Rex Babin

It saddens me to no end to say that a friend of mine, Rex Babin, editorial cartoonist for the Sacramento Bee and fantastic rower, died today of cancer after battling it for over a year. I met him through rowing and quickly found him to be passionate, entertaining, insightful, comedic, welcoming and wonderful person. I admired him in so many ways, and his family was ever welcoming and warm to mine. This is one of those cases where a person who rails against the system to make the world a better place has left the earth way, way to goddamn soon. I can't describe how much the rowing community (at least our little corner of it in West Sacramento) will miss him, and I can't even imagine the scope of the loss in the eyes of his wife and son.

Farewell Rex.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sacbee/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=156775426

http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2012/03/30/sac-bee-cartoonist-rex-babin-dies-of-cancer/?tw_p=twt

pants

I have no butt (because I am a white male and I don't lift weights), but I have reasonably big thighs (because I am a rower and occasionally pretend to be a runner or cyclist). These two facts combined mean that no regular pair of jeans will everywhere fit correctly. Most of my pants are baggy and look silly on me, as is the typical requirement for non-movie star men (not than I am really concerned with appearance). But lately I've been really disliking the bagginess, and since I have only purchased one or two pairs of jeans in the last, oh, four or five years, I decided it was time to pants up.

So here I sit at work in a new pair of Levi's 501s, and as I should have expected, they don't fit right. The butt fit is snug (I'm now exemplifying to the world the fact that I have no butt), but the thighs are WAY TOO TIGHT, and I really should take my phone our of my pocket so that my pants don't break it in half. What is the right solution? Why don't pants fit me?

On the other hand, in a world where unemployment is high, people are dying while fighting for democracy, two friends are waging war with cancer, another fighting CF, and starvation happens at all, pants that don't fit right really doesn't even qualify as something to bitch about. I guess everything is relative. Oh well, it sounded like a funny topic in my mind.

Laura gets tech savvy

I've long wanted to get myself an iPhone, but regularly decided against it because (1) it wasn't available on Verizon (my provider, not wonderful, but I've been happy with it), and (2) the wife and I decided it wasn't affordable. At the beginning of this year when it did finally come to Verizon, I got all excited and was ready to go get one for myself, but reason number (2) kicked in and I hung onto my five year old Razor.

Fast forward to this summer, and our kid is regularly doing things that are "cute" and "funny" and "awesome", and suddenly the interest in always having a camera and video recorder on hand and having the ability to share said items with friends and family increases greatly. Magically reason (2) no longer matters, and it's time to get new phones. I actually went to a Verizon store and waited in line to get phones, but the guy being helped was ... taking along time, and I had to get back to work. My technical self-gratification was further delayed.

Soon therafter I began reading on-line rumors about the release of the iPhone 5, and I made the decision that if I had waited this damn long to get an iPhone, I could wait another two months for September to roll around. Then Tyler dropped Laura's phone in the water. So now Laura has an iPhone, and I still don't. But that's ok, because I'm waiting (patiently!!!!!!) for version 5. Anyway, the point is that now Laura AND my dad are more technically savvy than me what with their fancy phones. My time will come.

Energy versus Trinity

My first job out of grad school was designing highway safety hardware at a place called Energy Absorption Systems. I developed a convertible, portable crash cushion that went into production before I changed jobs, and to date I have never actually seen one in use on the road, although I did once (finally) see several parked in a maintenance lot along the side of the road in Delaware, but never any on the road and in use.

It was designed in response to a product our competitor Traffix was making called the Scorpion. Though elegant and relatively simple in design, it was a total ripoff of another similar Energy product, and it was probably that way because one of the leads at Traffix was a former Energy designer. Anyway, that's not the point of this email. We designed this new crash cushion to be mostly reusable and very durable (rated for 65 mph impacts), and as a result it was a little heavy and expensive. Before I left the company I was excited to see it go into production, but kept hearing that I would likely never see it used in California because of its cost.


