
It took her three decades, but Marga has finally reached the birthday where her age is the same as the day of the month. That's right! Today Marga turns 30. To celebrate her arrival to adulthood, I've broken the first commandment of male-to-female gift giving and bought her a...toaster. Ever since we moved to Spain, she's been missing toast, and she specifically asked me for one for her birthday.

After she went to bed, I installed the toaster in the kitchen and left a loaf of bread, wrapped in gift wrap in the hallway so she would find it before entering the kitchen.

As you might expect, the wisdom passed down from father to son for generations was wiser than I. She said she likes the toaster, but it was kind of a let-down for a birthday present, especially on a birthday that's divisible by the arbitrary base of our number system. Luckily, I had another present, a sweat-suit sort of thing that she can use for the gym. It was one size too small, unfortunately, but she _does_ like it. Whew...

We're leaving Colindres for the remainder of 2006 and heading to Mondragon to welcome in 2007. This will be the last blog post this year.

I leave you with a few pictures from last year's celebrations. The Spanish eat grapes at midnight on New Year's Eve. You have to eat one grape with every chime of the clock televised from Madrid.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-30-thirty-decembers/538776462_beae98a169_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG1135">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-30-thirty-decembers/538776462_4c740804be.jpg" alt="CIMG1135"/>
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  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-30-thirty-decembers/538779534_2bcf7c7a41.jpg" alt="CIMG1137"/>
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  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-30-thirty-decembers/538782344_58624e1e70.jpg" alt="CIMG1142"/>
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There's also some superstition involving lentils.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-30-thirty-decembers/538808110_b2a3fa1b3e_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG1145">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-30-thirty-decembers/538808110_0ce1a7d18b.jpg" alt="CIMG1145"/>
</a>

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  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-30-thirty-decembers/538930243_5ddce91b90.jpg" alt="CIMG1159"/>
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Thirty Decembers


To stick with our recent blog topics of [chess](/2006/12/26/chess-nuts-roasting/) and [tasty livestock](/2006/12/28/the-best-christmas-gift/), I thought I'd post a few pictures to Flickr. <a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-29-topical-flickr-post/337178741_cfcb90d2d5_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Spanish Country Life">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-29-topical-flickr-post/337178741_cfcb90d2d5.jpg" alt="Spanish Country Life"/>
</a>

**Spanish Country Life** - My fiancé's uncle, íngel, on his farm in Extremadura, Spain in August 2003.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-29-topical-flickr-post/337179900_6c5acb8d3a_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Sacrificial Lamb">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-29-topical-flickr-post/337179900_6c5acb8d3a.jpg" alt="Sacrificial Lamb"/>
</a>

**Sacrificial Lamb** - Betsy slaughters a poor innocent lamb cake in January 2005.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-29-topical-flickr-post/337181689_f2fd23c5d6_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="How To Beat Your Dad At Chess">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-29-topical-flickr-post/337181689_f2fd23c5d6.jpg" alt="How To Beat Your Dad At Chess"/>
</a>

**How To Beat Your Dad At Chess** - A friendly game of chess against my father and his two canine helpers in May, 2004.

See? This is the kind of chess match I'm used to playing. A couple of beers, some quadrupeds scampering around, rooks with doggy toothmarks, a confused old man... No clocks, no hurry. Not like [the other day](/2006/12/26/chess-nuts-roasting/).

How cool is his shirt from [Rasmussen University](http://www.rasmussen.edu/)?


Topical Flickr Post


Yesterday I received a goat in the mail. I came home, and there he was, nestled in the mailbox, calmly chewing on a bank statement. For more years than I can remember, my maternal grandparents have given me a goat for Christmas. I don't actually receive the goat, of course. The goat is given, in my name, to a family in the third world. A goat can be a huge source of food and income to a third world family. It's better than money, because it's **sustainable**!

When this tradition began, I was still a youngster in a capitalist society, and it annoyed me quite a bit that my present on Christmas should be a piece of paper saying that some people that I don't know got some animal that I'd never seen. I mean, what kind of a present is that?

The answer is that it's the best kind of present you can get. As a kid, there were toys and stuff that I wanted, but nothing that I really truly _needed_. And now that I'm an adult, I can buy whatever I really want. And I'm a particularly hard person to buy presents for because, if I want something, I just buy it. I don't wait around pining for it.

Think about it. Gifts from family members very rarely hit their mark. Oftentimes the gift just isn't used or isn't liked that much. And why should I ask my grandfather to waste his money on something that I probably won't use or didn't want enough to buy myself?

Granted, by giving a goat instead of a pair of socks, you won't have the object to remind you of the gift from your loved one. But come on! Do you really need an object to remember and love someone? I hope not.

I don't know if my grandparents have always done it through the same organization, but this year's goat came through [Heifer International](http://www.heifer.org/). You can buy your livestock online at their website. A [goat](http://www.heifer.org/site/apps/ka/ec/product.asp?c=edJRKQNiFiG&b=477887&ProductID=164806) will set you back $120, a [water buffalo](http://www.heifer.org/site/apps/ka/ec/product.asp?c=edJRKQNiFiG&b=477887&ProductID=164580) $250, and a [heifer](http://www.heifer.org/site/apps/ka/ec/product.asp?c=edJRKQNiFiG&b=477887&ProductID=164545) $500. Or if you're looking for a smaller gift, a [trio of rabbits](http://www.heifer.org/site/apps/ka/ec/product.asp?c=edJRKQNiFiG&b=477887&ProductID=164815) (you _know_ how they reproduce!) is only $60.

Not only are animals a renewable and sustainable source of income and nutrition, but every family that receives an animal from Heifer International also promises to "pass on the gift" by giving one or more of the animal's offspring and knowledge to another family in need. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving!

From Heifer International's [Our History](http://www.heifer.org/site/pp.asp?c=edJRKQNiFiG&b=201520) page:

> A Four-Footed Attack Against Hunger
> 
> A Midwestern farmer named Dan West was ladling out rations of milk to hungry children during the Spanish Civil War when it hit him.
> 
> **"These children don't need a cup, they need a cow."**

Next time you're struggling to think of a gift to give someone, and that person isn't too materialistic, consider giving an animal to a third world country.

Now have a look at these cuties...

[![Goat Face](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-28-the-best-christmas-gift/185901317_fbcf7757bd.jpg)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaki/185901317/)

[![Baby Goat](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/6/9607023_3bb1117e4f.jpg?v=0)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/andiandgeorgeknapp/9607023/)


The Best Christmas Gift


Last Friday we left for Mondragon. I had to get up early (by Spanish standards) to play in the chess tournament at 9:00 am on Saturday morning. I went to bed early, reading a book that my father gave me last Christmas, called [How To Beat Your Dad At Chess](http://www.amazon.com/How-Beat-Your-Chess-Gambit/dp/1901983056/sr=8-1/qid=1167140201/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-5227592-7605651?ie=UTF8&s=books). I got up at 8:00, showered, and had breakfast. It's a 20 minute walk to the Extremadura Cultural Center, where the chess tournament was. Due to one of the clocks in Marga's folks' kitchen being 10 minutes slow, I ended up leaving the house at 8:45, half-jogging, half-walking as quickly as I could towards the Center. I got there at 9:01. It was closed.

A minute later, a woman showed up and opened the door and began cleaning. I asked here if the chess tournament wasn't suppposed to start at 9:00. She had no idea. She thought that the local team was going to come at 9:30 to set up the tables. After a few phone calls, her story turned out to be the correct one. So I sat and read a paper for a half hour. Finally the main tournament organizer (the guy that I met before) showed up with a few other guys, and we carried some boxes with chess boards, pieces, and clocks up to the main room of the Center and proceeded to set up tables and boards and pieces. By 10:00, more chess teams began showing up from the surrounding area, some from as far as an hour away.

There were ten teams of four players each. One of the teams had only three players, so I was assigned to that team. While things were getting organized, the main guy suggested that I play some practice games with another guy from the Mondragon team. In the four quick games I played with him, I went from looking like a complete idiot to actually holding my own for a couple minutes in the last game, before my clock ran out. Those practice matches helped me immensely.

The first part of the tournament was a round robin between all teams. I was the fourth seed (the fourth best player) on my team, so I played the fourth seeds of all the other nine teams. We played 10-minute games (five minutes for each player). I have no experience with playing timed chess games. A few times I completely forgot to hit the clock, allowing my opponent to move during my time. Some of these guys could make a dozen moves and still have 4:47 remaining on the clock. Needless to say, it was _very_ stressful.

