd+%4037.442420,+-122.173910+to:Sand+Hill+Rd+%4037.412320,+-122.240230+to:Skyline+Blvd+%4037.417420,+-122.318560+to:Old+La+Honda+Rd+%4037.386020,+-122.248620+to:Alpine+Rd,+Portola+Valley,+CA+to:Campus+Dr+W+%4037.429160,+-122.180580+to:palm+drive,+stanford,+ca+to:Donohoe+St+%4037.462490,+-122.134670+to:Garden+St+%4037.466930,+-122.130720+to:2265+Pulgas+Ave,+Palo+Alto,+CA+94303&mrcr=1,2&mrsp=2&sz=14&mra=dpe&sll=37.464163,-122.132263&sspn=0.053888,0.078106&ie=UTF8&ll=37.402346,-122.206421&spn=0.215731,0.312424&z=12&om=1

Anonymity and Access to Information

If you log into Facebook, you'll see that they're opening profile pages to search engines, allowing anyone's profile page to appear in Google search results. I'm sure thousands of high schoolers are crying foul at this moment, worried that the "I fall asleep in AP Bio" group they joined will get them in trouble. But is it really that big a deal? Is it an invasion of privacy? I don't think so, and I want to take a few minutes to outline my position on net privacy.

Ever since I started full-time work, I've realized how much information about you is on the internet. If you haven't Googled yourself, do it right now. And if you have an uncommon name (like myself) you might be surprised with the results. Under my own name, I have a few op-eds I wrote while at Stanford, some forum posts about my time as a high school debater, and for some reason, some non-existent webpages in another college organization I was briefly a part of. But, in the grand scheme of things, this information is not that big of a deal. If you look at the myriad of Yellowpages, or reverse phone lookup websites, you'll find that your address, phone number, and even previous addresses all appear. I did it for my father and I was surprised that data shows our residence in Maryland, Connecticut, and Missouri (all true). The Yellow Pages is a directory that has existed in print form for many years and nobody had a big problem with this. If you did, you could not list your number. You could opt-out.

For some reason, putting information on the internet causes a greater fear. I don't blame critics - with an address on the internet, anyone across the world could find where you live, as opposed to a local Yellow pages where local residents would be able to access that information. But, this is the trade-off we see with the benefit of the internet and search engines like Google. Google, in an effort to provide more and more quality results, can understand that a query for your name, or even a phone number, will return a result that a user, ultimately wants. Yes, it borders on stalking, but we do it for celebrities all the time, why not extend it to our own lives. At the core, this is transaction of valuable information that a user ultimately wants. Sure, it's unsettling at first, especially if something embarrassing comes up. There are appropriate escalations for that, such as removing the content at your own behest. But at the same time, that is the beauty of the internet as well - it is dynamic and ever changing. Back to the main point - I'm a supporter of the greater access of information on the internet. I think it ultimately pushes humans closer together.

The end.

In-Flight Messaging: Invasion of Privacy or the Wave of the Future?

Besides offering in-flight movies and TV for its commercial flights, Virgin Airlines is also allowing its passengers to chat with each other. Tech Diary from the WSJ recently did a hands-on investigation of this new service, and the results are nothing short of hilarious.

"11F rocks!" Oh. My. God.

OLH -> Skyline -> Page Mill

Wilmot and I rode from Arastradero up Old La Honda, and on Skyline to Page Mill. According to Google maps, the route is 23.4 miles, which took us over 2 hours, since I'm slow as hell on the uphills. Going down Page Mill was exhilarating and a bit scary; at one point I saw that I was going 36mph! I wore my brakes down a whole bunch on that downhill. This is a map of the route.



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