For years Caltrans would only ever use portable crash cushions rated for 45 mph impacts basically because the 45 mph devices were far less expensive and throw-away. This always irked me because, come on, let's be honest, how many people "only" drive 45 mph on California freeways? It seemed irresponsible to me to be using a product not rated for realistic highway speeds.

Anyway, money always wins and I got over it, resigning myself to not ever see my hard work in action in my home state. Over the last couple weeks, it got worse! I keep seeing the damn Scorpion out on the roads in construction zones! I'm not positive they are Caltrans devices, but some of them sure look like it. WTF?? Why did that one win out?


There was a sneaky (but altogether not suprising) tendency for some companies to "work" with the government to get regulations (contracts) written with specific requirements that in the end would limit the purchasing authority to choosing from only one product. My guess, and this is TOTALLY SPECULATION, would be that whomever is buying these now was limited by some agreement that said only the Scorpion would fill the need. Great. Oh well, at least my vacuum garbage truck is out there somewhere, maybe, cleaning up freeways.

tech savvy ... parents?

In the last two weeks my parents have managed to out-tech me. Keep in mind I am not on the cutting edge of technology, so out-teching me requires no great effort of any sort. But one day I'm talking to my mom, and I discover that both she and my father have acquired iPad 2s for themselves. Wha-what? Hey that's cool.

Then last night I'm talking to my father, and the conversation goes something like this:
Rick: "I finally got myself a gift for christmas and my birthday."
Andy: "Seems a little late for those. What did you get?"
Rick: "A battery for my truck."
Andy: (underwhelmed, hesitates) "Hey, that's great!"
Rick: "The old one has been in there since 2003, so I figure I got my money's worth."
Andy: (choke) "For as often as it sits around unused, I'd say yes, you got a great value."
Rick: "Then I went to the to the AT&T store. Do you know what they sell there?"
Andy: (feeling like a sneak attack just occurred, hesitates again) "You got an iPhone?"
Rick: "No it's a 4G."
Andy: "Huh? Yeah, of course, an iPhone?"
Rick: "What? Oh, yeah. I'm all set up for email and using it for work."
Andy: "Wow, that's cool. How do you like it?"
Rick: "It took these guys 10 emails going back and forth yesterday just to decice whether they wanted to fly to Larime or Denver. 10 emails. Seems like kind of a waste to me."
Andy: "Maybe your limited computer use over the last ... oh ... 15 years or so has insulated you from the way people communicate these days. Why bother talking to anyone when you can text or email them and never face them?"
Rick: "Yeah but 10 emails?"

Anyway, you get the point, and now my father has a iPhone before I do. Here I've been waiting patiently for Verizon to get the thing, and once they did I waited paitently again to convince myself that I really want to spend a couple hundred dollars to buy into this life changing technology that will fix everything for me. And literally as I am on the verge of pulling the trigger and going with a Verizon iPhone, Laura says "Oh, hey, I can get a discount though work with AT&T.", so I hesitated.

Ok, this blog is falling apart quickly. Anyway, my parents are savvier than me.

Anniersary the 8th

Happy Anniversary to my lovely wife of 8 years! I wish I could afford to sweep you off to Hawaii or maybe even Paris, but for now I'll just give you a big hug and kiss and tell you how much I love you.

negatives to digital

I mailed an envelope full of film negatives to Utah yesterday where they will be scanned into digital format, far faster and more effectively than I could ever do. When I receive the data DVD back in about a month, I will have roughly 350 photos from my time at Unitrans all nicely digitized for upload to my flickr account, for sharing, etc. I'm fearful that many of then won't be as crisp as I hope (scanning doesn't make a bad picture better), but this professional service will yield better results than my scanner can produce with the positive images.

Film negatives? What the hell are those?

I'd been thinking about doing this for years, and was finally inspried to do it because (1) the new Unitrans shop manager was asking me for copies of my RT Sunset and Solano Field photos, (2) my father-in-law has previously used and been happy with the place I am using, and (3) they were having a sale.

So someday soon I may have a lot more photo content to share.