Mark's blog

using Biztalk script functoid

2011-08-08T12:16:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to use Biztalk maps to create xsl transforms. The biggest challenge seems to be finding resources that talk about its capabilities and limitations. Here is my little contribution.

My transform involves a lot of repeating structures. In particiular a bunch of addresses attached to different entities that needs to be mapped to another address structure.

xxx
yyy
www
...

...

...
...

...

In some cases the address entries are blanks but the destination does not allow blanks so the nodes have to be skipped.

Most of these tasks can be done with various functoids. But if you have to repeat a good few times the biztalk map gets hairy.

So my solution is to use the scripting functoid and write an xslt template. Luckily every has an id so I can use that as a parameter. The other parameter would be the node (a, b, c, or d) so that I can construct the xpath inside my template. Then it's normal xsl stuff and you can control your output.

I can construct an example if there is interest.

Questions and issues with Home systems using RAID

2011-01-21T11:55:00.001-08:00

I bought a new home computer a few months ago. For the past few weeks I was trying to set up a RAID-1 array at home and ran into a bunch of issues and questions. The Motherboard is an ASUS M4A88TD-V which has a RAID support on the motherboard via a SB850 chipset.

There is no way to create a RAID volume from an existing disk. You have to create a new volume from scratch and re-image.

There seem to be a need to special drivers. When I boot up Linux with the RAID volume defined it still shows 2 disks!

Does the controller (or controlling software) verifies the write? If it doesn't and an error is discovered at read time it is too late.

If you have a corrupted file due to a software glitch for example you still need a backup. Otherwise you have a mirror of corrupted files.

If the motherboard dies can we take the disks and boot up from another computer with potentially a different chipset - RAID or regular?

Due to the above questions and issues I ended up using the secondary disk for backups.

kernel panic - unable to mount root fs

2010-10-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

I have a Ubuntu 10.04 desktop and one day it just refuses booting up. Here are my steps to get it going again. Please drop a comment if it helped you.

- press escape when grub is load. Choose "recovery mode" to see where in the boot process it failed. In this case it is trying to mount root and failed.
- rebooted the computer from the bootable CDrom. Chose "fix a harddisk"
- once the initial setup is completed, try to mount the harddisk as root. For me it worked.

At this point I have 3 suspects:
- grub is corrupt. I tried reinstalling grub from the CDrom and that didn't help. Moreover I have been able to change options, tried older kernels, so not likely.
- blkid or device id somehow changed. I double checked the blkid values and devices with both the grub menu and /etc/fstab and they haven't changed.
- it took a while for me but I finally did a ls -l on /boot. All the files except one was dated one day before the failure. It was also odd that there was no backup (.bak) of the file. The file was initrd-xxx. I couldn't find the documentation on how to roll back the file, so I grabbed the same file from another Ubuntu box, copied it over. Rebooted and it started working again.

I googled a lot during this process and there was nothing really helpful. My suspicion is that there was a kernel update and somewhere in the middle of the process it failed.

Powershell set-ClusterParameter

2010-10-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

Powershell is wonderful. That being said there are still dark corners you have to traverse through.

I need to create a Powershell script to create a MSMQ resource on a failover cluster. One of the things I need is to set the IP address using DHCP. Using the UI interface is simple, select the network, click DHCP enabled, click apply. You would think you can do the same thing in Powershell, but it has to work like this:


$clusterGroup = Add-ClusterGroup -InputObject $cluster -Name "MsmqCluster"

# create cluster IP address
$IPClusterResource = add-ClusterResource -InputObject $ClusterGroup -Name "${clusterGroup}-IP" -ResourceType "IP Address"

# find the network name
$ClusterParam = get-ClusterResource "Cluster IP Address"|get-ClusterParameter Network
$NetworkName = new-object Microsoft.FailoverClusters.Powershell.ClusterParameter $IPClusterResource,Network,$ClusterParam.Value
# have to fake an ipaddress and subnet mask
$address = new-object Microsoft.FailoverClusters.Powershell.ClusterParameter $IPClusterResource,address,"10.16.12.101"
$subnetmask = new-object Microsoft.FailoverClusters.Powershell.ClusterParameter $IPClusterResource,subnetmask,"255.255.255.0"

# have to bundle the parameters together and set the parameters in one shot
$setParams = $NetworkName,$address,$subnetmask
$setParams|set-clusterParameter

# now you have to enable NetBIOS before you can Enable Dhcp
set-ClusterParameter -inputObject $IPClusterResource -Name EnableNetBIOS -Value 1
set-ClusterParameter -inputObject $IPClusterResource -Name EnableDhcp -Value 1

longest run up

2010-09-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

My friend is doing this crazy thing. Please support him.

Nokia 5800 settings

2010-09-13T13:59:00.000-07:00

I called Fido and they gave all these info. I have to figure out how to put the information properly in the phone because I did not buy the phone from them.

Add a new access point under Network destinations. Do this twice (one for internet and one for wap)

Connection Name: fido wap (it can be anything I think)
Data bearer: packet data
Access Point Name (APN): wap.fido.ca
user name: fido
promopt password: no
password: fido
authentication: normal
homepage: http://fido.mobi (i need it because I use prepaid)
use access point: after confirmation (again because I use prepaid)

now go to options|advance settings

network type: ipv4
phone ip address: automatic
DNS addresses: automatic
Proxy server address: 205.151.11.11
proxy port number: 0 (8080 for internet settings)

I also find it curious that nobody talks about their $1 a day nor their $3 for a week (unlimited) data plans.

Hong Kong - sports part 1

2010-08-17T11:13:00.002-07:00

I went back to Hong Kong for a few weeks. Here is a recap of the activities I have participated in.

Wakeboarding
I remembered trying water skiing when I was a teenager but do not recall any success in it. It is fashionable to do wakeboarding and we were fortunate enough to book a boat. When you have a couple of noobs trying to learn this it is truly an expensive exercise. Everything from wearing the boots that are attached to the board, setting the boarder and the boat in position, resetting after the boarder has fallen in the water. Every round takes a good few minutes for the noob to try to hang up to a few seconds of board time. Throw in a couple of noobs and the time flies by pretty quickly without any interesting action.

To make things more interesting the guy who has the most experience was not on the boat when I was. I was left with little instructions and pure speculation based on how I've seen noob snowboarders do. And I have to share my thoughts with my daughter too.

I got 4 tries on the board. I was happy to stand up on the first try. By the third try I can turn the board so I was kind of surfing. On the fourth try I was able to hang on for about 10-15 seconds which seems like an eternity.

One odd thing about this boat trip is that the water inside the harbour is rougher. We got on the boat in Central and it was a rough 30 minute ride to get out of the harbour. Once we were able to turn the corner towards Pokfulam the waves die down. I haven't been on a cruise for many years and the busy traffic inside the harbour is to blame.

SQLserver 2008 R2 Management Studio

2010-06-21T16:30:00.001-07:00

Awesome...

Did you notice?

2010-06-08T09:38:00.000-07:00

That the hockey statisticians credited the loss to Brian Boucher for game 5?

If they used baseball rules it should have been Michael Leighton.

Network Load Balancing in Windows

2010-06-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

I am using NLB on a prototype I am working on. I have a custom process that listens to custom port and I have two Windows 2008 boxes to act like a web farm. The quick gotcha is that if my process is down but the network on the machine is still up NLB will try to distribute the network load around the two nodes. I was hoping for something a little bit smarter (like figuring out the port has not listener) but that is not the case.

TSS and CTL

2010-04-26T09:54:00.001-07:00

For the definitions of TSS, TSB and CTL read here.

This is my second year training with a powermeter. Last year it was mostly about getting the field experience of using it, matching up the perceived effort with the real power, managing efforts so the training is effective. This year the focus drifts into looking into TSS and CTL and how it relates to racing.

Firstly instead of using number of hours as a gauge of training effort, I am trying to use weekly total TSS as a gauge. So a big week needs to have say 600-700 TSS.

A rest week would be used to reset TSB to zero without losing CTL. The point is to keep building up CTL without going overboard. Last year I got sick right around Easter time trying to do too many big training rides and took more than one month to fully recover.

CTL is used as measure for race-readiness. If I were going into a 1.5 hour road race I need roughly 130 TSS. If my CTL were below 65 chances are I would crack before the end of the race. In comparison the one-day classic races the guys are racking up 300+ TSS in a day. Not only do you have to have the Watts per kilogram to stay with the guys, you need the CTL/TSS to stay with them for the duration of the race.

Lastly I counted the number of times a ride exceeds 150TSS last year and it is less than 10. So in terms of training regime 150 is a big ride. So if my "A" race is a 2 hour race worth about 180TSS, I will have to ride a couple of big rides to get use to that level. Either that or just stick to 30 minutes criteriums. :-(

how things have changed

2010-04-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

Back in the days when I was learning piano, I often hear my teacher play the song once or twice in the beginning, rely on your memory and your reading skills and try to play the song. I was one of the luckier guys when I was in University and can use the record (vinyl) collection in the music library to hear the music while reading the score.
Last night my son told me that we were tasked to pick a new song (list C) for him to play and the recommended composer is Rachmaninov. So I opened up imslp and search what they have. We then look for the corresponding pieces on youtube and have these great pianists playing for us. We picked prelude op 23 no 5 - something I haven't played myself.

invalid license data. reinstall is required

2010-03-29T10:31:00.001-07:00

I have Vista 64 SP2 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Monday morning I got this error message when I try to start Visual Studio. MSDN recommends reinstalling Visual Studio.

