Vignettes from the Lost Lake mountain bike adventure this past weekend.

Happy Wife stayed back and did the heavy lifting with Barkley, a high-spirited golden retriever.

For as long as I remember I’ve been an Arguer. I’ve argued with my parents, siblings, teachers, friends, co-workers, bosses, people on-line, girlfriends, wives, children, even dogs. I frequently argue with myself, especially on long walks or bike rides alone. I don’t argue to win. I argue, I suppose, for the same reason I breathe. It’s automatic. Somebody says something to me she believes is true, and my instinct — no different than taking a breath — is to ask, What if it’s not true?

I cannot say being an Arguer has served me well. Not in terms of my relationships. Arguing is different than Critical Thinking. At least it’s perceived to be. Critical Thinkers are eventually acknowledged as productive individuals, people who ask good questions; models, mentors. Arguers are perceived as truculent, difficult, refractory, rebellious, averse to agreement on almost anything — people to steer clear of. Arguers are sometimes provocative or amusing for a while, but all the people they know, eventually, fall out of touch.

Sometimes I even get sick of myself.

And yet, we must play the hand we were dealt, no? What else is there to do. Get Counseling! Yeah right. I’m reminded of the Monty Python skit, the one where a patient walks into the therapist’s office and says, I came here for an argument. The therapist says, No you didn’t. Patient barks back, Yes I did! Therapist, No you didn’t!

Round and round it goes. I can see myself in that skit, qua patient.

Naturally, I Googled “arguers anonymous.” I found this.

Ha ha, very funny, a blog devoted to recovering Arguers with no content, no controversy, no disagreement. What kind of sick joke is that.

Although you do have to wonder if being an Arguer isn’t merely a superficial expression of a more disturbing, underlying psychological defect. Except I’ve no childhood trauma to report that might’ve caused such a thing. My upbringing was closely analogous to an eighteen year long episode of Father Knows Best, with me as “Bud.” Although my parents may recall differently.

…

Obama’s coming to Alaska, to Anchorage, on Monday. Ostensibly for a conference on climate change. So we left town to get away from the madness, and headed for our Nest. But wait, he’s coming to Seward too! He’s wants to see Exit glacier. Without us… Sniffle. We’d be happy to have him over. Happy Wife said she’s never made banana pancakes for a standing president, or, for that matter, one that wasn’t standing.

…

We’ve seen considerable death on the beach lately. Tragic, yes, but there’s probably worse ways to go that croaking immediately after sex

We’d no idea there were Eels in Alaska until seeing this poor soul on our beach walk this morning,

Possibly  a Wolf Eel. Although I might Argue otherwise.

Friends from the Boston area are up here visiting.

“Wanna see a glacier?”

“Uh huh.”

And so up we went.

Nearly fell asleep on the bench outside the office building this afternoon. It was that pleasant. When I came to, a bee was buzzing

 

(Embiggening is better).

Alas, the nectar of another was too much to resist,

Later, at home, a raspberry harvest from the south side of our house,

For dinner, lamb chops on the grill,

Paired with Hedge Hog mushrooms harvested by Happy Wife ‘n friends at Tutka Bay, Alaska, along with fresh peas from our garden,

Embiggen!

To think we started off together like this over ten years ago,

 

When I was a young, even the thought of this happening terrified me. That I wouldn’t get my glove up, or be able to duck out of the way in time. Ugh.

 

I opened a chat recently with an Amazon customer support person. I asked why the Felina Women’s Lush Lace Cheeky Boy Panty (2 pair) that were ordered 4 days ago were not already in my mailbox. I’m an Amazon JPrime member, I typed, this entitles me to free 2-day shipping, no? Where are the Lace Cheeky Boy Panties?

The support person, “Mark”, who I assume lives in India, exhibited no specific understanding of the product, what the difference might be between Lush and non-Lush panties, though he was apparently quite concerned and understanding that we were still without the panties. Mark asked that I wait while he checked into it.

“Certainly,” I typed.