I lost two or three games in less than 10 moves to variations of what I know as "fools mate", which Wikipedia has just informed me is really called "[scholars mate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholar%27s_mate)" ("fool's mate" is something else). Basically, it all comes down to a knight and bishop and queen attacking your king's bishop's pawn. If you aren't well-practiced in defending against such attacks, you can lose a chess game _really_ fast! Surprisingly, of the nine matches I played in the first part of the tournament, I actually _won two_! My pride and I were very pleasantly surprised.

I lost quite a few of my games due to making illegal moves, moving a piece the wrong way by accident, or moving a pinned piece, or not noticing that I was in check and moving a piece that didn't alleviate my check. You see, no one says "check" when they put you in check. Either you notice and you do something about it, or you don't, and you forfeit the game. On the one hand, I can see that, in a 10-minute game, there's not much time for telling the other guy that he's made an illegal move and making him do it again. But, on the other hand, it seems pretty stupid that you can lose a game by not noticing a check, and making a move that any computer program wouldn't let you make. I even politely corrected one of the guys that I eventually beat when he made a bad move, and my teammate explained to me, after the game, that I didn't have to do that; I could have just said, "game over, you lose". It's pretty cutthroat out there!

After the first round robin, the top five teams were broken into one group, and the bottom five into another, and we played another round robin against the four other teams in our group. My team just barely made the top five grouping, and we ended up placing fourth, despite losing all our fourth seed (my) matches in the second part of the tournament.

When we finished, there was a lunch prepared for us. Before lunch was ready, I went and had a couple wines with Marga's father, uncles, and grandfather at the bar. They are usually there right before lunch on weekends. The meal was pretty mediocre, but I enjoyed the company. The guy to my right was a computer programmer and the guy to my left had spent a year in Leeds, England. My Spanish vocabulary excels at conversations about how strange the British are compared to the Spanish.

I was introduced to the team from Cantabria, and they told me that, if I was interested, there is a chess club that plays in Laredo, the town neighboring mine, on Saturdays. I'm kind of torn about the issue. On the one hand, we don't really have many friends around where we live, and it could be a good activity to make some friends. On the other hand, chess nuts are _weird_! The majority are unattractive and socially awkward nerds. Plus, I'm not really sure that I'm that interested in spending time studying a board game. I'll have to think about it.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-26-chess-nuts-roasting/536747815_b4fe6fe9e8_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG2929.JPG">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-26-chess-nuts-roasting/536747815_1780c40bf1.jpg" alt="CIMG2929.JPG"/>
</a>

Me and the one-eyed bunny studied my book before the tournament.

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  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-26-chess-nuts-roasting/536748681_7b523f921f.jpg" alt="CIMG2930.JPG"/>
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The clocks for most of my matches were digital, but some of them were the noisy tick-tick-tick kind that must really grate your nerves.

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  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-26-chess-nuts-roasting/536750121_f2103e6570.jpg" alt="CIMG2931.JPG"/>
</a>

This format was very good, because everyone was playing all the time. I took this during a break between matches.

Our Christmas celebrations were pretty tranquil this year, compared to other years. All the aunts and uncles were with the other side of their family, so it was just Marga's folks, sister, and grandfather that we celebrated with. We had a huge meal on Christmas Eve (Noche Buena) and again on Christmas. We didn't do any of the crazy singing on Christmas Eve that we've done in past years. Here's a video from last year.

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Chess Nuts Roasting


May I be the first to wish you a Happy [Winter Solstice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice)! Finally, some hope of respite from the darkness we were thrust into in October with the end of our arbitrarily-imposed daylight savings time. However, it's not the amount of daylight, as affected by our latitude and location in orbit around the sun, that I want to talk about. It's the actual length of the day, the amount of time it takes for the Earth to make one rotation.

I recently found this awesome article, called [Tides, the Earth, the Moon, and why our days are getting longer](http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/tides.html), which explains what it says it does:

> This missive explains the following:
> 
> 1. Why the Moon always shows the same face to the Earth.
> 2. Why the Moon's rotation period is the same as the length of time it takes to orbit the Earth (same as number 1, but phrased differently).
> 3. Why there are two tides a day.
> 4. Why the Earth's rotation rate is slowing.

Before reading the article I had forgotten why there are two tide cycles per day, and why there is a high tide on the side _opposite_ the moon as well. That's pretty fascinating in itself. I was also aware that the official time keepers were having to add [leap seconds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second) to our atomic clocks, but I didn't understand why. This article clearly explains why, just as we see the same face of the Moon at all times, eventually the Earth's rotation will slow down until the Moon sees the same face of Earth at all times, and it will take a lunar month (27.3 current earth-days) for our beloved planet to make one rotation, effectively making the Moon's orbit [geosynchronous](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit).

So how long will this slowing process take? That's what I want to know. I made a very simplified, and obviously wrong, calculation based on the fact that the length of the day is currently increasing at a rate of 0.7 seconds per year. If this rate of angular deceleration continues, it will take...

> (27.3 - 1) \* 24 \* 60 \* 60 / 0.7 = 3,246,171.4 years

...for the Earth's rotation to slow down to that of a lunar month. Three million years is hardly a blip on geological time scales, so this is clearly wrong. Obviously, as the article mentions, the rate of deceleration will decrease as it approaches the "lunar earth day" asymptote. Still, I wonder how long it will actually take...

I've emailed Philip Plait, the guy that runs that [Bad Astronomy](http://www.badastronomy.com/) website, to ask if he knows the actual value, or how to calculate it.

Anyway, it's fun to think about. Can you imagine it being dark for 14 days and then light for 14 days?

May your solstice festivities be merry!


Days Getting Longer


![Stumbling on Happiness](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-22-the-secret-to-happiness/51CRTFEKP9L._SL160_.jpg)I've understood for a few years now that I am the one in control of my happiness, and that greed and wanting more than you can realistically get is a sure way to avoid happiness.  The thing that I adored most about my college psychology classes (I got a psych minor!) was hearing about experiments that gave counterintuitive, unexpected results, like the famous [Milgram experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment), which, in attempting to explain how the Holocaust could have happened, showed that ordinary people are capable of being incredibly cruel to others if they are ordered to do so by an authority figure. Another example that I recall is the [Stanford prison experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment), where ordinary college student subjects were randomly chosen to be prisoners and guards in an experiment. Within a few days, both groups started showing the exact emotions and abusive behaviors that are seen in real prisons.

Anyway, if you care at all about being happy and want to know how to be happy, you **MUST** watch this video! It's 20 minutes long, but it could change your life.

Dan Gilbert, the speaker, is great lecturer. I would love to go to some of his psych classes. Unfortunately, I'm not a student at Harvard. He's written a book called [Stumbling on Happiness](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400042666?ie=UTF8&tag=eriksblog07-20&amp;amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;amp;creative=390957&amp;amp;amp;creativeASIN=1400042666), in case your interested further.

By the way, he mentions Ze Frank because [Ze also gave a talk](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1895918195820925057) at the TED conference. Worth watching for Ze fans and non-Ze fans alike.


The Secret To Happiness


I took some pictures when I walked around town doing some Christmas shopping today. Over the past few weeks, I've smiled every time I passed this hair salon that is on a common grocery route.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-22-winter-hairspray-wonderland/536739839_4f4e36fa9f_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG2924.JPG">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-22-winter-hairspray-wonderland/536739839_de16ac7466.jpg" alt="CIMG2924.JPG"/>
</a>

Little wood nymphs have taken over this log in the forest and are celebrating the winter season.

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  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-22-winter-hairspray-wonderland/536626678_50d769598e.jpg" alt="CIMG2925.JPG"/>
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They don't seem to notice the huge hairspray bottles in the snow, or maybe they are part of the winter nymph ceremonies.

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  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-22-winter-hairspray-wonderland/536742667_2dc0d6a2df.jpg" alt="CIMG2926.JPG"/>
</a>

This perfect Christmas tree is on a rarely traveled corner of town. It's a shame. With some lights and a star, it could look really nice!

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-22-winter-hairspray-wonderland/536629894_8396ac97c8_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG2927.JPG">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-22-winter-hairspray-wonderland/536629894_d00e6639a8.jpg" alt="CIMG2927.JPG"/>
</a>

I like the juxtaposition of this antique radio (it's probably really an MP3 player or something) next to all the new high tech gadgetry in the hardware store window. This hardware store is on the ground floor of my building.