Luckily the technical support guy reminded to reboot the computer first. The problem goes away.

withdrawal

2010-03-01T18:27:00.000-08:00

What did I do after watching the closing ceremonies? I re-read all the emails that were sent to me from the volunteer program manager. I baffles me that 7 years or planning and executed the plan in 2 weeks. Think designing, coding and testing a system for 7 years and run it for 2 weeks and throwing it away. Imagine hot-fixing it within the 2 week period as well. Amazing.

Next thing I would do: re-read the training manual. :-)

GroupBy with XElement

2010-01-05T10:43:00.000-08:00

I am working on a new project and experimenting with Linq. It is very powerful and useful however it is a paradigm change for us old geezers.

The problem at hand was an XML string that needs to be sorted by a the value of an inner node:


<a>
  <b>
    <c>value1</c>
  </b>
  <b>
    <c>value2</c>
  </b>
  <b>
    <c>value1</c>
  </b>
</a>

I want to grab a list of "b" sorted by "c".

So I tried:
var xmldoc = XElement.Load("file.xml");
var grouplist1 = xmldoc.Elements("b").GroupBy(x => x.Elements("c").Select(y => y.Value);

When I do that the key is not the value1 but some sort of IEnumerable.
Then I tried:

var grouplist1 = xmldoc.Elements("b").GroupBy(x => x.Elements("c").Select(y => y.Value);

Then the compiler complained that I cannot cast an IEnumerable to string.

The issue is that within XElement you can have multiple "c"s although we know it could not. So this finally works:

var grouplist1 = xmldoc.Elements("b").GroupBy(x => x.Elements("c").Select(y => y.Value).ElementAt(0);

Of course it assumes there is at leaat one "c" node inside or else it would not work.

Lesson learned:
(1) types are still your friend. Declaring them make things easier.
(2) Break up Linq queries into smaller function calls. You will get the right result faster. At least it works for me.

reflections on the Olympics part 1

2009-11-28T01:04:00.000-08:00

Just a little background: I signed up to volunteer for the 2010 Olympics and recently I have been officially offered a position as an NOC (National Olympic Committee) assistant.

I have been attending the training sessions since April. I did run into a cycling friend in one training session but other than that these are all strangers to me. Being the anti-social self I have not been interacting with my fellow volunteers. All that changed today as I have my driver training. Three of us were assigned to a car and our job is to go through a couple of the Vancouver venues to locate the entry roads, dedicated parking, loading zones, etc. And for a few hours the three of us have to interact, make conversation and discover the solution for the problems posed to us.

Here is my reflection: as diverse are the people coming to compete in the games, the volunteers are similarly as diverse. We don't have to be friends, we don't have to have the same political views, we don't have any similar interests. We are all there just to make the games work. And as long as that objective is achieved that is the bottom line.

busy

2009-11-13T09:49:00.000-08:00

I am volunteering for this, this and this. It's going to be busy for a while.

bike fit

2009-10-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

I went for a bike fit at this bike shop. Here is what I have learned from the session.

1. Most of us have feet that are not parallel to the ground. I have known since a teenager that the outside of my shoes wears out first. Yet most pedals and cleats assume we are parallel and we are locked in while riding. I sometimes get soreness on the outside of my feet possibly because of this. The guys at the store installed some cleat wedges to rectify that problem.

2. In an ideal world the world the knee should be perfectly above the pedal and moving up-and-down only. Sideways movements just causes inefficiencies in the power transfer. The guys figured that my knee was moving outwards and rectified it by moving the pedals out by 20mm. At first it feels drastic but after a few rides it seems natural now. My only worry now is how peddling through a corner in a crit will be affected.

Before I went into the fit session I thought it was mainly about adjustment saddle and handlebar positions. They spend way more time on cleat and knee position than saddle/handlebar. I now have results to prove that I am more effective and would recommend this bike fit session to any serious cyclist.

a question

2009-09-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

With all the discussion around gender differential disorder these days, it brings back an old question I had about 10 years ago: what if a person with an sdd goes to apply:

1. to be a Catholic priest or a nun?
2. a single-sex school?

(1) brings the most interesting discussion as it is defining a rule based on science (gender) and the science is giving a non-boolean answer.
(2) brings similar issues as the IAAF as it has sports performance implications among other issues.

Tuesday Night Crit Aug 18

2009-08-19T01:46:00.000-07:00

Raced 9 laps with the main pack until my diaphragm start cramping up and my legs cannot turn the pedals at that rate. Another 2 laps or so and I could have finished with them.

Normalized power is 279W for just over 20 minutes. Too bad the season is coming to an end...

Horseshoe Bay Aug 12

2009-08-12T21:44:00.000-07:00

I have done this ride a couple of times this year. The ride really starts once we passed Dundarave. With a bigger group the pace is higher and I will get dropped around Lighthouse Park and ride tempo the rest of the way. Today there were only two of us and Joe was nice enough to work with my tempo. Here is the section starting from Dundarave:

I went as hard as I could and we even have a sprint finish! Average power was 233W and normalized power is 272! That is definitely a personal best.

Thursday Crit Aug 6

2009-08-08T17:32:00.000-07:00

First time racing in the 3/4s. Power is actually lower (average 216 normalize 234) than this race but pace (41.9kph)is higher. There were a lot of big guns out there so I know I have no business sticking my nose in front. I was just "swimming" up the peloton to get a good position and drifting down slowly. Rinse and repeat for the whole race. I felt good and confident that I can hang with the big boys for the whole duration.

mishap

2009-07-28T09:23:00.000-07:00

When I was commuting to work, there was an accident in the intersection of Cornwall and Cypress. A cyclist was knocked down and emergency crews were treating her right there. Let's hope she's alright and everyone please ride safe.

Cypress Hill Climb

2009-07-16T03:31:00.001-07:00

Climbed up Cypress on Wednesday. 41 minutes from the first switchback to the end of the steep part just beyond the power lines.

The dips in power happened where the switchbacks are. It is relatively flat and only on the lookup was I trying to power it through. With the others I was actually stretching my back and legs.

Everything done in one gear: 39x27. Cadence was mostly between 75-80. Power drifts down as heart rate drifts up.

Actually I was surprised that I have heart rate data for the whole climb. These old Powertaps tend not to record heart rate data when it is too "busy" - normally means when there is substantial power data there is no heart rate data. From today's chart it looks like it is speed related and the cut off speed is around 22kph. Will keep this under observation.

Thursday Crit #2

2009-07-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

Since Tuesday was a rainout, and riding was on the low side the early part of the week, it is high time to race on Thursday.

The routine to race on Thursday is like this: I have to leave work at 5pm sharp, commute for about 70 minutes at below threshold pace (roughly L2) to Richmond. Sign-up, final warm up, race for about 30 minutes then commute home. If I am stuck in the office which often happens and cannot leave before 5:15pm there is no hope making the race. So it is roughly a 2 hour commute for a 30 minute race.

Thursday was also the company annual barbeque at Stanley Park. I decided to opt out of the barbeque partly to work on my projects and partly to make sure I leave downtown on time.

I have not been doing good at this Richmond criterium for one reason or another. The first time I went to race in 2008 I was rushing to get there so my legs were feeling tired before the race started. I blew up with about 2 laps to go. The second time was the same week as WTNC #1 this year and I was not in good shape. I was not able to hang on to the lead group of four or five and cramped with about 2 laps to go. I finished but barely.

I do not have high hopes this race. I was aiming to finish in the lead group and get a good workout. I was constantly positioning myself in the front third: not front enough to chase the occasion efforts to break away and also not needed to pull in the front of pack that often. There was a good size crowd so it is easier to move up the pack as there are more shielding from the wind. Moreover the road is wide so there are lots of lanes to move around people.

By about the 4th lap I got to the front and did some work pulling. As I crossed the start/finish line they rang the bell for prime lap! I was worried that if I pull off too soon nobody would want to work in front and it would be more accident prone. So I continued pulling the group through the backside so the guys can go for the sprint. Then I have to work a bit to make sure the sprint group didn't stay away. Once I caught them I looked down to see my numbers. My heart rate was going at 175 at that point! My threshold is 168 and history has taught me that I cannot stay above that number too long. I also made the determination not to look at my numbers again until the end of the race and see how I can race this.

The end the average speed is 41.5kph and my max heart rate is 179. The max heart rate is a personal best as I have never gone beyond 176 is previous efforts and testing.

The middle couple of laps I was hanging towards the end of the pack or what's left of it. By about the 9th lap I was feeling good and looked down on my Heart Rate monitor. The number was 161. That means I was well rested and ready for more action. We were going against the wind towards the start finish line. I was at about 6th or 7th wheel but still I decided to pull out and push the pace up. When I cross the start finish line I heard the bell ring again for the second prime lap. Sure enough I have to keep the pace high again for about half a lap before I slow down. I then follow the pack making sure there is no significant gap.

