Two interesting, relevant articles I found while browsing the joelonsoftware.com archives over lunch:
Open-plan offices are making workers sick
and
Thanks or No Thanks about employee bonuses.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Santa Barbara Wine Country
This past week I visited the Santa Barbara County wine country.
Santa Barbara County has three major AVA’s: Santa Maria Valley in the north part of the county, Santa Ynez Valley in the center, and Santa Rita Hills in the central-west. There are also additional vineyards in Los Alamos and other areas that fall under the more general Santa Barbara County label, which also includes blends of grapes that come from more than one specific AVA, although Santa Rita Hills is technically a sub-AVA of Santa Ynez Valley so blends of the two may be labeled "Santa Ynez Valley".
According to the official Santa Barbara County wine map, there are 108 wineries available for visiting in the region. I spent four days wine tasting in Santa Rita Hills (SRH) and Santa Ynez Valley (SYV), but not Santa Maria Valley, visiting 15 wineries in the in process.
To reach the wine country from Santa Barbara, it’s a scenic drive northwest on the 101 for approximately 40 minutes till the 246 at Buellton. Turn left (west), and you are in the SRH AVA. Turn right (east), and you are in the SYV AVA. The Santa Ynez Valley area is relatively rural and consists of 5 small towns, including:
The landscape is in the Santa Ynez Valley is serene and picturesque, full of small farms, horse ranches, and vineyards framed by mountains. The vineyards are mostly planted Rhone and Bordeaux varietals (syrah, sauvignon blanc, merlot, etc.).
The further west you go into Santa Rita Hills, the more mountainous the landscape and the cooler the climate becomes. Farms and ranches are replaced by cow pastures, which are in-turn replaced by chaparral (and, in places, bare rock). This area is extremely rural, with no services for dozens of miles. The terroir is really distinctive here. Small pockets of vineyards dot the slopes and valleys where it is warm enough for grapes to ripen. Cooler-weather Burgundian varietals of pinot noir and chardonnay dominate, although some Rhone grapes, especially Syrah and Viogner are planted.
The coastal mountain range here is unusual in that it runs east-west instead of north-south, bringing cool ocean breezes to even the hottest, eastern-most vineyards of SYV, dropping temperatures at night, and making SRH the coolest fine-wine growing area in California in spite of being the southernmost.
Santa Barbara County wines were popularized in the movie Sideways, and it’s hard to underestimate what the movie did to the wine business out here, not to mention kicking off a huge nation-wide pinot trend. As someone who had been visiting the area regularly for years before the movie came out, I was witness to the dramatic change: the price of local pinot noir has tripled in some cases, and both quality and planting have increased. At the same time, local merlot has been relegated to a second-tier grape status, only now gradually regaining its reputation. Before Sideways and pinot, the trendy grape in the early 2000s was syrah, pushed to popularity by the Rhone Rangers.
Pinot Noir
These trends made their mark on the wine. I was most impressed with the pinot noirs, many displaying elegance, minerality, and complexity, especially the ones from SRH. Many have the structure and backbone to age a decade or more. Most are characterized by a racy, but not overly bracing acidity indicative of their pedigree of cool-climate but relatively southern latitude growing conditions.
The 2006s were particularly impressive--muscular, well structured, and perfectly balanced--most packed with minerals, earth, leather, and stone fruits.
The 2007s were at an awkward stage: fruit forward and tannic, but showing hints of the grace and elegance that they will become of with bottle age.
The better producers used a percentage of new French oak barrels balanced with neutral oak to mature the wine and give it extra flavor, complexity, and structure without overwhelming with woodsy or vanilla flavors.
Best producers:
Alma Rosa
Sanford
Melville
Foley
Best value:
Lincourt
Syrah
Unlike the pinots, which were mostly all excellent, syrah was a mixed bag. While some syrahs were delicious--fruit forward but with a perfumed elegance, a racy backbone, and balanced oak, others were over-oaked, over-extracted, too hot, too sweet, or unbalanced in some way or another.
Once again, SRH had an advantage. The cooler climate terroir produced more elegant wine.
The winery that really knocked my socks off for syrah is Tensley--my last stop of the entire trip. Their wines were truly aristocratic in their elegance and balance.
Very best producer:
Tensley
Best producers:
Qupe
Melville
Andrew Murray
Merlot
Sideways did a lot of hating on merlot, and I don't blame them. While there are some excellent merlot producers in Napa, most American merlot is not worth much consideration.
While there were a few good, delicious merlots that I tasted which were orders of magnitude better than the typical, nothing was striking. Many producers had some for tasting, but no one concentrated on it.