We're going to Mondragon this evening, so that I can be up early tomorrow morning for my [chess tournament](/2006/12/20/ajedrez-tournament/), and we'll be returning on [Boxing Day](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_Day) morning.

I hope to take some pictures of the holiday light decorations around Colindres next week. Remember that, here in Catholand, Christmas lasts until [baby Jesus gets his Myrrh](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(Christian)).

May your holidays be joyful.


Winter Hairspray Wonderland


In the [Tate Modern](http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/) art museum in London, they have these huge sculptures (?) that are slides like you'd find on any playground. Anyway, my buddy, Hubbers, went there and recorded a video of himself going down one of the slides.

revver(123650)

Hubbers' pictures of the slides are [here](http://www.hubbers.com/photos/Tate%20Modern%20Slides/), and you can see [pictures by other people here](http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=tate+modern+slides&m=text).

I guess "modern art" really can be anything.


Modern Art Meets The Playground


I'm not sure how it happened, but I'm going to be playing in a chess tournament this Saturday. One of the members of Marga's parents' social club, the Extremadura Cultural Center, is organizing a chess tournament on December 23. When they were looking for participants, my name somehow came up, and the last time I was there, I was introduced to the organizer and offered a place in the tournament. I have no idea if it's some kind of team competition against another social club or if it's just intraclub, or what. We'll see...

I also have no idea about the level of competition. I can beat most beginners, but I don't stand a chance against anyone that plays regularly in tournaments. The guy did ask me if I was familiar with playing with a clock and if I was ranked in the States, so I might lose pretty fast.

The word for "chess" in Spanish is "ajedrez" (ah-hey-dreth), which is pretty clear evidence of its Arab origin to Europe. Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that "checkmate" is "[jaque mate](http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaque_mate)" (ha-kay ma-tay), which comes from an Arabic phrase, which came from a Persian phrase meaning "The king is dead".

I've been practicing against my computer. The chess game that comes bundled with Mac OS X (we Mac folk are too intellectual for solitaire) has changed since I last played it. When OS X first came out, I couldn't even come close to beating the chess game at the easiest setting. No chance whatsoever. But now, it makes all kinds of mate-inviting errors on the easiest level, and I can even beat it about half the time at the hardest level! They have definitely made the game a lot more fun for a player of my caliber. I guess they figure that someone better than me that wants to be challenged, or just can't stand the 3D-only view, will actually know enough to go download [GNU Chess](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Chess).

Who knows? I might win it all, or I might lose in the first round. At the very least, it will be an exciting new experience. That's good enough for me.


Ajedrez Tournament


<img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-20-colindres-panorama/538864573_9e8f7ec806_t.jpg" alt="CIMG1530.JPG" class="post-thumb"/>I stumbled upon this picture of my town on Flickr today.  [![Colindres panorama](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-20-colindres-panorama/221810445_ae65af2aa4.jpg)](http://flickr.com/photos/grumpywolf/221810445/)

**Colindres Panorama** - A panorama of Colindres and the surrounding area.

I especially like this picture because my house is so clearly visible. Take a look at [the 5612x1743 version](http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=221810445&size=o).

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-20-colindres-panorama/538741524_e8b7438428_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="zoomin">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-20-colindres-panorama/538741524_e8b7438428_o.jpg" alt="zoomin"/>
</a>

This is our house zoomed in on [the 5612x1743 version](http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=221810445&size=o).

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-20-colindres-panorama/538864573_9bfc065105_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG1530.JPG">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-20-colindres-panorama/538864573_9e8f7ec806.jpg" alt="CIMG1530.JPG"/>
</a>

Our house from street level.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-20-colindres-panorama/538741528_37e102e8b0_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="house-outline">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-20-colindres-panorama/538741528_37e102e8b0_o.jpg" alt="house-outline"/>
</a>

A strict outline of the windows that belong to our apartment. Go back up to the big picture and see if you can pick it out.

Notice that this picture is [geotagged](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoTagging). You can click the link on [this page](http://flickr.com/photos/grumpywolf/221810445/) to see the exact spot that it was taken from on a map.

Another feature to notice is that, at the far left of the panorama, you can see, almost edge-on, the bridge that appears at the bottom left of my blog header. Since my blog header picture is looking almost due north, this panorama is looking a little bit north of due west.


Colindres Panorama


In honor of my [driving exam success yesterday](/2006/12/18/i-remembered-how-to-drive/) in Santoña, I've decided to post some pictures of Santoña. <a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-19-road-to-santona/327118501_bb12f30895_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Road to Santoña">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-19-road-to-santona/327118501_bb12f30895.jpg" alt="Road to Santoña"/>
</a>

**Road to Santoña** - Looking back towards Laredo and Colindres from the road going to Santoña. Taken in August, 2006.

A good portion of my driving test was on this road. When the tide is high, it feels like you're driving on the surface of the water, because the road goes right through the middle of the sound.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-19-road-to-santona/327121685_b5053c0833_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Buena Vista">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-19-road-to-santona/327121685_b5053c0833.jpg" alt="Buena Vista"/>
</a>

**Buena Vista** - Paul and Betsy sit down to enjoy the view of Berria Beach and the Cantabrian Sea in Santoña, Spain in August, 2006.


Road to Santoña


Today was my in-car driving test. I got to the driving school at 11:00am, as planned. The instructor and three students were there waiting for me. I got into the back with the two young ones that I met during my last class, and an older (mid-forties) woman took the wheel to finish the last fifteen minutes of her lesson. She drove us to Laredo, where she parked and I took the wheel. I didn't learn much from my lesson, but it was good to practice in the car right before the exam. The instructor spent most of the lesson explaining the things that I was doing correctly to the three never-before-licensed students in the back.

Finally, at noon, we got to the place in Laredo where both of Laredo's driving schools are, and we waited around nervously for the examiner to arrive. There were a half dozen groups of four students, and the instructors talked amongst themselves. I think I was the only one not smoking. Our driving instructor suggested an order for us to go in, and we followed it. The mid-forties woman went first. She was shaking as she got in the car. The rest of us followed her in another car, driven by another instructor. From our vantage point it didn't look like she did much wrong, but about four minutes into the exam, she pulled over and got out, shaking all over and half crying. She'd failed.

The young girl was up next. Meanwhile, the rest of us had to try to stay calm while the first woman sobbed and told us all the other things that were wrong with her life as well. We then went to Santoña, the examiner's home town. Santoña is about 15 minutes away, and I thought the current examinee was pretty lucky to get a bunch of maintain-just-below-the-speed-limit driving during her exam. Upon arrival in Santoña, she parked, and it was time for the next person to go. The other kid said he was feeling nervous and asked if I'd go. I was happy to get on with it.

The examiner was very nice, and politely explained what he wanted me to do. The whole time, he was talking with the instructor. It was quite soothing, really. They talked in calm tones about how much more money driving instructors can make in the south of Spain, and other business-related topics. Before the exam, I was concerned that there would be complete silence in the car, with the examiner watching my every move, and the instructor nervously hoping that I didn't screw up. It wasn't like that at all. I had to be very attentive to the conversation, because between sentences, the examiner would say, "And take the second right here," and then continue with the conversation.

The only mistakes that I noticed me making was that, when I passed from a 70 kph zone to a 40 kph zone, it took me about 50 meters into the 40 kph zone to finally get down to 40 kph. And another time, in the lack of speed limit signs, I assumed that I was in a 50 kph zone when it was really a 70 kph limit.

The only thing about my exam that wasn't really boring was once when the conversation in the back went like:

**Instructor:** I've got a sister-in-law in Tenerife that's a driving instructor, and she makes double what I do, and works whatever schedule suits her. Whenever she wants to give a class, there's a student available. It's not like that here.

**Examiner:** So go to Tenerife.

I immediately began looking for a sign to go to Tenerife, since his sentence sounded just like the other "Take the road towards Treto" commands he'd given me. Of course, two seconds later, I realized that _[Tenerife is the Canary Islands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife)_! I told the story when I got back to the other car after my exam, and the other instructor got a kick out of it.

I parked, shortly before having to go over a really narrow bridge that I hate going over, and exchanged places with the young guy. You see, they don't tell you if you passed when you get out of the car. So I and the other girl had to wait until we got back to Laredo before hearing of our fates. The first woman had stopped shaking and sobbing and was just swearing to herself under her breath every minute or so.