For the last couple of laps I was just hanging around making sure I was in the front 3rd and not creating gaps. On the last turn towards the finish line I found on 3rd wheel behind two strong guys looking for the win. I waited for them to move knowing that I cannot outsprint these 2 guys and I do not have much left in the tank. Once one of them move I tried to follow but their speed is just to great. I sat up and let one guy move around me. There was another guy nipping me at the line and I finished 5th. Regardless these is the first points I claimed as a competitive cyclist and it only took my 3 seasons.

The good part about the race was that I raced smart and did not use up a lot of energy. I did most of it right and was lucky enough to be at a good opportunity for somebody to win provided he has a decent sprint speed. The bad part was that I never was in this situation and did not know how to win the race given the opportunity.

From a power point of view it can be divided into 3 parts: the first 10 minutes until the first prime the average power was 252W. The middle 7 middle minutes I had a bit of a break and average power was 195W. The last 8 minutes the average was up to 262W with that long pull being 46 seconds and average of 323W. Overall the average was 239W with normalized power being 253W.

Lessons learned:
- race smart and not necessarily hard.
- law of large numbers: race often and good things will happen.
- relax and enjoy the race.
- work on sprinting!

Tuesday Night Crit #1

2009-05-28T00:24:00.001-07:00

This is my first race of the year, the local WTNC criterium at UBC.

The image has the first 5 laps up to the prime. Where the blue line is going above 50kph is the downhill section on 16th. After that there is a 2 short sections followed by the 1 minute climb up Stadium. The third lap is the hardest averaging about 370W. Other laps range from 320W to 360W. The whole race was averaging about 37kph with a normalized power of 264W which is kind of in range given my FTP is 250W.

There is one other significant point about this race. I was racing with an ex-professional hockey player whom has his number recently retired by the Canucks. Of course he is good and strong and won the race. As for me I just recovered from a 2-week bout of cold and was happy to finish the race.

this looks better

2009-04-30T21:26:00.001-07:00

For the past month or so I have been riding the racing bike a lot. The weather was cooperative and I was in the build phase of training. Here is what the zones look like:

The top 3 zones adds up to about 25% of riding. There was a lot of hill repeats and intervals so there was a lot of recovery riding in between as well.

Here is a more detail distribution of the power levels:

The 2 lines sticking out represents recovery and commuting (which is an estimate of the whole ride). The threshold is sitting right around 250-260 which is where the distribution turns back down. Not as textbook as far as spotting the functional threshold power (FTP) is concerned. There was supposed to be a big dropoff in the distribution which does not exist here.

Something's wrong

2009-03-04T00:10:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of my power distribution for the last 28 days:

The labels are Active Recovery, Endurance, Tempo, Threshold, VO2Max and Anaerobic Capacity. As you can see it skews heavily on Tempo and Endurance combining close to 90%.

Now a lot of the rides are done without a powermeter and therefore are estimates. But the point that too much time is spent on tempo and Endurance is still there. I don't feel very comfortable riding above threshold and it shows on the chart.

Trainer

2009-01-16T17:00:00.000-08:00

One thing I am trying to do this year is "ride to failure" - keep pushing the pace (normally TT or just below) and ride until I cannot push the pedal anymore. It is actually harder than I thought. The body is complaining. It is uncomfortable but I can actually go on. So far I have been doing these SST (90% of TT power) drills and it was only last night when my calf cramped up so bad I have to stop.
If I do these same drills on the road I have to save some effort so I can ride home. Going on a trainer gives me more leeway to "dig deeper".

note to self

2008-12-17T15:34:00.001-08:00

Riding a fixie on snow without brakes is not a good idea. I just saw one fixie sliding into a car. Ouch.

PDC 2008

2008-10-28T18:29:00.001-07:00

I am at Los Angeles attending the PDC. Lots of cool technology. Some of the stuff I am looking at includes:

Geneva framework

Project Velocity

jQuery

These are all 'low hanging fruit' type of efforts that can be readily incorporated into my day to day work.

Time Trial

2008-08-11T18:05:00.000-07:00

Finally raced my first time trial.

This is the second of two time trials in the race season that operates as an independent race. Other TTs that runs are part of some stage race which I am not ready for.

I grade my TT as a C+. My original target was 38km per hour. Based on an estimated distance of 36km (official distance is 36.4) I was pacing for 58 minutes hoping to start conservatively and have a slower 1st half.

I caught a ride around 5:30am and arrived at the location around 6:45am. I wanted to volunteer as well and my job was to assist in bike measurements. The commissaire was mostly enforcing the rule where the tip of the saddle needs to be 5cm behind the BB axis. There were a couple of guys and gals used the "morphological exception" by sliding their bum beyond the end of their saddles to get by the rule.

My start time was 10:56 so I have lots of time to get ready and warm up the bike measurements were finished.

It has been raining off and on that morning and sure enough when I start my warm up it was raining the hardest. I was soaked before starting. Just when I was about to start the rain stopped. The start house was actually the club trailer so that was kind of fun. I was nervous for a little while waiting for my start. There was nobody starting 1 minute before me. The guy that was supposed to start 2 minutes ahead but didn't show up until the very last minute so I was in the start house for almost 3 minutes. I didn't want to go too hard when I start because the first 2km or so was a slight downhill and I was hoping to save my effort for the final climb. I chose a cadence around 85 and was cruising above 40km very quickly. At that point there was a burning sensation around my crotch area. The bib shorts is not adjusted properly and it is rubbing in the wrong place. I chose to ignore that sensation and keep going as I do not want to stop and knew I could not fix the problem on the bike. The downhill comes gently to flats and I started pacing at 38km. I was thinking the course is not completely flat as my speed rolls down to about 36 and I would push it up to 39 and let it sink again (it could have been the rubbing - see below). It is a twisty course and it is hard to know where you are other than looking at the elapsed time on the watch. My heart rate monitor has been acting up for about 2 weeks before the race and it was only after 2 battery changes was I able to get it working the day of. For the first time in about 2 weeks I was able to know that my heart rate was hovering around 155-163. My threshold is 167 and my expectation was to push the HR up for the final 1/3 of the course.

The 5-6 guys following my start are all strong cat 1 or 2 riders, so I was passed a good few times before the turnaround. Lucky for me these guys are so fast (Will Routley the winner averages 10+kph faster) I did not know they were passing until they blew by. I did pass one woman after the turnaround before the bridge so that was a bit fun.

My pace was good and I was feeling comfortable (to a point) up till about 20 minutes to go. I wanted to push the pace up and found that my legs have been locked into automatic cruise control and refuse to cooperate. I tried shifting down to spin up but that only brought the speed down more so I have to settle for the same speed (36-38) and roughly the same HR which was mostly in the high 150s at that point.

The final climb was dreadful as I cannot garner any extra power to my legs and watch my speed go down while the HR stays the same. I slowed down to about 30 towards the end and clocked at 1:00:05. The guys did a re-measurement of the course and relabeled it at 36.5km so my average speed was 36.45.

At the end I found out my rear brake was rubbing the wheel. I did not realize it because the warm up was so wet and I cannot hear the rubbing. Afterwards I was told that I should have performed a test to just roll the wheels to check for rubbing.

Just like in Westside classic, my hamstrings were sore for a few hours after the race. This time I have problem sitting down so the car trip back to Vancouver was not very comfortable.

In hindsight my cadence should be higher (like 90-95) as my muscles were tired but I never taken advantage of my heart rate. If previous practices I find my HR dropping towards the end and my speed sank. So I should probably start around 160-163 and move it up that way. The lower cadence drill (4x10min at TT pace but 70-75 cadence) that John Tolkamp suggested helped my endurance but confused my cadence selection.

So between the rain, the brake rubbing, slow turnaround and my wrong cadence/HR selection I think I can save a minute at least. I wasn't too unhappy with the result as 1 hour was my lower bound and the conditions were not ideal. But then again you see other cat 4s and 5s doing really well so I do feel that I am not progressing at fast as I wanted.

Results are here. The bib numbers represent starting order.

Inconsistent Behaviour

2008-07-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

I was helping to troubleshoot a problem with HttpWebRequest where a cookie came from the server but wasn't going back to the server.

The server (say www.foo.com) sends the cookie in the header of the response with attribute domain=www.foo.com. The .Net cookie class interprets this according to RFC 2965 and adds a period (dot) in front of the domain. So when we try to get the cookies for www.foo.com this cookie is not included. Specifying something like

myCookieContainer.GetCookies(new Uri("http://a.www.foo.com")

works though.

The way I understand the RFC is that the domain should be foo.com instead of www.foo.com. However both IE and Firefox accepts this and sends the cookie back so no web server developer or tester would ever pick this up because the major browser works.

White Rock Road Race

2008-07-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

I volunteered as a driver for the White Rock road race. I got to drive an SUV carrying about 20 wheels in case somebody has a flat. I got assigned the men's race which was longer and tactically more sophisticated then the women's as it turns out.

At the starting line we were trapped behind the women's group which was supposed to start 5 minutes after the men. Of course there was a bit of a delay so after they started I have to push the car hard to overtake the women and chase back to the men's group. Due to logistics I did not get hold of the car until the morning of so trying to drive hard a new car is quite stressful.

The course has 2 sections, the loop up Columbia/Victoria and the Magdalene Ave switch-back. The Magadalene section is tricky because of all the lefts and rights. Driving the course the first time in a unfamiliar car is definitely not the way to do it in the first lap of the race. Anyways after a error or two we caught the group on the downhill after Magdalene section so things were turning normal after that.

