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I have a disagreement with the people who decide on the color for the mute button for online meetings. The particular incident that brought the color problem to my attention happened to be Google Meet, but other programs such as Zoom also have the same issue. Of note is Microsoft Teams, which does not change color for muted versus unmuted, so it does not have this issue.

The problem is that the color was decided by extroverts.

Before getting into that though, a little bit of background: red is the color that has been chosen by society to mean “unsafe”. Whether it’s the color your car door locks change to when unlocked, or the color revealed on your firearm when it can be fired, things like that are considered unsafe and show a red color in that condition.

Now back to Google Meet. It was my first day back from a vacation, and it was my first meeting using Google Meet that day, so I was out of practice and my actions on the laptop were not back in habit yet. I wanted to be on mute, I saw the mute button was red, so I clicked it to make it not red, then I started talking to Some Wife (I think asking her what her sister-in-law called about) because it wasn’t my part of the meeting.

To me, an introvert, the unsafe mode of an online meeting is when my voice is being broadcast to everyone. Since red means unsafe, red to me means unmute. Not red should mean mute, because mute is safe.

But to the designers of that button or user interface, unsafe must mean no one can hear them, or whatever it is that extroverts want. Because when I clicked the mute button to make it safe, I actually unmuted myself and then everyone could hear me. I was glad other people had the option to mute me, which they did before too long.

On a related note, I’m glad for the programs that put a red border around your screen when you are sharing your screen to the meeting. That is unsafe too.

We have reached the end of the track season here, and one of the later meets reminded me of something that I feel like posting today. On certain events – I think this one was the 4×800 relay – the first 1.25 laps will have the runners stay in their lanes, but then on the back straightaway they are allowed to move over to lane 1. And there is usually an official standing at that point to both make sure people don’t cut over too early and also to remind them to cut over.

My experience as someone who understood math was that I did not cut over very quickly. And that frustrated the official, who thought I didn’t hear him yelling “Cut over!”, so he yelled more and louder at me.

Even all these years later, not many high school kids realize how much extra they are running. They just know that lane 1 is the shortest lane and thus they want to get to it as soon as they can.

It looks like this (not to scale, wrong number of lanes, other disclaimers):

The yellow star is where most runners aim to get, and the blue star is where I was aiming to get, and the green line is the start of the back stretch when runners could leave their lanes.

And now I’m going to add some geometry.

As you see, the distance I ran was line segment A, and other runners were choosing B+C.

Now let’s put some numbers in.

It doesn’t look like it, but the yellow dashed line is supposed to be a 45 degree angle. A standard high school track has 8 lanes of 42 inches each, so segment D is 28 feet

D² + D² = 1568, the square root of which is 39.6, so C = 39.6 feet.

Segment B is going to be 100 meters – 28 feet, so we end up with 300 feet.

Now for segment A. The Pythagorean theorem only works with right triangles, so this one is a little trickier. It’s also not enough just to know two length, we need an angle also.

Since I made angle CD to be 45, I know that BC is 135. So now we’re stuck using the Law of Cosines. I was hoping it would be easier, but that’s what I got.

A² = B² + C² – 2BC cos(A)
A = sqrt(90000 + 784 – 2*8400*cos(135))
A = 320 feet

So I would run 320 feet, and the opposition would run 339.6 feet, so I would get an advantage of 19.6 feet.

Your mileage may vary, especially if you’re not always in lane 8. And yes, it should be 7 lanes of width because no one runs on the outside of the lane so the 42 inches of lane 8 should be discounted. I’ll let you run the math on what the more appropriate number is. Just consider the 19.6 as the highest value it could be. Also, the opposition was not also in lane 8 with me, so no their distance would not be from the same point I was, as shown on the diagram (for illustrative purposes only).

I wish I would have started working on cars earlier in life – it would have saved me a bunch of money. Here are some things I’ve learned over the last few years of working on my own cars.

• The speedometer in our 2007 Cadillac stopped working. A bit of internet searching revealed that the motor for the speedometer needle is known to go bad. So I ordered a replacement dash gauge from Ebay, and while I was waiting for it to arrive I noticed the mileage on the odometer wasn’t increasing either. I actually looked around the car then and found some mice had chewed up some wires. I spliced them back together and the speedometer and odometer started working again.
• Also in that Cadillac, the right rear brake caliper was locked up – that brake was always noticeable hotter than the others after a drive. I installed a replacement caliper and it still had the problem. It turns out the cause was a bad brake hose leading to the caliper. A little bit of extra investigation before installing parts can save extra work and part costs.
• The old minivan (2012 Chrysler Town and Country) was a little wobbly, so I went to replace the back shocks. The bolts for those shocks are not very user-friendly, especially the upper bolt and especially after 8 salty winters. I gave up on the shock bolt and ended up unbolting the shock bracket from the frame. That’s 4 bolts instead of one, but they’re more accessible. The problem was that one bolt snapped off rather than move, but I reinstalled it with 3 bolts and figured that was good enough. Then I went to do the other side and only one bolt came out and 3 snapped off. We drove that van with one shock missing for a few months and then ended up junking it due to other problems.
• For that generation of minivan, if the dashboard display “Key in ignition” when the key is not in the ignition, the problem is the TIPM not the WIN module. I bought a WIN (several hundred dollars), installed it, still had the problem, but was able to return the WIN and get my money back (minus a restocking fee).
• A couple years back, I bought a pressure bleeder for the brakes, but I was using it wrong. I finally figured out it’s a lot less messy and quicker too, to not put brake fluid in the bleeder. I think you’re supposed to do that, to keep the master cylinder filled with fluid. But now I just top off the reservoir, then attach the pressure bleeder and just pump it full of air, run the brake bleeds while checking on the reservoir, and if it’s running low on fluid I start over, without spilling brake fluid out of the hose because all it has is air.