Eventually we got back to Laredo, and the instructor and examiner stayed in the car for the longest 5 minutes, and eventually they got out and told us that we had all passed! I was later told that I had _zero faults_! You're allowed 6 light faults, and only 1 grave fault before you fail. But a grave fault is not stopping completely at a stop sign, so a light fault must be something like not signaling a turn.

It's been 32 days since [The Day I Forgot How To Drive](/2006/11/16/the-day-i-forgot-how-to-drive/), and now I've remembered again! Yay!

Of course I won't be legally allowed to drive for another week when the papers get done. You know how government drones get around the holidays...


I Remembered How To Drive!


Today, December 15, is the five-year anniversary of my move to England in 2001. I left a confused and emotional nation, still unsure of what action should be taken against its September 11 attackers. Who knew that the world would be so much worse off five years later? That's all I wanted to say about that. Changing subjects... I had my second driving class today. This time it was with a female instructor. She was a thousand times nicer than [the guy I had before](/2006/12/01/first-driving-lesson/). She was helpful and only corrected things that really matter for the exam. My exam is on Monday. I will be driving the same exact car that I drove today and will have the same instructor next to me. The examiner (and probably another examinee) will be in the back seat. The exam lasts fifteen minutes. Let's see if I can get through 900 seconds without screwing up...

The main thing I learned today was that I need to stop more completely at stop signs. The correct technique is to stop right at the sign or line, if there is one, and then continue forward until you can see clearly if it's safe to continue. I was stopping, but only for a fraction of a second at the first place, and then really stopping at the second. She taught me to stop at the line, count to three in my head, advance to where I could see, stop, count to three, and then go (if it's safe, of course). The instructor talked me into taking another class right before the exam. It can't hurt, that's for sure.

Nothing else new of interest here.


Five Years Abroad


After an abnormally prolific blogging week last week, as Hubbers so cleverly [pointed out](/2006/12/08/the-immaculate-conception/#comments), I have nothing to say this week. So I decided to play with old content. I knew that my [Moderation Proof](/2006/08/23/moderation-proof/) post back in August still had some capacity to interest the masses, despite the lackluster response it got from my regular readers. So I [submitted it](http://digg.com/health/Moderation_Proof) to [Digg](http://digg.com). Unbelievably, "digging" the article generated exactly _zero_ page hits. No one clicked on that article at Digg. Part of the problem is that it didn't fit into their category structure, and I chose the "Health" category, because there wasn't a "Mathematics" or "Linguistics" category.

I also did a quick search for web forums about logic and ended up [submitting it](http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=148003) to the [Physics Forums](http://www.physicsforums.com/) where it got a bunch of clever remarks, but little interest.

Finally I submitted it to [StumbleUpon](http://www.stumbleupon.com/). For those of you that don't know, StumbleUpon is a toolbar that sits in your browser, and when you see a web page that you like, you click the "I like it!" button. Then, when you're bored and looking for something interesting on the internet, you click the "Stumble!" button, and it takes you to a random site that someone else has marked as "I like it!". There's a tagging system to ensure that you get sent to sites about topics that interest you and the sites are weighted, so you're more likely to be sent to a site that lots of people have "liked".

As of right now, approximately 24 hours after I submitted that page to SU, [20 people](http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/erikras.com%3Fp=68) have also marked it positively, and a few have left comments. My blog normally gets between 130 and 250 unique hits every day. In the last 24 hours it got almost 2000!

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-14-stumble-in-moderation/538854205_0d0d2911cd_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="visitors">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-14-stumble-in-moderation/538854205_42c3a4c4e9.jpg" alt="visitors"/>
</a>

My stats from Google Analytics from the past week.

Pretty crazy, huh? I even "inspired" some dude to write [a blog entry](http://notquitegettingit.blogspot.com/2006/12/new-rules-for-language.html) about the stupid things people say and how we need a new set of social linguistic rules.

Popularity, like money, is easy to generate more of once you have a lot of it already. Spread the meme.


Stumble In Moderation


<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-10-vino-y-pollo/536733093_4009c35689_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image post-thumb" title="Roasting Chicken">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-10-vino-y-pollo/536733093_5c9ab9409a_t.jpg" alt="Roasting Chicken"/>
</a>

Marga's folks, Juan and Marce came over for the weekend. Lots of wine and food were consumed.

On Saturday afternoon, Marga had the idea to go bowling at the mall in Santander. It was a dark and rainy day, and it turned out that quite a few other people had the same idea. We had to take a number and wait an hour to get a lane. I think this was the second time ever that Juan and Marce have bowled, and I was there for their first time, two years ago. My experience as a member of a bowling league when I was 12 (or 10?) shone through, and I put up two scores of 168, which is pretty good, considering that my personal best, from 15 years ago, is 185. In the second game, I almost had a turkey in the tenth, if you know what that means... My performance at the lanes, having not bowled in two years, and my memory of salsa dance steps when we went out last Thursday, combined with my ability to play golf once a year with very little skill degradation, has convinced me that I have better-than-average [neuromuscular facilitation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory). Throughout the weekend, Juan and I were put to work fixing little things around the house. On Saturday, we figured out how the rotisserie apparatus built into our oven worked. We also hung a clock and cleaned and refilled [the wine cask](/2006/11/15/basque-cask/).

To answer some of [your questions](/2006/11/15/basque-cask/#comments) about the cask... Since we filled the cask, the wine steadily got better and better over the course of three weeks. The wood was clearly aging the wine in a good way. Then we went away for two days, and when we came back, the cask was full of vinegar. It was disgusting! Juan explained what our mistake was. On top of the fact that it was the first batch of wine in the cask in several years, apparently the cask can't be even a little bit empty. After you've taken a couple of liters out, you have to fill it back up. Personally, this sounds more like advice to protect the wood than to protect the wine, but I openly admit my ignorance of such matters, so I could be wrong. Unfortunately, this defeats the idea of bulk wine purchases to fill the cask, since filling it from a multi-liter bag/box of wine is a pain (and therefore not something you want to be doing every week). Juan and I removed the remaining two liters of vinegar from the cask, saving it for "cooking", and filled it with warm water several times, sloshing it around inside to clean out every corner. That's quite an upper-body workout, let me tell you. When it was clean, we went out to buy some wine. We chose a wine from my local grocer that Marga and I have found to be the highest quality/price ratio in town. We bought a dozen bottles, 9 liters, for 15€ ($20). For that price, this wine is surprisingly good. A little later, we put all twelve bottles into the cask, plus another half-bottle that we had lying around from a previous meal. I'm a little disappointed about this new cask rule. To me, a bottle is much more convenient than a cask, and buying refills by the bottle seems to defeat the purpose of having the cask. It _is_ still pretty cool, though.

On Sunday, we did our best to hang one of Juan's chickens in our oven rotisserie. In the end, we failed, but we learned a lot from the experience. First of all, the bird was huge. We cut off a leg to save for another day, and it still didn't fit very well. Marce had to break out a sewing needle and thread to tie the remaining splayed leg to the body. When it was eventually rotating, it was so unevenly balanced that the heavy end would fall down with a thump every turn, and eventually the rod would come out of its place. In the end, we had to just roast it normally on a tray. Oh well...

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-10-vino-y-pollo/536733093_4009c35689_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG2920.JPG">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-10-vino-y-pollo/536733093_5c9ab9409a.jpg" alt="CIMG2920.JPG"/>
</a>

A poultry pirouette.

Our work done, Juan and I headed out into the not-very-cold sunny December day to visit some of the bars that Marga and I never go to ("the road less travelled by" and all [that](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken)). An hour later we got a call from the ladies on my cell and we went to our neighborhood to meet them and have a few more glasses of Rioja with them. In one of the bars, Don Remaes, (where my parents managed to have dinner by themselves during their visit) they had done some remodeling and had this awesome wine rack.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-10-vino-y-pollo/536734289_0c85157073_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG2921.JPG">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-10-vino-y-pollo/536734289_7aa6b4e8f1.jpg" alt="CIMG2921.JPG"/>
</a>

Too bad a bottle was missing. Hey, don't look at me!

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-10-vino-y-pollo/536621720_f9f25cba91_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG2922.JPG">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-10-vino-y-pollo/536621720_d1b6666680.jpg" alt="CIMG2922.JPG"/>
</a>

The three bottles on the bottom left of the rack. Check out the dates.