In terms of work we have 2 flats. The 2nd flat was in a very awkward spot where the road is used 2-way. Once my car stops, cyclists behind me have very little room to pass me. Luckily there were no crashes nor much oncoming traffic from the women's peloton. Here is a view of the 2nd flat taken from the women's lead car:

The view from car is great. I got a race radio and can listen and communicate to the commissaires which were covering the race in front and at the back. I can see the whole pack riding and can listen to the progress of the breakaway group. It is like having the legs to follow these cat one or cat two riders and watching the whole race develop in front of my eyes.

The race itself is exciting as well. There was a breakaway of 4 riders for a few laps. The gap was at one point almost 3 minutes before Symmetrics and Jittery Joe decided to pull them back. At the last long lap Chris Horner decided to attack at the Magdalene switchback, the whole peloton then got shattered. Then when they do the short laps the tempo keeps going up and more and more people got dropped. At the end Chris dropped everybody else and claimed victory.

It was a fun thing to do and gives a lowlife racer like me a chance to contribute in Superweek. I would definitely do this again.

3 good weeks followed by...

2008-07-09T13:03:00.001-07:00

All good things have to come to an end. :-(

Firstly it was some work related stuff that delayed my departure to make it to the Thursday night crit. That wasn't all bad as I took the opportunity to do some intervals and it was by far the hardest I have done all year.
That however leads into Friday: the schedule says do some time-trial pace intervals. My legs were dead. I have a day off and decided to sleep in instead.

So the delay pushed the time-trial pace intervals to Saturday before the club ride. It was raining lightly off and on and there were wet patches on the road. To save time I did the Chicks TT route. I was not doing too well. I was not pushing too hard when I hit the downhill portion of 16th towards Imperial Ave. I was thinking that I had a good line turning right when the rear wheel slipped. Immediately the bike was traveling sideways. I did a baseball slide at about 35kph on Asphalt. When I got up there was a car right behind me. The driver kindly offered to take me home and pointed out my right thigh/bum area is badly injured. I then realized that my shorts are ripped and I was bleeding. I decided to ride home slowly as my bike was fine as it probably will be better for me to keep the muscles moving.

When I got home I assessed the damage: right shifter was bent in - easy fix. Scrapes to right pedal and shifter. Most cuts to handlebar wrap. A couple of some bumps and bruises and one big skin abrasion about 4 inches by 4 inches. I was not bleeding a lot. I have been leaking fluid out of the wound for 2-3 days and it is finally coming to and end. Hopefully I can start training again in a day or two when the motion of thigh moving up and down does not cause a lot of pain and the skin has healed up enough.

The odd thing I still cannot explain is why the rear wheel slipped. I was well into the turn when it slipped. I was on my hoods implying more weight was on the rear wheel. So wetness should not be the explanation. More likely I hit a slippery patch or sand.

3 weeks of training

2008-06-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

After the A race, it's back to build 1. I borrowed a trainer with power display to see how I am doing power-wise.

The first week I did some test to see what type of power I can sustain.
The second week I did this pacing exercise. I was able to do 10-8-8-8-6-6-4 minutes with average power somewhere between 245 and 255.
The third week I did a 12km time trial test run at Iona. I still think I can pace myself better but the numbers are already way better: 19:32 for 12.4km out and back. Average speed 38.1kph. My previous runs in April and May were about 35kph.

This is the best training phase I have had all year. Let's see what the next 3 weeks can do.

Westside Classic 2008

2008-06-05T10:52:00.000-07:00

I am not too happy with my race and I am not too unhappy about the race as well. Going in I know it will be hard for me to follow the main pack up the hill. Someone said the first two laps will be hard and it was. At lap one there was a gap after the climb but I was able to bridge back with a bit of time to get ready for the second climb. By lap two I have lost sight of the main pack. We formed a group of six (and later seven) that rode together for most of the race - knowing that we can't bridge up. At the last climb there were seven of us - four from the same club. I tried to set the guys up by forcing the tempo and blew up half way up Camosun. Four guys left the pack - three of which are from my club. Yet still the coveted 42nd spot when to the lone enemy. I could have regrouped to try to sprint for 2 more positions but did not try hard enough doing so.

I felt stronger this year than last but unfortunately not strong enough to be in the big group. Looks like climbing up Camosun in the big chainring is a requirement for next year. From a numbers perspective I am about 10 places better than 2007 and time-wise I am about 10 minutes faster as well. I also have improved on my turns, especially the two turns entering and leaving SW Marine drive.

Here are some photos. And here is the official results page.

To shut down a computer in .Net

2008-06-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

I was testing something and needed to shutdown a computer. Wanted to look for an example and couldn't found one anywhere. So here is what I have written:

ManagementClass MC = new ManagementClass("Win32_OperatingSystem");
ManagementObjectCollection ObjCol = MC.GetInstances();
//there is only one object in the Collection
foreach (ManagementObject MO in ObjCol)
{
MO.Scope.Options.EnablePrivileges = true;
MO.InvokeMethod("Shutdown", null);
}

Note that if you skip the EnablePrivileges line you will get a exception with the message:
Privilege not held

This assumes the identity of the process has the privilege to shutdown the computer under normal conditions.

knocked down but not out

2008-05-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

I was commuting to work, rolling down Dunbar towards 16th. Like any other morning there were a few cars backed up. As normal I slowed down as there are traffic and pedestrians around. Suddenly an SUV decided to turn right in 18th - probably to avoid the traffic as I was approaching the car. I yelled, braked and tried to turn in the same direction (probably in that order as well) but eventually hit the SUV and was down.

The driver came out and checked if I was alright. A few pedestrians (there is a Starbucks at that corner) came out to see if I was alright as well. Well luckily other than 2 scratches on the right knee, a bump on the right hip, a bump on the right shoulder and a bruise on the left arm, and more cuts on the handlebar wrap me and my bike are both ok. So I stood up, checked that I can continue on my bike, talked to the driver (not yelled) and ask him to signal and check, and went on my way.

Lessons learned:
- I should have counter-steered. The fact that turning right shows up on my manoevres is a blessing.
- I should have been slower when approaching slowed cars. I had a similar run in with a car 7 years ago but that was worse. So I have improved. :-)
- I am alright.

Today's EV count is 2.

weird and lucky

2008-04-29T14:47:00.000-07:00

I got to deliver this guy a cheque. He lives in Kits and I work downtown. I thought about sticking it in an envelope and mailing it out but something just does not feel right. (weird #1) I have to hop over to the school at lunch time today. The sun is out so I decided to take a detour and drop off the envelope at John's place.

While I was heading over, somebody in an SUV was honking at me. I thought about chasing him down but don't have the legs to...

I was not able to access his mailbox (lucky #1). I could not see his name in the directory so I called the building manager. She told me that he moved a while ago. (weird #2) So I sadly turned around and head back to downtown. While on the way to Burrard bridge, a pedestrian was waving at me. It was none other than John himself! So I yelled, stopped and dropped him my envelope. (lucky #2)

That's not all. John told me he gave me an updated address in another email. When I got back to the office I forwarded the updated address to our membership director. Turns out the address and postal code do not match (weird #3). So even if I caught the updated address the cheque might still not get delivered (lucky #3).

My EV count today is technically 1 although if I count non-cycling guys too its 3.

we'll see how this goes

2008-04-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

First time in my riding life I broke a chain while riding. I was going uphill and felt like the chain has skipped off. Lucky when it happened I was close to a bike shop and got help. The owner and mechanic knocked 4 links off and send me on my merry way. He said the drive train is still good for another 6 months although I have doubts and estimated 3 months. I have been very tentative with my commuter bike since and actually rode my race bike to work the majority of times - partly because of training and partly because I don't feel comfortable about the chain.

Last Saturday was my fourth ride after the fix. It snowed Friday night and the road was wet so I thought it might be better to ride a bike with fenders. I left the group and was on my way home. I was actually saying to myself that I should go to buy a new drive train when the chain snapped again! Stranded between Richmond and the airport I called for help using the universal repair kit known as the cellphone. While waiting for the support car to arrive I decided to try fixing the chain. The theory is that you can knock 2 more links out and at least ride home with a shortened chain. After 20 minutes of fumbling around I was at the point where I could try to put the pin back in when the support car arrives.

I bought a new drive train the same afternoon along with the necessary tools. It does look like I would need a new drive train every year so the tools are worth investing.

Last night I finally got the time to put the drive train on to the bike. The rear cassette was relatively easy once I figure out the chain whip and wrench should be position like scissor handles. Next come the hard part: the cleanup of the bike. The rear derailleur was so filthy I spent about an hour cleaning it up. The chain I bought (SRAM 991) is very easy to install because of the powerlink feature.

We will see how long this drive train will last. The previous one lasts about 13 months and the one before that about 2 years.

Today's EV count is 2: I met 2 EV guys riding.

the season till now

2008-04-11T12:59:00.000-07:00

I went to the last road race of the Spring Series as a 'C' race - a race that I used as training and done without preparation - and it was hard.
The course is the 'snake': a 10km loop with a climb about 600m in length with average grade of 10.4% and max gradient of 15.4%. Using my granny gear of 39-27, I was climbing with a cadence of 50's to 60's which was very uncomfortable. The first lap I climbed sitting down (which I prefer), the 2nd lap a coach was yelling "stand up" (to his people that was around me) so I tried standing up. My heart rate shot through to the roof and my quads were sore after the climb.

