We live in a police state

I’ve been following a series of stories similar to this one where an interracial couple was targeted by the LAPD and it’s disgusting and scary.  Why? Because the cops are targeting and harassing everyday citizens for non-crimes. For instance, this incident, where a mother was arrested when her husband took her kids to a restaurant to use the bathroom, happened across the street from my office.  I would like to believe it’s not race related because I don’t know all the facts in all these incidents but chances are, it is race related.

Today it is Race X or Race Y. Tomorrow it will be another race…when did the police stop protecting, and start harassing?

End of life care services

Each time I’ve run this race, Run As One, in previous years, I always thought of my aunt who has been battling lung cancer as a non-smoker for some years now.  After several surgeries and removal of pieces of her lung which kept the cancer in remission, it has returned this year with a vengeance, spreading into the bones, eventually making it near impossible for her to walk or even lie down as it’s spreading in her spine and knees.

As an aside, I learned that there are a lot of non-smokers who suffer with lung cancer and it seems to be higher for Asian women.  I guess it is good to know to try to keep healthy — damn those smokers and all the second-hand smoke we are forced to inhale every day. In the city, I feel like you can’t take a breath without inhaling cigarette smoke — heck it comes through our apt window nightly (no thanks to smoking neighbors)!  We have to exhaust it out and turn on the air filter to keep the baby from inhaling it all night!

We’ve been through this before — trying to comfort a loved one wrestle with the slow, painful wasting away that is cancer — with other family members but this is the first time where we are given a bit more time than a few weeks which usually results in the patient being in the hospital.  So we were asked to set up hospice care for her and we had no idea what that entailed…or how to set it up.

My bro has been doing a lot of research for hospice and palliative care in the last days as sadly, it has reached that point.  (Irritatingly enough, the primary care doc from chinatown was so inept he had no idea how to set it up as it is the PC doc’s responsibility to refer the patient. Luckily, the oncologist was able to help and he went above and beyond working this weekend to help us.)  He’s helped set one up with VNS and we also learned that some other recommended ones in the NYC region are MJHS and Calvary.

My bro found a lot of really useful links in his research to learn more so I wanted to document some of them in one place b/c the whole hospice thing was such a scary unknown to us before this.  We are in the beginnings of this journey so I’m sure we will learn more. I hope to never need to go through this again any time soon but it’s always good to be armed with information.

Borrowing NYPL ebooks for the Kindle

I recently visited the NYPL at 42nd St during lunch and finally got myself a library card. I haven’t been in this library for at least a decade and I haven’t been to a public library in a long while since I switched over to using a Kindle a few years ago.

The upside is that I no longer have many bookshelves overloaded with physical books; it is easier when it comes to moving apartments because I used to have 25-35 heavy boxes of just books (most have been donated between 2008-2012 leaving me with just enough for half a cabinet). At one point I had four large bookcases and one shelf noisily collapsed with much fanfare in the middle of the night scaring the stuffings out of me.

The downside is that I’ve spent way too much money buying books because it is too easy to buy them on the kindle. You don’t even realize it until you do an inventory and discover you’ve bought hundreds of books.

Anyway, I decided to get a library card so I can borrow NYPL ebooks. It’s pretty cool. The nypl steps to do it was a bit confusing at first but I finally got the hang of it.  I’m going to write my own little how-to here in case anyone is trying it out for the first time too. Here’s some useful info written in 2011 from the NYPL though the visuals are a little outdated.

Library stuff:

  • Apply for a library card: You can go to a NYPL in person and apply there (bring a piece of ID like your driver’s license) or you can apply online but you will still need to go to a library with your ID to have your application validated and to pick up the physical card. If there isn’t a lot of people applying, it takes about 15 mins. Please note the card doesn’t work in Queens — you need to get a separate Queens library card.
  • Library cards require you to have a PIN and the cards expire every 3 years.  The NYPL online member accounts are pretty nice — you can search for books, put a hold on books and add books to the wish list.
  • Borrowing an e-book:  Log into your account at the NYPL eBooks site. Search for a book that you want. (Hint: use the filters to filter by Kindle ebooks that are currently available else all you will end up with are books that you need to put a hold on. Just about every book I wanted to read had 20+ people in front of me waiting to read it too.)  Once younypl ebooks bookshelf have found a book you want and it is available for borrowing, click on “Borrow”. This will add the book to your bookshelf. Log into your Amazon account (or the one that is linked to your kindle device). Go back to the nypl ebook bookshelf and click on “Download” and choose the format (Kindle book). Now go back to your Amazon account. You should see the book (if you don’t, then search for the title) with a button on the right side bar that says “Get library book”. Choose the device you want to send to from the drop down list (in case you have more than one kindle) and click on “Send to Device”. Turn on your kindle, make sure wifi is enabled and you should see the book downloading!

Happy Reading!

 

Bird Identification with the Merlin Bird ID App

My brother told me about this Merlin Bird ID App from Cornell University. I like watching birds and I’ve always been curious about the types of birds in my neighborhood so I downloaded the app to try.

It is a very good app and it’s easy to use and provides a consistent and clean user experience. I only wish there was a way to create a list of birds I saw so I wrote to them about that in the contact form. On my walk with the baby, I was able to identify the regular birds I see all the time: the American robin, the European starling, the mourning dove, the cardinal and the bluejay (and what a screechy call it has!). I was also able to identify the black and white bird I saw in battery park city weeks ago (a black and white warbler) and the oddity I saw back in January: the Northern Harrier (I mistakenly thought it was an owl at the time but felt it was odd that an owl would kill a pigeon and fly away in the day time).