Upon returning home, we had some fantastic roast chicken waiting for us. It's been five hours since we ate, and I'm still very full.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-10-vino-y-pollo/536623454_7c58c28cc8_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG2923.JPG">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-10-vino-y-pollo/536623454_d4ade973e0.jpg" alt="CIMG2923.JPG"/>
</a>

The skin had a wonderful crispiness to it, and the meat was, to use an already-overused adjective, incredibly succulent.

With a belly full of wine and chicken, a siesta was inevitable for me, and when I awoke two hours later, the in-laws had left. When in-laws leave, do they become outlaws?


Vino y Pollo


[![Blessed Mother](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-08-the-immaculate-conception/6252248517_a5b66bf219_t.jpg)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/waynewilkinson/6252248517/ "Blessed Mother by wayne's eye view, on Flickr")Today is the [Day of the Immaculate Conception](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Immaculate_Conception) in Spain. Unlike [Wednesday](/2006/12/06/constitution-day/), today's holiday really is a holy day.  As I understood it, the immaculate conception is the part of Catholic dogma that allows for Mary to have conceived Jesus without sinning herself. I asked Marga, who was schooled K-12 by nuns, and she confirmed my understanding. She even predicted my next question about how the miracle of the 17-day gestation is at least as fantastic as that of the spermless fertilization. "Yeah, it's confusing, isn't it?" was her response.

I went to the wikipedia article on the [Immaculate Conception](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception) to read up on it and link to in this blog post, and what do I find? It turns out that both I and my Catholic-schooled fiancé are mistaken!

**The miracle of the immaculate conception is not about the Mary conceiving Jesus!**

The immaculate conception \[allegedly\] took place in Mary's _mother's_ womb when _Mary_ was conceived! Mary also had the same spontaneous fertilization herself (it must run in the family), but that's what's known as the [Virgin Birth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Birth_%28Christian_doctrine%29). Not only that, but December 8th is exactly nine months before Mary's birthday! Amazing! How did that reasonable scientific fact creep in there?

The immaculate conception wasn't part of Catholic dogma until the mid 19th century, around the time of the US Civil War, 152 years ago today, actually. I have to wonder if this concept didn't come from some influence from some powerful members of the [Cult of the Virgin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blessed_Virgin_Mary#Cult_of_the_Virgin). That is what the Knights Templar were all about, as you may recall. The Catholics really do worship Mary as a goddess. In Spain, she's paraded through the streets and idolized (note my [choice of word](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blessed_Virgin_Mary#Accusations_of_idolatry)) as much as, or more than, Jesus is. So clearly, to make her a goddess, they had to take away her original sin with Pope Pius IX's [Ineffabilis Deus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineffabilis_Deus) (Ineffable God) document published 152 years ago. Nothing like calling something "ineffable" to make people want to talk about it.

Did any of you catch the silliness of celebrating Mary's birthday nine months after the date that the dogma was officially created?

Anyway, I wish you a happy day-that-Jesus'-grandmother-did-NOT-have-sex day. Sounds like a good enough reason to take a day off work to me! (I, unfortunately, am not employed in Spain.)


The Immaculate Conception


The town where I live, Colindres, has recently started a campaign against canine defecation in public areas. There were even some posters of close-up sidewalk fecal deposits. Those were taken down before I could get a picture. The translation of the sign is:

> Here no!!! Wherever you go, pick it up!

Personally, I would have changed "vayas" to "vaya", changing the meaning to, "Wherever he/she/it goes, pick it up!"

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-07-poopy-signs/536724727_051a29af6f_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG2917.JPG">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-07-poopy-signs/536724727_f0cef922bc.jpg" alt="CIMG2917.JPG"/>
</a>

As an avid fan of [Ze Frank](http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/), I must attempt a couple Ze-esque captions here:

1. If your dog looses all three testicles, don't touch them! One of them is not a testicle!
2. Don't stab your dog through the neck and pick up rocks at the same time.
3. Don't lift the lid on the funny-shaped toilet.

Visitors are encouraged to leave other captions in the comments.

Right after taking this picture, a dog walked by off-leash, with no owner in sight, and began sniffing the grass in a way that any dog owner understands. I was so pleased! It looked like Lady Luck was gonna pinch me a golden loaf of photographic irony. So I stood there, looking up the sky in feigned disinterest (again something that any dog owner understands). And when the hound began to hunker, I quickly found the best angle to get both the sign and the pooch, and snapped this gem:<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-07-poopy-signs/536612838_d083a63c97_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG2918.JPG">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-07-poopy-signs/536612838_535a99a590.jpg" alt="CIMG2918.JPG"/>
</a>

Too bad he was so far away from the sign.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-07-poopy-signs/538728230_7083e2d4e9_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG2918.JPG copy">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-07-poopy-signs/538728230_29a519e8ab.jpg" alt="CIMG2918.JPG copy"/>
</a>

A cropped close-up, since he was so small in the other one.

On the same walk, I figured I should get a picture of the other one of these signs that I know about. Some teenager did his best to make into a poop joke. This one reads:

> Here! Pick it up!

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-07-poopy-signs/536731207_e4a02580c4_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="CIMG2919.JPG">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-07-poopy-signs/536731207_8f293a22b7.jpg" alt="CIMG2919.JPG"/>
</a>

This particular region of Spain has the least amount of spray-paint vandalism of anywhere I've lived in Europe. There is only one other place in Colindres that I know of that is spray painted, and it says, "Say 'No' to drugs!" I guess the authorities aren't in a rush to clean up that message.

Whew! It was about time for a lighthearted blog post.


Poopy Signs


Yes, you read correctly. I will now present a solution to The Iraq Problem that will result in a stable democracy. Not only is it elegantly simplistic, but it won't cost one cent of US taxpayer money. In fact, it will be paid for entirely by American corporations. Sound too good to be true? Judge for yourself.

### The Problem

Iraq's problem at the moment is that most children are raised, from a very young age, to be very strictly religious and to passionately hate the other ethnic groups. A democracy is impossible under such circumstances. Their belief systems need to be moderated. The solution, in only two letters, is T.V.

### The Plan

1. Withdraw all occupying troops
2. Set up high powered television antennas all around the borders
3. Flood the Iraqi airwaves with American television (overdubbed into Arabic, of course)
4. Wait 10 to 20 years
5. Watch theocracy overthrown and democracy established

### Why It Will Work

American television is hugely addictive. It appeals to universal human appetites for drama, adventure and humor. I have now lived in three different European countries for a total of 5.5 years. In all three, at least half of the entertainment programming on television and 80% of the movies have been from America. Even in Spain, where it's all overdubbed, we get all the currently popular US shows, like Desperate Housewives, 24, CSI, Grey's Anatomy, House, and Lost. It's not that the Spanish or the Danes can't make great shows too, because they do. It's that the quality, and universal appeal, of shows coming out of America, probably due to higher advertising budgets, is just so high! And when I say "quality", I mean "ability to entertain the masses".

At first, the authoritarian dictator(s) of Iraq will prohibit the viewing of such blasphemy. People will be executed for watching these unsanctioned television stations. The antennas will have to be protected in some way, because they will be attacked. And they should be rebuilt after they are destroyed.

Slowly, but surely, people will be unable to resist a little peak in the privacy of their own homes. After a year or so, people will start talking quietly in groups about how Trisha kissed Bobby in whatever teen drama is popular at the time. Kids will tell their parents that their friends' parents let them watch Malcolm In The Middle on Thursdays. Very, very slowly, despite harsh resistance from elders and religious and political authority figures, the Iraqi society will be unable to resist the drug that is American television.

What will they learn? First of all, they will see lots of free, unveiled, women. They will also see people free to talk about their ideas, and even talk negatively about the government, without harsh consequences. They will see the criminal justice system providing fair trials to the accused. They will see people of different races, nationalities, and religions living (relatively) peacefully together. I'm sure there are many other Iraqi social taboos that I don't even know about that are blatantly broken on your average episode of Friends or Dawson's Creek.

It will take at least 10 years, probably closer to 20, before the people that are of strong, government-overthrowing, revolutionary age can't remember a time when rogue American television stations weren't commonplace. If the government is still enforcing burka laws then, it won't take long for it to be overthrown.

Do I even need to explain how easy it will be to get Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, et. al. to pay for the construction, defense, and maintenance of the antennas?

Once we've pulled out of Iraq and set up the antennas, we can spend our time and energy into preventing America from becoming a totalitarian theocracy itself.

### Why It Won't Really Work

I'm pretty sure that you just can't make UHF and VHF signals travel far enough from the borders to reach the central areas of Iraq. The only other option would be to use a satellite and then flood the country with dirt cheap dishes and decoders, but those are easier for the government to prevent.