On every lap after the climb people get away. People like Stuart has the ability to accelerate after the climb. If they were around me I would try to sit in the group and try to bridge back. Because I do not have as much acceleration I would lose contact with the chase group and have to ride in time trial pace all the way down the hill to catch back to the pack. At lap 4 just ran out of gas. Lap 5 I was at "tempo" - a notch below time trial effort and rode with a guy. By lap 6 I have let that guy go at rode at a warm down pace. Climbing that hill was hopeless so I stopped after lap 6.

Anyways not a bad day - weather held up, race conditions was acceptible. No accidents in the C race. Can't really complain.

A couple of things I have learnt that day: when the roads are dirty with manure, you have to spit out the first squish of water you drink to rinse the nozzle and avoid getting sick. It was a bit of a mess but I survived. Also for older cyclists it looks like more training at zone 4 (time trial pace) to 5a (a little bit above) is more useful than short intervals at zone 5b (which is my max range).

Yesterday I did my first Time Trial Test: 8 miles, full pace. It took me more than 20 minutes which averages about 35kph. When I got home I was wobbly and hungry. It was more intense than most of my workouts this year. Definitely more of this type of training in the coming weeks.

bone head

2008-03-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

I got a new bicycle computer last year with 2 bike support and installed the second bike kit on my commuter bike. Everything was working fine for a week or so.

On Monday morning I realized I have no cadence reading. I tried adjusting the magnet thinking it might be knocked out of alignment but to no avail. When I was home I looked at the bike and realized that the cadence sensor wire was severed. I wrapped the cadence sensor wire around my down tube and slid the wire between the tube and the shifter wire. The shifter wires are just bare wires. As I was shifting the wire act as a saw and finally chopped the cadence wire. I tried reconnecting the wires. The wires are very thin it is hard to get it back working. I might need another cadence kit.

aaaaaargh.

i think this is a bug

2008-02-26T10:25:00.000-08:00

I am writing a little app that hosts the Internet Explorer/Webcontrol control to navigate our production site and get some page load values. Somewhere on a page we have the following html snippet:

<input name="foo" type="checkbox" id="foo" />

Both IE and Firefox render this as a checkbox without the check mark.

When I interrogate the attributes inside the HtmlElement object, here is the interesting bit:

GetAttribute("Value") returns "on"
GetAttribute("checked") returns "False"

I wrote a loop to get all the input elements inside the <Form> tag to construct a post data string so the natural choice is to use the Value attribute because it seems to work for all input types. So the post is sending in foo=on for this input. ASP.Net happily interprets it as checkbox value=true and created a different behaviour that took me a while to track down and isolate.

job fair

2008-02-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

Last week I was manning the company booth at a job fair in UBC. Here are some FAQs that I developed towards the end of the day:

Q: Is Thomson Financial an insurance company?
A: No.

Q: Is it an investment fund?
A: No.

Q: what is the company like?
A: we like to eat, don't drink a lot and like to work out and/or participate in sports.

Q: Does your company makes DSL Routers?
A: No. And we do not make seatposts, nor stems nor headsets.

Stuck

2007-12-18T12:29:00.000-08:00

Once in a while a song will get stuck in my head and the music will play inside my head throughout the day. This one has been stuck in there for about a week. The words fit how I feel right now:

Holy darkness, blessed night,
heaven's answer hidden from our sight.
As we await you, O God of silence,
we embrace your holy night.

good coaches don't yell

2007-12-02T18:34:00.000-08:00

My daughter is involved in both soccer and basketball. A few weeks back we were up in SFU playing a Vancouver Whitecaps Club Super Series soccer game. Her team was coached by Steve Kindel. It helped with a quiet environment and a small field. Steve was calm and was always talking to the girls in a speaking tone. Instructions were clear and concise and the points were well taken by the team.

Today my daughter was in a basketball game. I got there just about half time and I realized her opponents were very different from other opponents her team has faced before. Defense was strong, people help each other in double teaming, inbounds play is precise. As I look towards the opponents' bench I saw a familiar face. Again Kevin is calm and collected, not talking much but when he makes a point his team listens.

In contrast, I yell too much. Sometimes the same keywords over and over again to no avail. I will definitely try different strategies to get my point across.

problem of the day

2007-11-26T15:51:00.000-08:00

A colleague was trying to write a calculation tool on IIS logs. I recommended him to try the text file driver from Microsoft Jet. He couldn't get it going. The error is:

Cannot Update. Database or object is read-only
Error code is -2147217911 or 0x80040E09

Turns out the file has an extension of ".log". Once I changed it to ".txt" everything works. Can't find an explanation though.

gotcha

2007-11-21T13:43:00.001-08:00

We got caught in the production system yesterday.

Turns out the problem is that we use System.IO.Path.GetTempFileName() to, well, get a temporary file name to use in a directory. This method, if you read the documentation (which I did not), states that

Creates (emphasis mine) a uniquely named, zero-byte temporary file on disk and returns the full path of that file.

So there is a side-effect by calling this method. But that's not all. In the remarks it said:

The GetTempFileName method will raise an IOException if it is used to create more than 65535 files.

So the production system failed because this method has been called more than 65535 times.

Lessons learned:
(1) RTFM!
(2) the method should be renamed CreateTempFile.

indoor trainer

2007-11-13T11:32:00.000-08:00

I have always resisted the idea of riding a trainer in the house. It never appeared to be interesting nor effective, until this year.

It started out having a cold winter this January when I have to stop commuting for a few weeks.
In the fall when soccer season starts it is obvious that I will have less time riding in daylight.
Then there was some discount trainer emails flying around.

So being the cheap bastard that I am, instead of buying a new one, I sourced an old noisy trainer for $20 from a friend.

I've started riding on the trainer and it feels different. The 12s or zone 2s seem to be harder on the trainer than on the road. I've tried a small amount of 14s just to see how it feels and it seems harder as well.

On the entertainment front I found some old Japanese animation series that I normally would not watch sitting down. It works and time flys by a bit better than a regular Hollywood movie.

I probably need to set up a fan as I am sweating like a pig.

The lesson learned is that it is not boring when you don't want it to be boring.

Another weird problem

2007-10-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

This time it is in our development environment. We are integrating with an external report engine and one of my tasks is to look at some performance statistics to see if we need extra hardware to support the report services. The reporting engine is still a 32-bit process so I wrote a bit of code to thunk down from our 64-bit .Net code to 32-bit before calling the reporting service.

After that I hook up our test/performance harness to make the system run 100 reports. That CPU was under siege for well over 10 minutes. After same tuning and monitoring I realized the CPU was not spent in the reporting process (nor our application services for that matter), it was the 64-bit version of rundll32.exe. Out comes the Sysinternals Process viewer. It turns out rundll32 was running:

rundll32.exe ntprint.dll "printer name"

The process is trying to install a printer. I tried it manually and we don't have the printer driver locally. So I guess this process failed repeatedly but kept trying. I looked up some documentation and found the option to turn off the printing portion of the report and everything works like charm. Just another day in the office...

tracing in asp.net

2007-10-03T16:59:00.001-07:00

I am trying to use the trace.axd viewer to view page traces. I changed the <trace enabled='true' > tag in web.config and all I get was
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Server Error in '/xyz' Application.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trace Error
Description: Trace.axd is not enabled in the configuration file for this application. Note: Trace is never enabled when

Details: To enable trace.axd, please create a tag within the configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This tag should then have its "enabled" attribute set to "true".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.832; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.832
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Turns out I have to restart the worker process in order to get it to work. Turning it off has no such problems though.

Interesting piece of news

2007-10-03T16:52:00.000-07:00

I just came across this piece of news from the office pantry. What is interesting to me is that the deal is made on the cycling roads rather than on the golf course. Cycling being the new golf in the corporate world someday?

I blew it!

2007-09-27T13:07:00.000-07:00

I put my lunch on a plate, throw it in the microwave and about a minute later, there was a loud crack. The plate was split into two down the middle. First time in my life I have broken a plate like that... how bizarre.

Network problem

2007-09-18T17:29:00.000-07:00

Ever since late July I have been involved to diagnose a performance problem. After a few weeks of back and forth, dicing through the numbers and adding instrumentation to our code, it boils down to network delays in our .Net remoting calls. At that point I should have throw my hands up and pass the problem to the Network engineers. Unfortunately that person was on vacation and I need to carry on. After a bunch of trials and errors and flipping around options on the network driver level, the problem seems to be related to SNP/TOE. So next time you see a network slowdown, check if SNP/TOE is turned on.

it might be obvious for others

2007-09-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

This is definitely not obvious for me.

I did some performance tuning for our web app and cached some pages a while back. I did this:

<%@ OutputCache Location="Any" Duration="3600" VaryByParam="none"%>

I was going through the IIS logs as see that the page in question is still being requested a lot. Changing it to

<%@ OutputCache Location="Any" Duration="3600" VaryByParam="None"%>

does the trick. It seems implicit and I have definitely seen other people using the lower case version. But the attribute is CASE-SENSITIVE!!!