Best producers:
Sunstone
Whites
I typically shy away from American white wines. I find them either lacking in acid and too sweet, way over-oaked, lacking in character, or all of the above. The whites I tasted however blew me away.
It seems like producers have listened to the criticism and have started making racier wines, and using oak in proper proportions. The chardonnays were excellent--an antithesis of your typical California chardonnay. There was pinot gris, pinot blancs, sauvignon blanc. Of the Rhone varietals, the floral viognier was the most popular, and there were excellent bottlings of roussanne and marsanne, especially at Qupe.
Look for SRH fruit for the chardonnays, pinots, and viogners.
Best producers:
Gainey
Qupe
Foley
Alma Rosa
Lincourt
Sunstone
Santa Barbara County has three major AVA’s: Santa Maria Valley in the north part of the county, Santa Ynez Valley in the center, and Santa Rita Hills in the central-west. There are also additional vineyards in Los Alamos and other areas that fall under the more general Santa Barbara County label, which also includes blends of grapes that come from more than one specific AVA, although Santa Rita Hills is technically a sub-AVA of Santa Ynez Valley so blends of the two may be labeled "Santa Ynez Valley".
According to the official Santa Barbara County wine map, there are 108 wineries available for visiting in the region. I spent four days wine tasting in Santa Rita Hills (SRH) and Santa Ynez Valley (SYV), but not Santa Maria Valley, visiting 15 wineries in the in process.
To reach the wine country from Santa Barbara, it’s a scenic drive northwest on the 101 for approximately 40 minutes till the 246 at Buellton. Turn left (west), and you are in the SRH AVA. Turn right (east), and you are in the SYV AVA. The Santa Ynez Valley area is relatively rural and consists of 5 small towns, including:
- Solvang, where we lodged, is a Danish village full of kitchy shops and restaurants that looks like it was ripped right out of Europe,
- Santa Ynez, an old-west stagecoach stop, and
- Los Olivos, home of art galleries, fine restaurants and more than a dozen wineries.
The landscape is in the Santa Ynez Valley is serene and picturesque, full of small farms, horse ranches, and vineyards framed by mountains. The vineyards are mostly planted Rhone and Bordeaux varietals (syrah, sauvignon blanc, merlot, etc.).
The further west you go into Santa Rita Hills, the more mountainous the landscape and the cooler the climate becomes. Farms and ranches are replaced by cow pastures, which are in-turn replaced by chaparral (and, in places, bare rock). This area is extremely rural, with no services for dozens of miles. The terroir is really distinctive here. Small pockets of vineyards dot the slopes and valleys where it is warm enough for grapes to ripen. Cooler-weather Burgundian varietals of pinot noir and chardonnay dominate, although some Rhone grapes, especially Syrah and Viogner are planted.
The coastal mountain range here is unusual in that it runs east-west instead of north-south, bringing cool ocean breezes to even the hottest, eastern-most vineyards of SYV, dropping temperatures at night, and making SRH the coolest fine-wine growing area in California in spite of being the southernmost.
Santa Barbara County wines were popularized in the movie Sideways, and it’s hard to underestimate what the movie did to the wine business out here, not to mention kicking off a huge nation-wide pinot trend. As someone who had been visiting the area regularly for years before the movie came out, I was witness to the dramatic change: the price of local pinot noir has tripled in some cases, and both quality and planting have increased. At the same time, local merlot has been relegated to a second-tier grape status, only now gradually regaining its reputation. Before Sideways and pinot, the trendy grape in the early 2000s was syrah, pushed to popularity by the Rhone Rangers.
Pinot Noir
These trends made their mark on the wine. I was most impressed with the pinot noirs, many displaying elegance, minerality, and complexity, especially the ones from SRH. Many have the structure and backbone to age a decade or more. Most are characterized by a racy, but not overly bracing acidity indicative of their pedigree of cool-climate but relatively southern latitude growing conditions.
The 2006s were particularly impressive--muscular, well structured, and perfectly balanced--most packed with minerals, earth, leather, and stone fruits.
The 2007s were at an awkward stage: fruit forward and tannic, but showing hints of the grace and elegance that they will become of with bottle age.
The better producers used a percentage of new French oak barrels balanced with neutral oak to mature the wine and give it extra flavor, complexity, and structure without overwhelming with woodsy or vanilla flavors.
Best producers:
Alma Rosa
Sanford
Melville
Foley
Best value:
Lincourt
Syrah
Unlike the pinots, which were mostly all excellent, syrah was a mixed bag. While some syrahs were delicious--fruit forward but with a perfumed elegance, a racy backbone, and balanced oak, others were over-oaked, over-extracted, too hot, too sweet, or unbalanced in some way or another.