And no, you don't need to tell a cynic such as myself that the US government doesn't really have any interest in setting up a stable democracy and "liberating" the Iraqi people.

So, what do _you_ think?


The Solution To Iraq


<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-06-constitution-day/2781512739_16e112a331_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image post-thumb" title="Spanish Flag">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-06-constitution-day/2781512739_05ae37ceee_t.jpg" alt="Spanish Flag"/>
</a>

Today is [Constitution Day in Spain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Constitution_of_1978). It's one of the few holidays that is not a holy day.

I thought I'd write down a few thoughts that I had recently that actually relate to Constitution Day. A couple days ago, there was a lot of news coverage here about [Hugo Chávez](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez) being elected president of Venezuela for a third term. The most important fact about Venezuela's current political climate, that I was previously unaware of, is that apparently Venezuela has quite a bit of oil under it. Chávez is mining this oil and pumping money into the economy. This is one of his biggest "Look what I'm doing to help this country" political platforms. One of the more astute political analysts criticized Chávez, saying, "By removing that oil, he's reducing Venezuela's future bargaining power. It's not that previous leaders didn't know that the oil was there, they just thought it best not to spend it all at once, like Chávez is doing." They also went on to point out that it's not really helping the country, it's just widening the gap between the filthy rich and the filthy poor. Stop me when this sounds familiar... Saudi.. \[cough\].. America.. \[cough\].

Apparently Chávez reminds his people, quite often, that Venezuela is oil rich and it is very likely that Mr. Danger, his pet name for President Bush, among others1, will be invading soon, like they did in Iraq, to take all the oil. "And when they do, we will be ready for them! We will retreat to the hills and fight them on our own terms!" Another political analyst pointed out that Chávez is maintaining much of his power by presenting this imaginary external threat to the country, and saying that the people need him to protect them. Man, that sounds so _familar_! Who else does that? Wait...don't tell me! Oh right... Caligula, Hitler, and many other megalomaniac tyrants throughout history. That's like the first chapter in the textbook for Dishonestly Maintaining Political Power 101.

They also said that Chávez likes to show footage of him being all chummy with Castro on his deathbed. I'm not sure why the 'zuelans dig Fidel so much, but apparently they do. This got me to pondering what's going to happen when Castro's cigar finally goes out. Although he's not directly wielding much power anymore, the fact that his heart is still beating is no doubt maintaining a lot of civility in Cuba.

So I started thinking, "Man, it's gotta be hard to go from a dictatorship to a democracy," and I started trying to think of an example in history where a country has successfully, and peacefully, transitioned from a dictatorship to a representative democracy. I thought and I thought, but my knowledge of history didn't seem to contain any instances of such a transition. And then it hit me, like a ton of bricks, each with "Duh!" written on them. Spain! The country you're sitting in, you idiot!

Only thirty years ago Spain made the incredible transformation from a horrible dictatorship to a peaceful democracy. No bloodshed, just political discourse. And on December 6, 1978, just three years after [Franco](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco)'s death, the [Spanish Constitution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Constitution_of_1978) was ratified. If that's not reason for a country to be proud, I don't know what is. Cuba should take note.

Although I've rounded this post off nicely now, I'd like to share another thought that sprang from those above. No doubt in my talking about a dictatorship-to-democracy transition, many of you thought of Iraq. There are two reasons why Iraq cannot (yet) make the transition to a democracy: religion and racial hatred.

Oh, and I have a solution to establish a working democracy in Iraq. But I'll save that for [another post](/2006/12/07/the-solution-to-iraq/)...

1If you haven't yet, you should check out [this video](http://youtube.com/watch?v=KWAJVH8pTWI) of Chávez making fun of President Bush and calling him funny names. Although humorous, it is certainly no way to garner international respect. And can you imagine Bush addressing the nation, not from the Oval Office, but with the backdrop in that Chávez video?


Constitution Day


Not everyone is cut out for the kind of work I do. I may be the only full time transatlantic telecommuter. I work alone from home with no supervision and a six-hour time difference between my coworkers and myself. Like all scenarios, mine has its pros and cons. It takes me less than a minute to get out of bed, get dressed (I work in long pajamas), and get to my office. I don't care what you do; my daily commute is shorter than yours. This is both a blessing and a curse, as you shall see. My job requires a lot of self-motivation and the ability to survive with relatively little social interaction. I have productive and unproductive days just like anyone else. I've learned to recognize and harness my productive spurts when they happen...day or night.

If I'm working particularly intensely on something, and I don't watch at least an hour of television to clear my mind before going to bed, it's quite likely that I will wake up in the middle of the night with some insight about how to continue my project. I lie there for five minutes, working out the details of my insight, and by this time I'm fully awake. At this point, I convince myself that it's silly to be here lying in bed when I could be down in my office implementing this idea. So I make the 50-second commute to work and start hacking away...

On Sunday, two days ago, I woke up from a stereotypically-Spanish afternoon siesta with idea of how to write [the best javascript drop-shadow library ever](/2006/12/04/the-shadower-realistic-drop-shadows-in-javascript/), and, boosted by the nap, I ended up working on it until 2:00am. Fully aware of my need to let my brain idle a bit before turning off the ignition, I watched a BBC documentary called [Supersense - Sense of Timing](http://www.bbcactive.com/BroadCastLearning/asp/catalogue/productdetail.asp?productcode=21800), which, ironically, was about animals' biological clocks. It was all timelapse and high-speed photography, so, if you like that sort of thing, I recommend it. I was in bed by 3:00am.

At 7:00am on Monday morning, I sat up in bed and knew how to get my javascript library to work in the [Evil Browser](http://www.microsoft.com/ie/). By 9:00am it was done, and I took a two hour nap.

On Monday night, I went to bed, quite tired, at 10:00pm. But, wouldn't you know it? At midnight, I'm wide awake with the design for my current project figured out. My biological clock is definitely [fubar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUBAR). Good thing I don't have a set time to be at work tomorrow!

To explain the title... In all my humility, I like to think of my problem as something that creative geniuses like Beethoven, Einstein, or Tesla might have suffered from. In reality, I think that it's probably pretty common to anyone that doesn't have a clear boundary between work and leisure time, works too closely to bedtime, and has relatively easy access to get from bed to work.

Oh well. It's almost 1:30am. Better get to work!


Genius Insomnia


I had no idea that this form of spam existed.

I ran "whois amazon.com", and got this:

> Whois Server Version 2.0
> 
> Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.
> 
> AMAZON.COM.ZZZZZ.GET.LAID.AT.WWW.SWINGINGCOMMUNITY.COM AMAZON.COM.IS.N0T.AS.1337.AS.WWW.GULLI.COM AMAZON.COM To single out one record, look it up with "xxx", where xxx is one of the of the records displayed above. If the records are the same, look them up with "=xxx" to receive a full display for each record.

Who knew!? Gulli.com is, not surprisingly, a site about hacking. Also, not surprisingly, doing the same for Google results in:

> GOOGLE.COM.ZZZZZ.GET.LAID.AT.WWW.SWINGINGCOMMUNITY.COM GOOGLE.COM.ZOMBIED.AND.HACKED.BY.WWW.WEB-HACK.COM GOOGLE.COM.WORDT.DOOR.VEEL.WHTERS.GEBRUIKT.SERVERTJE.NET GOOGLE.COM.VN GOOGLE.COM.UA GOOGLE.COM.SUCKS.FIND.CRACKZ.WITH.SEARCH.GULLI.COM GOOGLE.COM.PLZ.GIVE.A.PR8.TO.AUDIOTRACKER.NET GOOGLE.COM.MX GOOGLE.COM.IS.NOT.HOSTED.BY.ACTIVEDOMAINDNS.NET GOOGLE.COM.IS.APPROVED.BY.NUMEA.COM GOOGLE.COM.HAS.LESS.FREE.PORN.IN.ITS.SEARCH.ENGINE.THAN.SECZY.COM GOOGLE.COM.BR GOOGLE.COM.AU GOOGLE.COM

Well, I'm off to register my "google.com.wishes.it.was.as.incredibly.awesome.as.erikras.com" subdomain...