Things I did on Sunday

2007-08-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

Or things I did not do on Sunday.

The first event of the day was the Team Time Trial. Before I go on vacation I was pretty gung-ho on doing this as it sounds like fun. I was asking around to gather interest and form a team. Unfortunately there was not a lot of interest and after my vacation, I lost a lot of fitness and gave the idea up. I then signed up to help out in the race. A few days before the race a couple of cat 4s were looking for a 4th member. I replied, wanting to ride on condition the race director agrees. Then the race director came back saying he needs me to marshal the race, thus making it impossible to race. I have no qualms about the decision and helped the team find a 4th member. This team won the race. I was happy for them and was happy that I didn't drag the team down as I was not in good form.

After the race, a coach hosted a cycling garage sale at his house not far from the race venue. I was carpooling, the driver wanted to drop by so I went to take a look as well. It was like going to a candy store. Wheels, helmets, sun glasses, jerseys, jackets, bags, you name it. Everything useful for a cyclist is available. I picked up some old team jerseys for cheap and bought two nice shimano wheels off him. I had no intention of buying anything but ended up being one of his biggest customers that day.

I was excited and Sunday night started to assemble up the Pinarello. With the extra wheels the work is easier as I can take my time to tune up the bike while riding on the current bike. No single point of failure makes things easier to transition.

The most important lesson for the day: that front and back skewers have different lengths. Pull a rear skewer to fit a rear wheel - it is longer.

All in all a good day.

a little bit of history

2007-08-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

As the Canucks are getting ready to launch their new logo and jersey, let me share a little story about their previous jersey launch.

I joined a small software company in 1997, replacing a guy who went to a big game development studio. It was all in good terms and this developer was in touch with the few of us. A few days before the jersey launch one of my colleagues received a email from this guy with the Canucks whale logo in an attachment. This ex-colleague was not on the hockey team but somehow got hold of the logo. We were admiring the logo and another colleague came by, saw the picture, called his girlfriend and forwarded the email over to her. This person worked for CKVU and it was a matter of minutes when Don grabbed hold of the picture and ran a story at their six o'clock news.

So this little company played a pivotal role in leaking on the logo last time.

A race

2007-08-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

I was finishing my morning ride and spinning to the office when I met Gord on Macdonald and Cornwall. Gord is a strong rider and the president of the cycling club. We exchanged pleasantries and he took off. I continue spinning away but there was always an urge to go after Gord's wheel. I lost sight of him after the uphill section and was surprised to see him in front, slowed by the lights. I almost caught him at Burrard but the light turn green before I could reach him. Gord took off again. This time it is a struggle because of 2 weeks' vacation I lost a lot of fitness. The climb up the Burrard bridge is a challenge when you want to push but your HRM disagrees with you. At the end I decide to go with my HR zone and let him go.

Little did I know that he was caught up in traffic lights again and I caught him around Smithe. This time I have the legs to ride away from him and did not see him again. He looked at me from his Subaru in disgust as I smiled and waved bye bye.

caught

2007-08-05T16:30:00.000-07:00

I know it is inevitable, but the moment of truth is still surprising. My son has been growing up and he has reached the first milestone: we now officially have the same shoe size. I now can test fit shoes for my son!

there are racers and there are racers

2007-07-24T08:31:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday on the club ride we had time to chat because of a good number of flats along the way. One topic of discussion was wheel weight and how one guy bought a used wheel with a Powertap. The rear wheel weighs 1700 grams alone and he rebuilt the Powertap with a lighter rim and it saved him 200 grams.

Then yesterday during the weekly criterium race I can't help but notice one guy on a bike that squeals. After the race I was asking him whether he notices the noise from his bike. He said he ignores the noise. Another guy rolled by and pointed out that he spokes are loose and rubbing.

It just surprises me how extreme people are: either they care about every gram they carry or they are totally insensitive about savings to make their bike go faster. Go figure.

How odd

2007-07-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

We were playing a card game at home - a variation of slap jack where we call the cards from Ace to King and slap when the card matches the call. I have played this game lots of times and for the first time in my life, the whole deck was dealt and non of the cards matched! So what is the probability of a set of cards that does not match their ordinal position at all? I have to think about calculating that...

surprise at home

2007-06-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

As I was riding home last night, I heard some unfamiliar sound as I was rolling into the driveway: it was the sound of drums and cymbals. From the direction of the sound, my neighbours over on that side have no young kids, and the drum sound was from a beginner.

So as I opened the door, the drum side was coming from within! My 12 year old son and his two buddies was having a jam session! Their school has a talent show in about 2 weeks and they were getting together to practice. Being first timers the singer brought the lyrics, about 2 bars of music for one hand and the drummer brought his (rental) drum set. My son was struggling to play the few notes the singer brought along. So my music and superhero instincts kick in, sort them out. Reverse engineer the song for the basic chords, give my son a basic pattern to play, settle them in a practice tempo, and about 2 hours later they got the basic pattern going. They will be going into an audition today so let's see what happens.

Several interesting observations:
- figuring out what chords to use is way easier than it was when I was in highschool. An mp3 and the slider in the computer makes life soooo easy.
- the band is a bunch of piano players venturing out to different instruments. Just like when I was in my band.
- 12 year old kids these days know what they want to do. I would say they are way smarter than when I was 12.

I had fun and saw them had fun too.

Road Race

2007-06-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

I have taken a full Cycling BC race license this year. So I thought it might be a good idea to do some races that require a full license. This being the closest to home and the timing is favourable so I signed up and went for it yesterday.

Here are the positives:
I had fun.
I finished the race.
I contributed - I was telling people how to ride paceline to go faster.

I need to work on these...
Climb faster.
Turns
Positioning myself in the pack.

I was extremely tired after the race but felt much better towards the end of the day. I was going through flickr trying to find photos of myself but couldn't find anything...

Anyways more training. Onwards and Upwards.

Race 2

2007-05-17T15:14:00.000-07:00

I did the 2nd criterium on Tuesday. This time I am more relaxed and focussed on keeping myself in the front 3rd of the pack. The race has more people this time (probably 25 to 30) and it was a bit crowded when we start. As expected the crowd thins out as some 1st timers cannot keep up with the pace and the climbs. The pace was a little quicker than the previous races I've seen as there are more people and more people trying to lead the pack.

There was some confusion in the middle of the race. The women's races were running at the same time and their cat1-3 pack caught us. People were yelling to move away so that the women can pass. There was a bit of confusion and there were people trying to sit in the women's pack as well as trying to break away using the women's pack as a decoy. A couple of us decide to chase the breakaway down creating more
confusion in the race. After a lap or two the race official called a "neutral lap" to let the women's group ride away. That suits me fine because I was pretty close to blowing up trying to chase the breakaway. Somewhere in the middle of the confusion was the prime lap and I don't even know exactly which lap it was.

At the last lap I was in the front group of 10 or so riders. I saw there were 2-3 riders from the same team so I rode next to one of them and said I was going to try to lead him off. Then I dive down the hill going all out thinking he would follow me. But I think I was going too fast and he knows that I wouldn't succeed. I
went all out for about 30 seconds or so and saw the pack or right behind me, probably less than 20 feet away. There was a right hand turn and I wasn't prepared to make the turn at that speed. So I braked, let the people pass, as finished the race last. When I went home my kids asked me how I did. I said I had fun and my wife said "you didn't do well, did you?" I smiled and walked away.

weird side effect

2007-05-15T12:04:00.001-07:00

With this piece of news finalizing the deal, I have now worked in the same physical office for 3 companies.

Here is the original deal:

SQLException

2007-05-03T15:37:00.000-07:00

Our test server got this Exception a zillion times when we did our performance test:

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted.)

Unfortunately Google as of today reveals very little information about this. To make a long story short this is created by one of the guys mistakenly adding the connection string with "Pooling=false;". This caused a humongous amount of connections, probably flooding the network and popping up the exception.

Race 1

2007-05-01T23:13:00.000-07:00

Finally this is the day. First race of my career - so to speak.

It was raining this morning. It was cold. I was not feeling the best. On the ride to UBC my heart rate was too high. You get the drift. I was nervous. I was talking to other club members and the advice is always: don't worry, try your best, dropping a lap is ok as long as you get the hang of the peloton.

Once the race starts all the other thoughts went out the door. I was concentrating on the wheel in front of me and a little bit more. The course is tough: it starts on a climb, a little bit of flat, downhill and up again for the loop. I tried not to use too much energy and try to recover enough to survive the climb. Most of the climbs were at a pace of 30+ km per hour. With a bit of tail wind and people in front of me it didn't feel that hard. In fact roughly 10 minutes in I was watching my heart rate and it was in an acceptable range: high 160s and I could recover down to 140s. My goal was to follow the pack and not get dropped and I am happy to say that I did that - almost all the way. During the last lap I lost sight of the pack when the person in front of me slowed down a bit and a gap opened up. As soon as I realized I tried to bridge up. It was not my forte and they were accelerating away. I pushed hard and could not join the pack again for the last lap.

There were two accidents. I actually did not see it happen - luckily no one was seriously hurt and the pack did not go down with it.

All in all I achieved what I set out to do for my first race. Now for more training and hopefully I can really hang in the pack for the finish next week.