Here are some thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these is a tweet.

• A bird in the hand is no longer worth two in the bush. I checked, and a bird in the hand is now worth 32 birds in the bush. The phrase is a few hundred years old, so it should be adjusted for today’s cost of living.
• It seems to me there is a penny-wise/pound-foolish mentality for people who refuse to eat any GMO food but then go ahead and inject a GMO Covid shot into their body. As far as I can tell, neither one will modify your own genetics.
• What is the correct past tense of the phase “you snooze, you lose” – you snoozed you losed, or you snost you lost?
• I would love to be the receptionist at the doctor’s or dentist’s office (or any other place that still asks Covid-screening questions), because I would throw on at the end “Did you pack your own bags and have they been with you the entire time?”. One, it would check if people are paying attention or if they’re just answering “no, no, no” to the Covid questions (like I usually do), and two, it would highlight the ineffectiveness of that class of questions. I might as well say to the person “If you say ‘no’ then you get to enter here, if you say ‘yes’ then you don’t. What would you like to say?”
• It seems to be a habit of some people to have a list of potential band names. I have no plans to start a band, but my favorite potential band name is “St. Vincent and the Grenadines”.

In the last week or so, we had the announcement of the 2022 NFL schedule. Now that we know who will play whom and when, we can start predicting wins and losses.

I keep my predictions over at Some Fun Site. View results of previous football seasons.

2021 Summary

Last year, I predicted that

• Cleveland Browns = 9-8
• Washington Team = 11-6

How they actually did was

• Cleveland Browns = 8-9
• Washington Team = 7-10

Browns was close, Washington was not. Record prediction is not very reliable

(more…)

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2021 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2021 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

It was just Mother’s Day, so the SSA released the name rankings for 2021. Last year’s champion, Jackson has finally be de-throned as the most popular boy’s name in the US. After 7 years at the top of the leaderboard, it was surpassed by Liam. Liam had been gaining on Jackson for a few years, but what really happened is that Jackson lost a big chunk, rather than Liam gaining a big chunk.
No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again, and by a similar margin as last year.

Some Stats

• In the top 9 names for the boys, 1 and 2 switched spots, 5 and 6 switched spots, and 8 and 9 switched spots.
• The top 8 names for the girls are the same as 2019, and in much the same order. The only difference is that Charlotte moved up 2 spots.
• Again, Liam has the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 1.
• Again, Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 3.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (258/1000 vs. 176/1000 alternates)
• Kayson once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 8.
• For the girls, Adaline has the sole lead for the most spelling variations at 6.

2021 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

This is the second of a two-part series. You can also read about the first part of our trip to Hocking Hills here.

Day 2 Continued:
After lunch, we drove over a bit to the most impressive feature of Hocking Hills – Ash Cave.

Ash Cave

This is the other picture you are most likely to see if you look for pictures of HH without specifying which area.

This is the approach to the cave:

And this is what it looks like from the bottom, just past the waterfall:

The trail itself was nothing of note – it’s more a means to get to the waterfall. Unlike other trails like Old Man Cave which maintained interest the whole time.

Fire Tower

The fire tower was not on my original agenda, but it’s there and the kids wanted to see it, so we did.

It is just a tall tower but on top of a ridge for the park rangers to go up and look around for forest fires. Climb at your own risk, and no more than 6 people at a time.

The cabin at the top was locked – you could climb up the stairs until you got to the bottom of the cabin, which is just higher than the treetops so it was windier up there.

I wouldn’t say it was fun, but it was memorable. A few members of our crew did not go up.

At this point, we were done with our planned hikes, but there was still more time in the day. My brother had heard about another cave that is not one of the main features and not on the popular trail maps that you get at various places, so we figured we give it a try.

State Rockclimbing and Rappelling Area
I don’t know the official name of this place, but the sign at the road said “State Rockclimbing and Rappelling Area” so that’s what I’m putting here.

Our goal was a certain cave, and we pulled into a parking lot that was where we heard it should be. We all got out of our vehicles, and while my brother and I discussed expected hiking time, our wives started chatting with a couple of other women, one of whom had a professional-looking camera.

I figured they found someone they knew, but when they waved us over we found out that our hiking plans had changed. They happened to find the lady who had written the book on various day hikes in Hocking Hills. Her name was Mary Reed and she told us that the trail to the cave we wanted was a horse trail, so it was very muddy because horses are rough on the trails, and we were better off going across the street. And I think she was right. Since she was nice enough to give us that advice, I’ll return the favor and tell you all to go buy her book “Hocking Hills Day Hikes”.

