We went on another fun backpacking trip this weekend. The scenery was good, the hiking pleasant, the overlooks overlooking, the rain staying away, and the dogs walking like champs. Hank did quite well despite his sore feet and Scout pulled me up all the hills. Despite hot and dry conditions, we still found a little water in the spring to pump for dinner.

We even learned a few lessons:

• When you're on the last dirt road before the trail starts, and you've been driving on that road for 45 minutes, and then it's suddenly paved, you have missed the trail.
• If you're going to drive 45 minutes on a dirt road, you should have brought your four-wheel drive truck instead of your Camry.
• If you can't get your dog to go to the bathroom before bed, you will hear a familiar high-pitched whine and tail thumping at 1:15AM, and be forced to take her outside then!
• Even if things don't go to plan, it's always fun to go backpacking!

Instead of going directly home, we took a detour to catch some of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. It's a pleasant stretch of road and generally more interesting to drive than the interstates.

We had so much fun with the trip that we went to REI when we got home and bought more gear for next time (hopefully this month): a new stove, a lighter bowl/spork for me, and a camping pillow.

Jesse James Garrett coined the term AJAX. It stands for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML. To find about more about what it is and does, read Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications

The term Web 2.0 was coined by Tim O'Reilly in his blog in 2005. Read: What is Web 2.0?

I'm looking forward to our family backpacking trip this weekend. Just myself, Elise, and the dogs. We'll do about 10 miles on the Appalachian Trail. Hank has prepared himself for the weekend by licking not one, not two, but three different paws raw. If you're out hiking this weekend and see a three-legged beagle trying to keep up with an almost galloping labrador, say hello to us!

I went on my longest bike ride ever yesterday, a 48-miler. It was an official training ride for the MS-150 (which I'm not doing), called the Cup-n-Cone ride. The brilliant premise behind Cup-n-Cone is that you get a cup of ice cream at the halfway rest stop, and a cone of ice cream when you finish. Two free servings of ice cream is well worth the $20 registration charge :-) I alternately rode alongside groups as well as by myself, and I ended up doing the last 15 miles alone, since the riders were spread out by that point. I ended up finishing in 2:49 of riding, not counting the 15 or so minutes spent at rest stops drinking water and eating cookies. It was a good ride, and I'm looking forward to my 62 mile ride in two weeks!

"Complexity catastrophes help explain why bureaucracy seems to grow with the tenacity of weeds. Many companies go through bureaucracy-clearing exercises only to find it has sprung back a few years later. No ever ever sits down to deliberately design a bureaucratic muddle. Instead, bureaucracy springs up as people just try to optimize their local patch of the network: finance is just trying to ensure that the numbers add up, legal wants to keep us out of jail, and marketing is trying to promote the brand. The problem isn't dumb people or evil intentions. Rather, network growth creates interdependencies, interdependencies create slow decision making and, ultimately, bureaucratic deadlock." (The Origin of Wealth by Eric D. Beinhocker)(Emphasis mine)

In this book on economic theory, there's a chapter about networks. While the previous quote talks about the effect of networks within companies, it is clear that the idea of local optimization within a network applies to other walks of life. A traffic jam isn't caused by "a bunch of morons who don't know how to drive", rather it is the cumulative result of each driver doing what's best for them: maintaining a safe distance from the car in front of them, and braking when that car brakes. With large volumes of traffic, jams are inevitable.

You'll see this theory in action in many other places too!

In the comments section of this Scott Adams blog post, readers respond with their favorite jokes. So far my favorite is the math-nerdy joke about e^x...

A series of unusual events occurred on our bike ride tonight, and before I knew it I was in the lead with three people behind me, and no one else very close. It looked like I was the one to call out the directions. I wasn't very worried because I've been on several rides and I can get home from almost any point on almost any ride. We climbed a hill and made a left turn. I knew that I'd done this turn before. A few minutes after we turned I realized that aside from the three, no other riders had joined us. When I made the next turn I was certain that I'd done this turn before, but that it was definitely not the Thursday "B" route. (In retrospect, it was the Thursday "A" route, roughly "B" in reverse.) After the third turn, the guy behind me said "I've never gone this way... are you sure it's right?" I told him it was the way back to the bike shop, regardless of whether it was right. In the end, we reached the bike shop before the rest of the "B" group, despite going about two miles farther than the others.

A stupid story, but I think it's the first time I successfully gave directions to anyone in Cary.

"Inexplicably, we found ourselves meeting the #1 team in the Loser's Bracket. With perfect play in the field, we held them to 8 first inning runs, and we could have tied them by the end of the game if they had not scored runs in other less than perfect innings. We ended up losing 8-15 on 15 hits in 34 at-bats.

In an even-steven year, we were 6-6 in the regular season, tied in the middle of the pack, scored 197 runs for the year and gave up 196. To avenge our last year's label as 1-run losers, we increased our losing margin to 9 runs per game (with notable 16, 18 and 18 run losses), while also maintaining a 9 run win margin (and starting the year with a statistically-skewing 23 run victory).

Thanks for playing this year, and thanks to our subs for filling in admirably. Our next hit-around is scheduled for 11:30 am Wednesday, April 2, 2008. As you travel to the beach this summer, bring a little sand home with you each time, then bring it to our first practice to fill in various pot holes on our beloved fields of play. Somebody has to do it..."

21-40, 5 2B, 5 3B, HR, BB, 19R, 18 RBI. .525/.537/1.25 AVG/OBP/SLG with 1.789 OPS. What kind of nerd goes through the problems of A) figuring that stuff out and B) posting it on his blog? Please don't answer!

For the non-stat geeks, that all means that if I got up to bat four times in a game, I would have advanced seven bases just from my hitting.