Beating oneself up

2007-04-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

Mentally that is. I just realized that I have the tendency to beat myself one in my thoughts - over and over again.

Take for example a few weeks ago - just before Easter to be precise. I finally got the go ahead to be a member of a local cycling club. So the following step was to get my hands on my club clothing. Well, a couple of emails and a few weeks later it has still not happened. So thoughts started to form in my head: was I not assertive enough in stating my options? was I too assertive and people backed up? Am I not making my clear enough? It goes on and on in my head almost nonstop. Luckily I guess my pleading worked and I got the clothing on Sunday.

But same things happen on any event on any day. Was I training enough, was I training not enough? Am I trying hard enough? Did my boss understand my concerns? I don't know about other people, but I do have this capability to keep beating myself up constantly... sigh.

I once was blind and now I see

2007-04-10T12:47:00.000-07:00

At the end of spring break, we were driving back from Sun Peaks. We stopped for lunch and I mentioned to my wife, "look, cherry blossoms". She said "it's been blooming for well over a week".

That same night a friend sent me a email saying how happy she was about the cherry blossoms. I replied back saying I only saw it today.

So the following workday I made the effort to count how many cherry trees I can find along the way. Turns out:
- there are less than 5 along South-west Marine between 41st and 16th.
- probably a couple more between 16th and North-west Marine.
- there are roughly 10 along North-west marine, close to where the houses are.
- probably around 5 along 4th from NW Marine to Alma.
- around 5 along Burrard between the Bridge and Hastings.

So far so good. Can't say I missed much.

But there are A LOT of cherry trees along Cornwall. So many that I don't know how I missed it. Lame excuses includes:

- there are a lot of cracks and potholes
- i am concentrating on my speed and heart rate.
- I like to look at cars than flowers.
- my neck hurts, can't look up.

Anyways I justed realized what I was missing. :-(

zone 2

2007-03-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

I've been following this program for a few weeks. I was going to blog that it is too easy - until last Saturday.
It was the last day of week 4. Soccer has ended so I have extra time to ride longer. So instead of a 90 minute zone 2 I extended it to 2 hours.
Unfortunately I picked the wrong day of the weekend to ride long. It is raining rather heavily constantly with a good wind. I went around Iona Beach thinking it has no lights so it makes a good continuous ride. On the way there I saw planes landing in the direction opposite to me - meaning the wind is on my back. So trouble lies ahead. On my way back the wind picked up and it was hard to keep spinning and maintain a steady heartrate.

When I got home I was exhausted, soaked from top to bottom and my legs were sore. I have rain covers for my shoes and they were still completely soaked. 48 hours afterwards they still were.

So zone 2 is not easy. Not at all.

it is not easy

2007-03-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

My drive train was wearing out and I was looking at different ways of fixing it. I can always throw the bike at a local bike shop and pay them. But being the skeptical self I don't always trust whatever the bike shop recommends. Last summer I met a guy what works for the local outdoor equipment co-op. He builds his own bikes, has a workshop in his garage and sounds very knowledgeable. So I asked him last week if he can change the drive train for me. He said it is simple and would not take more than an hour. So I picked up the parts at his shop, cleaned my bike (now that's a BIG job by itself) and took my bike over at his place.

Once I'm at his place I realized my riding philosophy is very different from his: I ride rain or shine and he would not ride in the rain because it damages his bike too much. Partially because of the amount of gunk and partially because of my worn out stuff it took a while just to change the chain. We got the chain ring wrong and we determined that we can try keeping the rear cassette.

In hindsight it is one of those jobs that a normal cyclist would not do and it is hard for anybody who does not do this for a living to do it consistently once every few years. Add to it nuances with new technology (e.g. you should not fit a 10 speed chain on a 9 speed drive train) makes this thing a non-trivial matter - never mind what anybody tell you how easy it should be.

The next morning I was cautiously riding to bike to work. I was crossing Burrard bridge when I heard a few clicks and a big snap. Turns out my rear dérailleur snapped out from the frame. I took the bike to the shop and the guy said I have to replace the dérailleur too. So a few hundred bucks later I have a new drivetrain.

almost frozen

2007-02-27T14:06:00.000-08:00

I went out on a training ride last Saturday morning. The weather report was rather normal: 3 degrees Celsius, light rain. So the plan was to follow the program and ride for about 90 minutes. About 10 minutes in I realized it was not only raining: it was wet snow. My gloves and shoes starting and get soaked and soon I was feeling the coldness through my extremities. Soon after I finished my main drill I turned back home. Luckily I was about 20 minutes from home. By the time I got home, I cannot manipulate my fingers to take off my cycling gear! Took me a good few minutes to take off all the wet stuff using my stiff fingers without flexing.

one thing lead to another to a third

2007-01-30T18:05:00.000-08:00

About 10 years I was assigned to go on my first business trip in Canada. It was to install, customize and train our new client in Aurora Ontario (yes - the what's-her-name MP was the CEO then).

So the first morning me and my partner were having breakfast and we were reading the paper. This was the first time I read the Globe and Mail and I spent the most time on the obituaries section. I never read these columns but somehow the Globe got my attention. From then on whenever I get to flip open the Globe I read that section first.

With all the talks about making JP2 a saint here is a guy that is probably more deserved to be one. Not only is he action oriented, talks against injustice, he is also very honest about himself and his mistakes - something not even the beloved JP2 was able to do...

Too bad the article is pay only - here is another one about this priest that is free.

Hong Kong - part 5.1 - Macau part 1

2007-01-02T09:22:00.000-08:00

I have visited Macau a number of times when I was younger and have not visited that place for a while. So when we got there last December I was stunned when the immigration officer asked me whether I have been to Macau. I would guess their immigration system was implemented after my last visit and therefore have no record of me. Two interesting thoughts come to mind:

1. I must be a loser since Macau is such a bustling place right now there is no other reason for me not to visit.
2. Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China. Macau is also a Special Administrative Region of China. Why do we still have "border" controls? The same is for ShenZheng. I don't get it...

Hong Kong - part 4 - cycling

2007-01-02T09:18:00.000-08:00

One of the fun things I have done this trip is cycling with a few friends from school. These guys started out swimming competitively in school days and picked up triathlon as a sport a few years back. I was never good at swimming so triathlon was not my thing.

Here is a picture we took on a ride near the border of Hong Kong.

My friends' bikes are all very high quality. I didn't bring a bike and borrowed my friend's nice spare Bianchi with Ultegra components. (My "good" bike is 105) The other guy's pair of wheels are more expensive than my 2 bikes added together.

The routes in Hong Kong are a bit limited in choices and we have to start early. I have to wake up before 5am, hop on my friend's car at 5;15am to arrive at the starting location by 6am. The routes are a few laps of 10-20km so you have to do a few rounds to have a 2 hour ride.

One thing I learned from my friends is their dedication and the possibility of riding in the early morning. It is challenging for me to wake up but once you do the ride is very enjoyable. This is especially true during the Vancouver Winter when sunset is before I leave the office.

Hong Kong - part 3

2007-01-02T09:16:00.001-08:00

Here is a small snippet of sights and sounds during the few days when the internet come to a halt due to the earthquake in Taiwan:

My family were having a bite at a small eatery and I overheard a conversation about the outage and ways to get around it like: oh I can go to yahoo.com.hk but can't do a search so I use this website and they were able to get me some results...

On the TV and in the paper people are talking about using proxy servers to route out of Asia. Of course the proxy servers pretty much shut down because this increased traffic.

My cousin was visiting Hong Kong from Japan and we were supposed to hook up to go to Ocean Park together. I was suppose to send him a email to confirm date and time. He was supposed to read his email from his blackberry and give me a confirmation. Well the email was sent out (thanks to the basic version of gmail) but he never got notified because of the routing problems.

During those few days I have to constantly no think internet, no google, limited email capability and survive without these tools. Kind of like brushing your teeth with your other hand.

Hong Kong part 2 - conveyor belts

2007-01-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

I was standing and the luggage claim area in the Hong Kong International Airport, and being the optimized person that I am, I want to grab my bags as soon as they show up. So I was standing right where the bags are being dropped into the circular conveyor belt area.

After staring at the mechanism for a few minutes I noticed one thing, that the linear conveyor belt that drops the bags into the circular belt sometimes stops. There seems to be some sort of traffic monitoring going on. It seems to be looking for existence of baggage in the main belt and waits for a slot to drop it in if there are bags in the vicinity.

When I arrive in Vancouver, I noticed there is a similar system. Unfortunately there is also a guy working on the belt to smooth out the luggages. So obviously the system does not work as well.

Hong Kong - part 1

2006-12-26T05:18:00.000-08:00

I was in Hong Kong for a few weeks attending a family wedding and visiting friends and family. Upon arrival I saw something like a ticketing booth in the immigration area:

So I stuck my smart-card Hong Kong ID card in and viola, in-and-out of immigration area in less than 10 seconds... cool!

Here is more info on the system.

My boss told me after the trip that this is similar to the NEXUS program. One difference is that every resident of Hong Kong has or will have this ID card and the system is to designed to process a high number of travellers at a very short time.

bullet

2006-10-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

I have been pondering on a new bike for a while. The ability to use a commuter bike for normal riding and a nicer bike for longer and faster rides has attracted my attention for roughly two years.