Whois Spam


Surprising no one that knows him, my father has become the first to make solid plans in regards to [my upcoming wedding](/wedding/). I share them here to help others that are planning to attend get an idea of costs. You are all welcome to mimic his schedule. The more the merrier! (marrier?) The following are my father's words:

We (Betsy, Paul, and Joyce Rasmussen) are flying from Raleigh to Philadelphia (USAir) to Madrid (USAir) to Bilbao (Iberia Airlines). We are leaving Raleigh at 3:35 pm on October 8, and arriving in Bilbao at 11:30 am on October 9. We paid $696 each for our tickets, including all taxes, [Expedia](http://www.expedia.com/)'s $10 booking fee, and $20 to have the tickets shipped to me. Erik will pick us up at the airport, and we will spend Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in Colindres, at Erik and Marga's house. I am hoping that some of Erik's American friends and relatives will find their way to Colindres during this time, and that they will stay at the Colindres hotel, about a two minute walk from Erik and Marga's house.

On Thursday, Erik will drive me the 45 minutes to Bilbao, and I will rent a car there, and drive back to Colindres. On Friday, October 12, after wishing Erik a Happy Birthday, I will drive my Mom, Betsy and me the 90 minutes to Mondragon, where we will check into the Mondragon Hotel. Erik has asked that we not book rooms at the Mondragon Hotel yet, as he is hoping to negotiate for a block of rooms once he finds out how many people will need rooms.

On the morning of the big day (Saturday, October 13), I expect to eat breakfast, put on a tie, and walk from the Mondragon Hotel to the Catholic church where the wedding will take place. After the wedding, I will board the waiting bus along with everyone else, and be driven to the fancy restaurant. When they kick us out of the restaurant, I will board the bus again, and be taken along with everyone else to Marga's parents social club in Mondragon, where I will eat and drink more until it is time for me to walk back to the Mondragon Hotel and go to bed. It should be a good day.

On Sunday, we will check out, and drive the 60 minutes to Bilbao, where we have reservations at the 3-Star [Petit Palace Arana Bilbao](http://www.petitpalacearana.com/). I have reserved two rooms there at 60€ each ($79). These rooms were booked at this rate through [Booking.com](http://booking.com/), but can be booked at the same rate directly through the hotel. Expedia offered me these rooms for almost twice as much! I chose the Petit Palace Arana Bilbao primarily for its location. It is only 600 yards from the Guggenheim Museum, but it is located on the East side of the river that runs through Bilbao. Equadistance in the other direction lies the "old town" of Bilbao. It is on those 600 year-old pedestrian-only streets noted for its restaurants and bars where I hope to spend most of my time in Bilbao. The [Guggenheim](http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm) is open on Sunday (closed on Mondays), costing 10€ admission for Betsy and Paul, and 6.50€ for my Mom. I expect we will see the Guggenheim's attractions Sunday afternoon, and walk through the old town of Bilbao Sunday evening.

We may rent our car Thursday from a downtown Bilbao location, and return it there early Sunday afternoon, paying 3 days rental, which should be about $200. Alternatively, we may rent the car at the airport and return it there on Monday. If we return our car Sunday in the city, I expect the taxi fare to the airport to cost us about $20 to $25, even though it is just 10 kilometers ([6 miles](http://www.google.com/search?q=10+km+in+miles)) away. This fare will be partially offset by the fact that I won't have to pay the hotel's $15 parking fee.

On Monday, we fly out of Bilbao at 10:05 am, and arrive in Raleigh at 7:15 pm.

The Petit Palace Arana Bilbao advertises:

- Business center with Internet access (DSL-2Mb).
- CyberCenter:video game room.
- Arana Restaurant and Coffee Shop.
- PC with flat-panel TFT 15" display with Internet connection (DSL-2Mb) in the excel and the executive rooms.
- Satellite television.
- Air conditioning and heating.
- Data line for Internet connection (DSL- 2Mb).
- ISDN line for Internet connection.
- Direct telephone.
- Hairdryer.
- Private safety box.
- Minibar.
- Television with music and radio channels (25" television with remote control). Canal Plus, with sports and movie channels.
- The latest in water massage shower cabins.
- Exercise bicycles.
- Trouser press.
- Medical service (outsourced).
- Hotel agreement with a nearby parking garage in the Plaza Nueva of Bilbao.
- All credit cards accepted.

According to the published guest reviews, the down-side to this hotel is that the glass doors to the bathrooms are not opaque enough.


Father of the Groom


Don't look now, but you're being followed! By Google... I'm using an awesome Wordpress plugin, called [Firestats](http://firestats.cc/), that lets me see the real-time hits to my blog as they happen, both human and spider alike. One thing that I've noticed is this spider bot with the user-agent of [Mediapartners-Google/2.1](http://www.google.com/search?q=Mediapartners-Google%2F2.1). Right after some people view my site, I get a hit (or two) for the same page from Google.

Let's have a look at the hits...<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-04-google-stalker/538829901_133a6df965_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="stathits">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2006-12-04-google-stalker/538829901_49b0ccf66d.jpg" alt="stathits"/>
</a>

In this case, the human visitor was a friend of mine in Houston (IP blurred to protect the innocent). The other IP address, 66.249.65.103, [is Google](http://whois.domaintools.com/66.249.65.103). I'm not sure why the IP would be located in Michigan.

Notice that his hitting the home page didn't cause a Google hit, presumably because he had already been to that page. But when he hit the new post that he had never seen, Google got notified and came to check out the new content.

This can only be a result of having the [Google Toolbar](http://toolbar.google.com/) installed. It must keep track of when you hit a page that you haven't hit before and send off a message to Google so they can come and investigate.

From Google's point of view, this is a superb way of finding new content. But from a personal privacy point of view, it's more than a little disconcerting that your every move should be tracked and recorded in such a way.

I don't see anywhere to disable this behavior in my Google Toolbar preferences. Oh well...

I just thought you'd want to be made aware of the guy in the trench coat and dark glasses that's behind you wherever you surf.


Google Stalker


This has been done before, but not in such a simple and elegant way, in my opinion. This implementation has four important features that separate it from the rest: no images, no messy nested divs in your html code, no CSS, and realistic fading shadows! It is based on the [Prototype Javascript Framework](http://prototype.conio.net/), and requires version 1.5, which you can get [here](/downloads/143/prototype.js).

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/scriptaculous/1.8.2/effects.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/scriptaculous/1.8.2/dragdrop.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="/blog/shadower.js"></script>

### Some Examples

Other drop shadow libraries that eschew images, provide their shadow by adding an absolutely positioned div just behind the object. Like so...

**Example 1**  
(Drag Me Around)

<script type="text/javascript">var example1 = function() { Shadower.shadow('example1', {opacity:1.0,nestedShadows:1}); } setTimeout(example1, 1); // IE doesn't like shadowing mid-flow new Draggable('example1', { change: example1, starteffect: Prototype.emptyFunction, reverteffect: Prototype.emptyFunction, endeffect: Prototype.emptyFunction});</script>

 I think you'll agree that that looks pretty bad. But it's a lot better with a little opacity tweak...

**Example 2**  
(Drag Me Around)

<script type="text/javascript">var example2 = function() { Shadower.shadow('example2', {opacity:0.7,nestedShadows:1}); } setTimeout(example2, 1); // IE doesn't like shadowing mid-flow new Draggable('example2', { change: example2, starteffect: Prototype.emptyFunction, reverteffect: Prototype.emptyFunction, endeffect: Prototype.emptyFunction});</script>

But it still just looks like a gray box under there, doesn't it? That's where the magic of The Shadower comes in. Rather than just one gray box, it uses several successively smaller boxes stacked on top of each other to create a realistic drop shadow that really fades into the background.

**Example 3**  
(Drag Me Around)

<script type="text/javascript">var example3 = function() { Shadower.shadow('example3', {opacity:0.7,nestedShadows:4}); } setTimeout(example3, 1); // IE doesn't like shadowing mid-flow new Draggable('example3', { change: example3, starteffect: Prototype.emptyFunction, reverteffect: Prototype.emptyFunction, endeffect: Prototype.emptyFunction});</script>

 Now, doesn't that look better? Drag it up next to the others if you aren't convinced.

### So how do I use it?

There are five parameters to play with in getting your drop shadow just right.

**distance** \[default: 8\]

The distance away from the shadowed element to draw the shadow. This can also be thought of as the height "above the page" of the shadowed object

**angle** \[default: 130\]

The direction away from the shadowed element to draw the shadow. It is measured in degrees from the vertical. If you think of it like the numbers on a clock, 12 is at 0°, 3 is at 90°, 6 is at 180°, 9 is at 270°, etc. The default angle of 130 would be between 3 and 4 on the clock face.