Once again, SRH had an advantage. The cooler climate terroir produced more elegant wine.
The winery that really knocked my socks off for syrah is Tensley--my last stop of the entire trip. Their wines were truly aristocratic in their elegance and balance.
Very best producer:
Tensley
Best producers:
Qupe
Melville
Andrew Murray
Merlot
Sideways did a lot of hating on merlot, and I don't blame them. While there are some excellent merlot producers in Napa, most American merlot is not worth much consideration.
While there were a few good, delicious merlots that I tasted which were orders of magnitude better than the typical, nothing was striking. Many producers had some for tasting, but no one concentrated on it.
Best producers:
Sunstone
Whites
I typically shy away from American white wines. I find them either lacking in acid and too sweet, way over-oaked, lacking in character, or all of the above. The whites I tasted however blew me away.
It seems like producers have listened to the criticism and have started making racier wines, and using oak in proper proportions. The chardonnays were excellent--an antithesis of your typical California chardonnay. There was pinot gris, pinot blancs, sauvignon blanc. Of the Rhone varietals, the floral viognier was the most popular, and there were excellent bottlings of roussanne and marsanne, especially at Qupe.
Look for SRH fruit for the chardonnays, pinots, and viogners.
Best producers:
Gainey
Qupe
Foley
Alma Rosa
Lincourt
Sunstone
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Photos from our California trip
Photos from our California trip are posted on flickr. Last night our camera broke, so there probably will only be grainy iPhone photos for the rest of the trip.
Alex
Alex
Monday, May 25, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
A Most Shameful and Unamerican Act
Obama bowed to the Saudi King Abdullah. How dare he? He's supposed to be the leader of the free world. This is absolutely disgusting.
And the wrong is doubled as he did not bow to Queen Elizabeth. What kind of message does that send to our allies and, especially, our enemies?
Alex
And the wrong is doubled as he did not bow to Queen Elizabeth. What kind of message does that send to our allies and, especially, our enemies?
Alex
Monday, March 23, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Monday, March 09, 2009
Lifetime Fitness Indoor Triathlon results & impressions
So I participated in the Lifetime Fitness Indoor Triathlon on Sunday. The event went as following:
Scoring was based on relative distance for each event. The first in each event scores the total number of participants in points and the last scores 1. Since there were 86 participants, a perfect score would have been 258 (86 swim, 86 bike, 86 run) if the participant came in first in each event. The lowest score possible is 3 (1 swim, 1 bike, 1 run) if the participant came in last in all events.
I didn't really train for this event, but I had been swimming pretty well the past couple of weeks. I was only worried about the bike portion, since I had never been on a spin bike before. My entire training for the bike portion was 15min on an upright stationary bike on Wednesday. I knew I could handle the run without a problem.
The strategy was: relax on the swim, make it through the bike, and finish strong on the run.
However, Sunday morning I woke up with a stuffy nose. I knew I was in trouble--I have never been able to swim with a stuffy nose before.
And so it was. Normally I breathe every 2-3 strokes while swimming. With a stuffy nose, I had to breathe on every stroke. I was flopping around like a beached whale in the pool, completely unable to get any sort of form. I panicked--so much for trying to relax. The swim turned into 10min of hell.
I was so exhausted from the swim that it took me a while to transition: quick shower to rinse off the chlorine, get dressed, and run up two flights of stairs to the cycle studio on the 3rd floor. At this point I had about 20sec before the start so I didn't get a chance to adjust the spin bike properly. I realized almost right away that I wasn't getting the right power into the pedals since my seat was too far back. I trudged through the bike--5.8mi in the first 15min and another 6.4mi in the second 15min. Dimple had her Cardio music playing in the studio and they were showing scenes from the Tour de France on the big screens, which was pretty motivational.
The run is my forte, so I was excited about finally getting to treadmill. I was pretty tired from the other events and my legs were rubbery from the bike. However, I felt comfortable for the first time and knew I could hold a decent speed, in spite of the fatigue. I started out at 9 min/mi for the first few minutes, moved it up to an 8 min/mi until the 10 minute mark then moved it up to a 7:30 min/mi and finally a 7:05, finishing with 2.66 miles over 20min.
Exhausted, I was pretty glad for the event to be over.
Final score: 127 (20 swim, 33 bike, 74 run) which put me 12th out of 17 in the male under 40 division. Pretty pathetic, but it was a nice learning experience. I think I could do much better next year if I took a few spin classes and worked on my swim form (and figure out how relax in the pool even with a stuffy nose).