So finally I pulled the trigger and got myself a second hand Cannondale. There is a couple of things I need to install before a real ride so more to come.

The interesting thing about this ordeal is the emotional aspect of it. I have been debating back and forth with myself with a little help with some friends. The moment I close the deal I felt dreadful, as if I have made the biggest mistake in the world. My wife was mildly supportive (that fact she did not veto is a good sign). My kids were a bit excited and wanted to go out with me on the new bike. Now I feel OK but there is no urgency to ride it - possibly saving it for next year.

Anyways I will put the stuff on and give it a spin when I have a weekend opening.

Chinese Fields Medal winner!

2006-08-23T00:21:00.000-07:00

I was planning to write up on Yau Shing Tung and this news popped right out. Congrats to this fine young genius!

new shifters = new bike?

2006-08-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

I have a touring bike with road shifters. My front Tiagra shifter is starting to skip at particular areas and the mechanic advices me to look for a new one. After a bunch of googles ended up getting a good idea on a pair of 105 shifters. I just got them installed yesterday.

With new shifters and new handlebar wrap, it justs feels like a new bike. It seems very smooth. So happens they put the same colour as the original wraps so it actually brought me back to the point in time when the bike is new and I was so happy!

So do yourself a favour, spend a little money on handlebar wrap and you can make a 5 -year old bike brand new again.

let me be the first to say this on the internet

2006-08-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

Last night we invited 2 out-of-town Jesuits home for a get-together. One of them, an alumnus of La Salle College and also attended my alma mater, said that the reason my school has a serious rivalry with Wah Yan College Hong Kong goes as far as the found of Wah Yan. It is documented that he was a teacher at St Joseph's before he started, but apparently he "invited" a few colleagues to come with him. So according to my friend the Jesuit this is the start of a rivalry.

what do I want to do - part 2

2006-08-15T19:39:00.000-07:00

This is one that is way out in left field: being a quant (aka rocket scientist), aka financial analyst in a heavy weight math setting. Most found in investment houses calculation financial option prices.

Why? Because it seemed fun. I was working in Tokyo for a US bank when I realize there is such an occupation for math grads.

It would be fun putting my interest and skills in math and programming together. The closest I've got since was to write a bunch of bond price-to-yield calculations which involve solving a bunch of degree N polynomials. It is really high school math then it is "advanced" math.

The saving grace these days is me having the ability to talk intelligently about financial instruments in general how it is modelled in the application.

The other side effect is to be able to argue with accountants and implementation folks about what kind of accounting entries need to be created for the financial instruments we model. Yea, amortization and interest accrual, debt expenses and stuff are *really* sophiscated math. :-)

What do I want to do when I grow up? Part 1

2006-08-09T11:45:00.000-07:00

I guess when one turns 40, one starts their mid life crisis. So I am starting to ponder the things that I wanted to do but never did and see if there is any chance of happening in the future.

So let's start with something old: the thought of becoming a teacher. A high school Math teacher to be precise. I did that for two years not long after graduating. It was challenging for a young guy who is not patient and does not possess the wisdom (read conviction) to stick to his ways and do the right thing for the students. Somewhere in the back of my head this is a broken dream and one day I want to try it again...

Also back in my education training and undergrad days there was a thought: the use of history in aiding the instruction of math. The argument I have is that topics should be introduced in the order of their discovery in history. For example, the concept of limit was introduced after integration and differentiation. So therefore when teaching students you really need to talk about differentiation and integration before you can introduce limits in any reasonable manner. But yet if you read Calculus textbooks 99% of them would define limit ahead.

this is funny

2006-02-02T16:08:00.000-08:00

Riding in the rain and cold

2005-12-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

Just read and commented on a post from the fat cyclist. One thing lead to another so here are some more thoughts.

The question comes up now and again: why do you ride in the rain? Why do you ride when it is so cold? The simple answer: because I can and I want to.

When I started commuting by bicycle 8 years ago, I only do it 2-3 times a week when it is not raining. I don't have the appropriate rain gear nor was I prepared to deal with cars and splashes and other problems. This went on for about 2 years. Then a new colleague who also commutes showed me what gear to get and soon I ride more and more. Now it is just natural to wake up, check the weather report and outside conditions, put on the right gear and go.

Riding in the cold is actually not hard. The body just naturally generates heat to keep you warm. The next issue to deal with is keeping your fingers, toes and ears warm.

Ice remains my biggest enemy. I generally stop riding for about 10-15 days during dead winter to avoid hitting ice. A few years back I spilled a few times. That's why I haven't conquered it. I still see commuters on the road and sometimes wonder how they can do it. Then again I watch racers go and also wonder how they can do it.

riding in Seattle

2005-09-13T13:35:00.000-07:00

Finally got a chance to brag about this. I went to the Devscovery in Redmond. The conference was great and insightful. The best part of the trip was riding around Redmond with Eric G! We even skipped a trip to the Microsoft employee store in order to ride!

new use of computer fan

2005-07-11T19:29:00.000-07:00

Well it's July 11th and it is still raining in Vancouver. When I leave home this morning there was no rain. Well a few peddles on the bike and voila, pouring rain. I took a chance and didn't put on my shoe covers and by the time my ride is over, my socks are shoes are totally soaked. I put my shoes to a strategic spot behind the computer and after an hour or 2, my shoes are totally dry. All thanks to Intel making a cpu that needs multiple fans to cool down. I finally found a way to reuse the heat generated! :-)

Visual Studio 2005 beta 2

2005-05-27T16:15:00.000-07:00

I was asked to do a prototype of a new UI based on new features from VS 2005. I started with the thinking that it should be relatively simple to upgrade stuff from .Net framework 1.1 up. We actually had a good experience with VS 2002 beta 2. Boy was I wrong this time. Things I encountered include:

- the new partial classes with aspx pages blows up the previous implementations of inherited code behind. See this blog entry.
- custom controls not showing up. Haven't even logged this yet.
- using master pages changes how controls are hooked up under the Page object. I always thought the FindControl method goes iterative into the hierarchy, but I guess I was wrong.
- XML serialization problems with datasets. A patch is needed for framework 1.1 but not available yet.

So my advice to the reader is that check early and don't assume anything.

Mark's blog

2005-04-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

Comment from this blog:

"Nor did anyone blog the conversations that took place among the thousands of attendees as they interacted during sessions, labs, meals, etc."

I agree the interactions are useful if you are there, but even attending doesn't guarantee you are to be at the right place to participate or listen in to these conversations. I feeling I got after going to PDC 2001 and 2003 is that it is like drinking water from a firehose. There must be a better way for these interactions to happen.

PDC was good for me in 2001 and 2003, but that doesn't mean I will be going to the one this year.

PDC 2005

2005-03-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

track back from Robert Scoble's blog:

Having attended PDC's 2001 and 2003 I can't really find any good reason to justify going. Whidbey? Read quite a bit and I am waiting for beta 2. Unless there are late additions like Indigo into Whidbey I don't think I'm going.

scalability

2005-03-09T09:51:00.000-08:00

Comment from Larry Osterman's weblog:

"you can't speed up hard disk copies by throwing more threads or overlapped I/O at the problem, because file copy speed is ultimately limited by the physical speed of the underlying media - and with only one spindle, it can only read or write to the drive one operation at a time."

I thought with RAID, byte striping, SAN and the like you can't really assume what your underlying physical reality is anymore. I once heard this from a technical staff of a high-end RAID provider: "that anything you can throw into the SCSI bus, their RAID box will be able to write". Not really sure if it were true but their disks are really fast.

Compression on IIS 6

2004-08-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

Since this blog is closed for comments I have to add mine here:
http://weblogs.asp.net/owscott/archive/2004/01/12/57916.aspx

I was looking for ways to compress javascripts and google just keep return to the tool that does the metabase editing. Turns out the MSDN library has the description for the metabase entries. The HTML equivalent of what I've read is here:
www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/ iis/6/all/proddocs/en-us/ref_mb_hcfileextensions.mspx

IIS has htm, html and txt turned on for static compression so I've added js and css.

One more thing, turning it on does wonders. I am doing performance testing a test cycle without compression involves around 7000 packets. Turn it on make it drop to about 3500.

VB or C#

2004-06-09T18:58:00.000-07:00

A colleague raised this question again. My answer now is that I am bilingual and doesn't really prefer one over the other from a language point of view. However, the VB IDE is more feature rich than C#. e.g. background compilation and warnings, shift f2 (goto definition) works. That's why I prefer VB over C# now. I expect when Whidbey comes out the field is even more level than it is now. Comments?

IDE features (or the lack of)

2004-05-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

One of the pains of using Visual Studio 2003 is the lack of multi-monitor support. If you feel the same way go here and give some feedback:
http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2004/05/18/134295.aspx?Pending=true
Recently I have been reading code from multiple files and was trying to refactor them. One of my monitors is 21" and the other is 17". So expanding the IDE window to both monitors would not work. It would be really nice to drag a code window onto the second monitor and now you can cut and paste whatever you want. Note that I said CUT and not COPY. I am not a fan of COPYing code!

hello world

2004-05-14T16:13:00.000-07:00

I wonder if anybody will read this... if you do please send me a email at mhywan2@yahoo.ca