We were parked in the right spot, we just needed to go south from the parking lot instead of north.

Shortly after crossing the road, the path split (more like a T). We went right first, to visit the waterfall. We had seen a few other waterfalls this day, but this wasn’t supposed to be a long hike so we tried it.

The path started out rather similar to things we have back in Michigan.

Then it turned into more caves and slopes

And above that were cliffs with many nooks and crannies for them to go through:

It turned out the kids had the most fun on this hike because there was so much more to traverse. Not being an official tourist stop, the trail was less structured, so the kids went off exploring. The adults, not wanting to sprain anything, decided not to scamble up the slopes after them, so we stayed near the path and chatted while still listening for the noises of the children. Mostly “Hey, over here!” or “Look at this!”.

We finally had to yell for them that we were moving on to the waterfall.

The waterfall wasn’t much. Mostly a jumble of rocks. Here’s the view from the rocks at the waterfall, but looking back to the trail.

Balancing Rock
The we headed back toward the parking lot. At the split where we came in, a few people headed back to the vehicles but most of us continued on (as if we had turned left at the beginning instead of right). This is the path to Balancing Rock.

Two notes on the trail to Balancing Rock. One: it goes along private property, so you’re walking along a backyard or two. Don’t worry, you’re in the right spot, just stay on your side of the fence. And two: whatever length Mary Reed says the hike is, it feels double that because of the terrain and elevation changes. The waterfall path was mostly flat, but this one you’re hiking uphill most of the way there.

It wasn’t that impressive most of the way there. It was scenic but nothing worth stopping and photographing. But near the end it got a lot better.

This part of the trail reminded me of our trip to Nelson Ledges.

And then the path puts you right next to the top of Balancing Rock.

You could, as the kids did, scramble through some fissures to get to the base of Balancing Rock. I was busy taking various pictures of the top of Balancing Rock so I didn’t make it down there before everyone started leaving.

That was it for hiking for the day. We went back to the rental house, had dinner, read books and watched TV until bedtime. And it was evening, then morning the next day.

Day 3:
The agenda for day 3 was not so solid. We had seen most of the things on day 2, and we were starting to grow weary of hiking to waterfalls. Nevertheless, we set off to Conkles Hollow.

Conkles Hollow

Conkles Hollow has a very nice paved trail…

…for the first half of the trail. You don’t get to see the waterfall at the end if you’re in a wheelchair, but you can see views like this:

After going down the unpaved path the rest of the way, we found ourselves at the actual hollow. The sides of the gorge gradually converged together and that’s where the small waterfall was.

In that area, there are various ledges and rock formations that are accessible to the kids, so they took advantage of that.

There was also a path along the top of the gorge, but that was much longer and we didn’t feel doing that.

Since the first two days were packed, we though it would be good to take a break. So we left Conkles Hollow and went to eat at the Olde Dutch Restaurant in Logan. We chose that because it was a buffet with a decent price. There’s a gift shop attached to it, so we wandered around there while waiting to be seated. One of the kids wondered why people had southern accents, I explained that we are closer to Kentucky and West Virginia than we are to Michigan, so it makes sense the dialect would be different.

My review of Olde Dutch Restaurant: it’s fine. The food was good, prices were decent. The only warning would be dessert. Desserts are not buffet-style, you get to order one dessert item at the end of your meal. They have a lot of pies, or you can choose ice cream. I chose blackberry pie, I think I got blueberry instead, and it was not worth it. I should have gone for chocolate cream pie or maybe just ice cream, like the rest of the family did.

Then we went back to the cabin and had a relaxing afternoon. I got to finish reading the books I brought, and otherwise did nothing. But after a while, doing nothing in a small cabin starting wearing on people, so I rounded everyone into the van for one last hike, this time to Cedar Falls.

Cedar Falls

Cedar Falls was fairly deserted, since we were there around dinner time. We ended up parking near the falls, so there wasn’t much of a hike to get this view:

But it was about 100 steps down.

Then, since it took us 20 minutes to drive to Cedar Falls but only 5 minutes to walk to the waterfall, we decided to go on a little walk on the trail that loops around the area. It also was a short trail, so it didn’t take too long, but it had a variety of interesting features.

There’s wasn’t any one thing that was spectacular on the trail, just a smattering of different things.

Then, since it was 80 degrees outside (making a lot more icicles fall this day), we decided to stop at the Dairy Queen on the way back to the cabin. Us and about half of Logan, it seemed. We eventually got up to the window, placed our order, and we got the new guy who had just started. He was nervous about having to tip our Blizzards upside down as he had never done that before (he was that new). But we got our stuff and headaed back to the cabin to start packing a bit.

Then it was evening, then morning the next day.

Day 4:
Day 4 was simple: eat breakfast, pack up, clean, and leave. We were out the door well before checkout time of 11:00. We stopped for lunch at some friends’ house on the north side of Columbus, then made it home before dinner.

The End.