I highly recommend this app if you are into birds or just want to know what is flying and chirping around you.

Reviewing Perl with a baby is no easy task

For a week or two now, I have been trying to get back to programming, starting with a language I once used back in 1999: Perl. I started watching this Lea Verou video of reg-ex and then referred to this tutorial to trigger some memories and get back to the basic Perl syntax. Normally, I can complete this in a few hours and then do some practice apps and I would have the syntax down after a few more days or a week of practice.

This time it was challenging and I still didn’t finish the video or tutorial after 2 or so weeks! Why? Because there is a baby in the room! I wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me this prior to this year but it is nearly impossible to do any kind of work that requires deep mental concentration and focus when there is an infant present. People say babies sleep all the time — so not true! They sleep in 10-15 min intervals …. maybe 30 mins if you are lucky! Who can get any good learning or programming done in blocks of 10-15 mins?!

I am going to have to table this review for another time. I’ve had these 2 link tabs opened forever on my machine and just not getting the time to dive it. I have my perl program started but it has not gotten too far.

$userstring =~ /baby!/

Video: Stop calling them girls

Interesting article from Lea Verou (seasoned tech expert) on the Women in Technology (WiT) movement and whether that’s helping or harming women.  Here’s a video Lea refers to about how women are diminished when women or men use “girls” to describe women in the workplace.

Here’s the video Lea referenced in her article about using a male picture and seeing what response she would get – double standards out there in tech?


 

Bucket List item achieved! First Half Marathon Completed!

Leave a reply

oasisMedalFour years ago, if anyone were to tell me that I would one day be able to run over a mile, and enjoy it, and eventually run and complete a half-marathon under 3hrs, I would not have believed them.  It was unimaginable to me.

But we (the bro, the hubby and me) did it last weekend! I’m very proud of all of us! It didn’t come easy and there were some tough days leading up to it: too much sight-seeing and walking around Montreal in the rain and chill, and too much exploring at the fun Running Expo and not enough focus on proper nutrition and carbo loading, and me getting some bad stomach cramps and a severe headache the night before; my bro got a giant bruise on his shin when he slammed it the day before the trip, my hubby’s sinuses acting up….

But all that goes out the window when you become part of the crowd! The energy of race day takes over. When I registered, I put myself down for the last corral, thinking at best, I would finish around 3:30 IMG_9611minutes. (The time limit was 3:45.) I didn’t have high expectations on my time — just wanted to finish under the limit.  The first 6 miles wasn’t so bad. Even the next 2 after that was ok. But mile 9 and beyond became a mental and physical battle. The sole of my left foot, and eventually right foot, and the bony area under both big toes started hurting like a mutha$@$!@# every time each foot landed and it only got worse as I ran. It felt like my feet were going to split open right at the big toes.  I started to try not to land on the ball of my feet and that made my knee start to hurt a lot.  Then my thighs started to burn and ache, and my calves would tighten up and many times
IMG_9663around mile 11 or 12, my knee did not want to bend anymore.  But my hubby stuck with me to keep coaxing me on even though he could have just sprinted on ahead as he was doing ok and wasn’t feeling as much pain or fatigue as I was.  At one point, I even spent several minutes just speed walking my way through the streets of Montreal. Throw in more walk breaks and stretch breaks as we neared mile 13…. and somehow, the finish line was near.  Montreal has the friendliest and most supportive spectators — en francais too! When a spectator saw me walking and shouted, “come on, it’s only 500 meters away!”, I started running again and pushed myself to keep running till I crossed it at 2:59!  (Those were the longest 500 meters of my life!)
montrealHalf_14Right after crossing the finish line, all I wanted to do was lie down on the grass and have someone massage my thighs and calves and lower back because everything hurt!  Standing was an ordeal as the lactic build-up was just cramping up all over my thighs and we were all walking funny. But somehow, we managed to chill for a while, take in the ambience, watch the post-run concert a little bit, amble out of the park and mosey on down to St. Denis for some poutine and burgers at Frites Alors! before getting back to the hotel room to stretch and massage out those sore muscles!

Do I want to do this again? If you asked me right after I finished, I may have said no. Now, a week later, I do feel like doing it again! 🙂 Maybe not right away. My knee pain still haven’t fully disappeared and I still have to rehabilitate it. But I have a few short NYRR races that I’m thinking of signing up but will wait till after I come back from my next trip.  What I would want to improve on next time is the training — start training earlier and adhere to the training plan with more discipline and have better nutrition goals.  I didn’t train very well this time and hurt my knee back in July/Aug.  I also didn’t eat right (having drank alcohol prob 3-4 times the days leading up to the race trip and also eaten more fried, oily foods than I should have) and never ran more than 6 miles before hitting the 13.1 so it was pretty brutal on my body.  That said, all the soreness officially left my legs by Wed or Thurs.

My new running goals is to improve on speed and to attain the following:

  • sub 30min 5k
  • sub 1hr 10k
  • achieving the 10-min mile (and eventually hitting a sub-10 min mile if possible)
  • drop 15 lbs (which would help with speed and take a load off the knees!)

Thank you Montreal for a great race!