As I waited I wondered if Mark, who knew my name was Rod, might be wondering why a man was so anxious to get Lush Lace Cheeky Boy Panties. I wanted to type, “Their for my wife, btw! We share the Amazon account!” But I didn’t. Consequently, there is now a man out there, somewhere, left wondering just what kind of Kink goes on day-to-day in this place called Anchorage, Alaska.

When Mark returned to the chat he assured me I’d have the panties by the time promised, on or before Monday next week. I resisted typing, “Oh no, all my other Lush Cheeky panties are in the wash. I was hoping the panties would arrive today, so I’d have a clean pair to wear!“

But I didn’t.

 Spanking Speaking of Happy Wife, she and friends are attending a cooking class today at the Tutka Bay Lodge. Serious eye candy at that link. I shan’t be idle around the house while she’s away. Grass cutting, bike repair, and then maybe I’ll head downtown for baby back ribs and a martini (or 2) at Haute Quarter Grille.

Outside, summer rages on, although there’s a nip to the morning air lately, a brisk reminder the start of a new season is nigh. The lawn mower will be emptied of gas and stowed in the shed. The rakes briefly deployed to gather the leaves; the garage cleared of summer’s clutter so the cars can be pulled in; a final harvest of fruits and vegetables from the garden. The tourists are gone, back home sorting and sharing their pictures of Alaska, while here the land will take a deep breath and sigh while she awaits her blanket of snow. Sleep will come quickly.

Update: Just got a notification on my phone — the panties are Out For Delivery. What a country!

This is where we live,

Man In Bear Costume Harasses Bears In Alaska.

A merciful end to an otherwise merciless day.

I recently read an old post about a guy who taught himself how to write computer programs after failing at it a number of times before. Midway through the article he points to the kind of problem that really got him started on his path to learning:

My struggle to become a hacker finally saw a breakthrough late in my freshman year of college, when I stumbled on a simple question:

If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3 or 5, we get 3, 5, 6, and 9. The sum of these multiples is 23. Find the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000.

What’s especially neat about it is that someone who has never programmed — someone who doesn’t even know what a program is — can learn to write code that solves this problem in less than three hours. I’ve seen it happen. All it takes is a little hunger. You just have to want the answer.

It took me about three minutes, not hours (see below). Then again, I first learned to program computers about thirty years ago. What held my interest in the article, and this question especially, was it got me to thinking how, if I were the teacher and using this example to teach somebody how to program, how I might extend the problem a little by asking the student to make the program more flexible — extend it to let the user input any two numbers (not just 3 and 5), and any ceiling value (not just 1000). That’s what I did in the trivial example below.

What I didn’t expect, however, were the outputs when I repeatedly ran the program with values of ceiling 10 times greater than the previous one (10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000, 10000000, 100000000). It’s not intuitive to me that each successive sum would be a little over 100 times greater (not exactly) than the previous one. Not 10 times greater, which might appeal to your intuition (but still wouldn’t be obvious to me).

I have an email in to my brainy friend on the east coast asking for an explanation. I was told by a another friend of ours he got a perfect score on the SAT.

public class Quiz {

public static void main(String [] args) {

int firstNumber;
firstNumber = Integer.parseInt(args[0]) ;

int secondNumber;
secondNumber = Integer.parseInt(args[1]) ;

int ceiling ;
ceiling = Integer.parseInt(args[2]) ;

long sum = 0 ;

for(int i=1; i<ceiling; i++) {

if( ( i%firstNumber ) == 0 || ( i%secondNumber ) == 0 ) {

sum += i ;

}

}

System.out.println( “Sum: ” + sum ) ;

}

}

————-Output————-

>java Quiz 3 5 10
Sum: 23

>java Quiz 3 5 100
Sum: 2318

>java Quiz 3 5 1000
Sum: 233168

>java Quiz 3 5 10000
Sum: 23331668

>java Quiz 3 5 100000
Sum: 2333316668

>java Quiz 3 5 1000000
Sum: 233333166668

>java Quiz 3 5 10000000
Sum: 23333331666668

>java Quiz 3 5 100000000
Sum: 2333333316666668

Copy Paste.

Friday is my new favorite day.