**opacity** \[default: 0.7\]

The opacity of the shadow, measured between 0.0 and 1.0.

**nestedShadows** \[default: 4\]

This is the number of gradually darker shadows to draw under the shadowed element.

**color** \[default: #000000\]

This is the color of the shadow. The default black color is good enough for most uses, but you can change it if you want.

### Go ahead! Play with it!

<script type="text/javascript">function runShadower() { try { $('shadower_error').innerHTML = ''; var options = { distance: $('shadower_distance').value, angle: $('shadower_angle').value, opacity: $('shadower_opacity').value, nestedShadows: $('shadower_nestedShadows').value, color: '#' + $('shadower_color').value}; if(isNaN(options.distance)) throw 'Invalid distance parameter'; if(isNaN(options.angle)) throw 'Invalid angle parameter'; if(isNaN(options.opacity)) throw 'Invalid opacity parameter'; if(isNaN(options.nestedShadows)) throw 'Invalid nestedShadows parameter'; $('shadower_code').innerHTML = 'Shadower.shadow(\'testExample\',<br />{<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;distance: '+options.distance+',<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;angle: '+options.angle+',<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;opacity: '+options.opacity+',<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;nestedShadows: '+options.nestedShadows+',<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;color: \''+options.color+'\'<br />});'; Shadower.shadow('testExample', options, true); } catch (e) { $('shadower_error').innerHTML = e; } } function shadowerPresets() { var options = Object.extend({distance:8,angle:130,opacity:0.7,nestedShadows:4},arguments[0]); $('shadower_distance').value = options.distance; $('shadower_angle').value = options.angle; $('shadower_opacity').value = options.opacity; $('shadower_nestedShadows').value = options.nestedShadows; $('shadower_color').value = '000000'; runShadower(); }</script>

**Test Example**  
(Drag Me Around)

<script type="text/javascript">new Draggable('testExample', { change: runShadower, starteffect: Prototype.emptyFunction, reverteffect: Prototype.emptyFunction, endeffect: Prototype.emptyFunction});</script>

distance:

angle:

opacity:

nestedShadows:

color:

Presets: [Example 1](javascript:shadowerPresets({opacity:1,nestedShadows:1});)[Example 2](javascript:shadowerPresets({nestedShadows:1});)[Example 3](javascript:shadowerPresets({});)

<script type="text/javascript">setTimeout(runShadower, 1); // IE doesn't like shadowing mid-flow</script>

### Recommended Usage

Ideally, you should set a CSS class on any elements that you want shadowed, and then call Shadower.shadowWithClass() on page load. Like so...

`<html>  
  <head>  
   <script type="text/javascript" src="prototype.js"></script>  
   <script type="text/javascript" src="shadower.js"></script>  
  </head>  
  <body onload="Shadower.shadowWithClass('shadowed');">  
   <div class="shadowed">This div is shadowed</div>  
  </body>  
</html>`

### Download

So what are you waiting for? Download it and start using it!

[prototype.js](/downloads/143/prototype.js)

[shadower.js](/downloads/143/shadower.js)

### Feedback

I have not yet tested this on all browsers. If you have any problems, please either leave a comment on this blog entry or email me at erikwordpressplugins -at- gmail.

Enjoy!


The Shadower - Realistic Drop Shadows in Javascript


While surfing aimlessly this morning, I found this article on Digg:

[The act of terrorism that didn't get reported on September 11, 2006](http://digg.com/politics/The_act_of_terrorism_that_didn_t_get_reported_on_September_11_2006) The actual article linked to is [here](http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid28087.aspx), but I provided the Digg link because the comments are pretty interesting to read. The commenters fit into three groups:

1. People that say, "Well, abortion is murder," and support McMenemy's actions (most of their comments are hidden, and you have to click "show comment" to see them)
2. People who say, "Murder and violence goes against Christianity. It's wrong to call McMenemy a Christian, even if he says he is."
3. People who say, "Yes, this is why all religion is bad, because it fosters support for people like McMenemy that only need to be a little crazier than the rest," and mourn the state of the US media.

The fact that the people in group #1 exist at all is enough to blow group #2's position right out of the water, in my opinion. The problem is that religious moderates (group #2) pick and choose what they want to believe out of the Bible and have chosen to misuse the word Christian to mean "moral person". I'm all for a society full of moral people, but don't pretend that your morals come from an archaic book of mythology just because you can find passages where people are nice to each other. By doing so, you are making it acceptable for the nutcase minority to take amoral passages of the mythology literature seriously and cause actual harm.

It would be nice if the moderate Christians could specify the exact passages of the Bible that they want to "believe in", and put those into its own little book (it would be surprisingly short, I'm afraid), sort of a present day [Council of Nicaea](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea), if you will. They could call it the New Bible, and anyone that was still using the Old Bible would be encouraged to convert. That would solve the problem nicely. However, I think that it would be enlightening to all involved to see how much disagreement there was when in the choosing of passages.

Of course, even better would be to drop the Bible altogether and adopt another book of morals, like [Aesop's Fables](http://www.literature.org/authors/aesop/fables/) or something, where the fact that it was all animals talking would make it clear (I hope!) that it was all allegorical, and there would be no need for irrational belief in the supernatural.

I've gotten off topic. Back to my original reason for posting, I do recommend that you peruse both the article and the comments on Digg.


Terror and the Media


Well, I just got back from my first driving lesson in over 13 years. Let me just summarize it by saying that, if you think you know how to drive, and you want to be convinced otherwise, take a lesson with a picky driving instructor. First of all, my lesson was supposed to start at 5:15pm. I got there at 5:10. The woman that is normally at the driving school was off for the day and another woman was substituting and trying to run things, but was kind of lost. Anyway, my driving instructor casually shows up at 6:00, just in time to smoke a cigarette and chat with his two 6:00 students for 15 minutes. They'd obviously had many classes, because they were joking with him in a friendly manner.

Finally, we all get in the car, with me driving and the other two students in back. While I'm buckling my seatbelt, he says, "Wait, stop!", with a "you've already messed up, are you sure you know how to drive?" look on his face. He says, "First, you have to check the mirrors." I said that I was going to do that next, and he gave some idiotic reason about how if you buckle up before setting the mirrors, that you might not set them in the way that matches your body position as you drive. Obviously, that sentence only makes sense negated.

He shows me where the lights are (I've never driven this brand or model of car before), since it was dark already, due to Prof. Punctuality. And off we go...

At the first left turn, 30 yards from the driving school, he slams on the brakes in the middle of the turn and asks if I could adequately see down the little walled street that the opposing traffic could come from. I said, "Yes, I could," and he lets me take the car out of the middle of the intersection. We went on like this for a while, on our way to nearby Laredo. Laredo is full of one-way residential streets with blind corners and fading painted arrows pointing the wrong way on the street from when the streets went in the other direction. It's not the best place to drive if you're even remotely nervous. And this guy had me seriously on edge.

He corrected a bunch of silly things. Like driving down a two-way street with my lane being just barely wide enough for two cars side-by-side, it was important for me to move to the right side of the lane, even if there were no cars around. And to change sides of the lane, I had to 1) look in the rear view mirror ("retrovisor"), 2) put on the turn signal, 3) change "sides". If I did #2 before or during #1, I got chastised. And every time that I went over to the right side, there'd be a dumpster in the road 100 yards up, so I'd have to do steps 1, 2, and 3 again going back to the left. No reasonable driver would behave like this.

The biggest criticism was my use of the clutch. Apparently I step on the clutch while turning, even though I'm already in second gear. So freakin' what! But that's a point-deductible offense during the exam, and if you get three points off, you fail. Argh!

By far the most unnerving part about the whole experience was driving a car where the passenger had complete control to override me on the pedals. The pedals moved by themselves a lot. That will FREAK YOU OUT. I can't express how odd it is to be driving along and have the clutch or brake go down on its own. Give me a regular beetle over Herbie any day!

Finally the torture ended and a teenager from the back seat took the wheel. The instructor put on some loud thumping techno (the girl in the back seat with me said, "You'd better get used to this song. He puts it on every time!"), and we did a few more circles in Laredo before heading to Colindres, and they dropped me off near my house. I got home at 7:10, two hours after I left for my 45-minute lesson.

I'm now convinced that I, and 99.99% of everybody else on the roads, will fail the driving test. I'm not sure if I should pay for another class before the exam or not. If anything, it might be good to practice driving under the intense pressure.


26 posts from December, 2006