Final impressions: the event was very well organized (thanks to Dimple!) and was pretty fun. However, the lack of spectators cheering and inability to see who is ahead and who is behind you during the race made it less exciting than a normal outdoor race.
It does make me want to do an outdoor triathlon; although I definitely would need to work on my swim and bike.
Post script: I woke up this morning with major saddle soreness and a sore neck; demonstrating how my bike seat was poorly adjusted and my breathing was completely incorrect in the pool.
Update: The official results have been posted.
- 10 min swim in the lap pool, 2 participants per lane
- 10 min transition
- 30 min bike in the cycling studio, on a spin bike
- 5 min transition
- 20 min run on a treadmill
Scoring was based on relative distance for each event. The first in each event scores the total number of participants in points and the last scores 1. Since there were 86 participants, a perfect score would have been 258 (86 swim, 86 bike, 86 run) if the participant came in first in each event. The lowest score possible is 3 (1 swim, 1 bike, 1 run) if the participant came in last in all events.
I didn't really train for this event, but I had been swimming pretty well the past couple of weeks. I was only worried about the bike portion, since I had never been on a spin bike before. My entire training for the bike portion was 15min on an upright stationary bike on Wednesday. I knew I could handle the run without a problem.
The strategy was: relax on the swim, make it through the bike, and finish strong on the run.
However, Sunday morning I woke up with a stuffy nose. I knew I was in trouble--I have never been able to swim with a stuffy nose before.
And so it was. Normally I breathe every 2-3 strokes while swimming. With a stuffy nose, I had to breathe on every stroke. I was flopping around like a beached whale in the pool, completely unable to get any sort of form. I panicked--so much for trying to relax. The swim turned into 10min of hell.
I was so exhausted from the swim that it took me a while to transition: quick shower to rinse off the chlorine, get dressed, and run up two flights of stairs to the cycle studio on the 3rd floor. At this point I had about 20sec before the start so I didn't get a chance to adjust the spin bike properly. I realized almost right away that I wasn't getting the right power into the pedals since my seat was too far back. I trudged through the bike--5.8mi in the first 15min and another 6.4mi in the second 15min. Dimple had her Cardio music playing in the studio and they were showing scenes from the Tour de France on the big screens, which was pretty motivational.
The run is my forte, so I was excited about finally getting to treadmill. I was pretty tired from the other events and my legs were rubbery from the bike. However, I felt comfortable for the first time and knew I could hold a decent speed, in spite of the fatigue. I started out at 9 min/mi for the first few minutes, moved it up to an 8 min/mi until the 10 minute mark then moved it up to a 7:30 min/mi and finally a 7:05, finishing with 2.66 miles over 20min.
Exhausted, I was pretty glad for the event to be over.
Final score: 127 (20 swim, 33 bike, 74 run) which put me 12th out of 17 in the male under 40 division. Pretty pathetic, but it was a nice learning experience. I think I could do much better next year if I took a few spin classes and worked on my swim form (and figure out how relax in the pool even with a stuffy nose).
Final impressions: the event was very well organized (thanks to Dimple!) and was pretty fun. However, the lack of spectators cheering and inability to see who is ahead and who is behind you during the race made it less exciting than a normal outdoor race.
It does make me want to do an outdoor triathlon; although I definitely would need to work on my swim and bike.
Post script: I woke up this morning with major saddle soreness and a sore neck; demonstrating how my bike seat was poorly adjusted and my breathing was completely incorrect in the pool.
Update: The official results have been posted.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Best Running Ad ever
This ad really chocked me up:
- NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN HUMBLED BY JOGGING.
If all we want to do is feel good about ourselves, jogging is the ticket. It doesn't challenge us. It doesn't test us. It doesn't exact a physical or psychological toll. Worst case scenario is, jogging may cause mild perspiration on color-coordinated sweat suits. But if we're willing to push ourselves into uncharted territory, a place littered with broken bodies and remnants of the human psyche, running may be what we're looking for. Without question, it dishes out more heaping helpings of humble pie than any sport we know of. Little wonder that so few people have the testicular fortitude to lace up and run like an animal.
- taken from a Pearl Izumi add in the March issue of Runner's World, part of their "Run Like an Animal/We Are Not Joggers" campaign.
Friday, March 06, 2009
What's better? Speed Racer, Lightning McQueen, or Spiderman?
This was the question posed to me this morning by my son as I was trying to wake up. Of course, it was a rhetorical question. He told me that he likes Speed Racer better than Lightning McQueen and Spiderman the best. Which is funny, because for his birthday he wants... (and I quote...)
- ... a Lightning McQueen toy that lights up and drives by itself, and if you can't find it just get me another Lightning McQueen toy.
Lifetime Fitness Indoor Triathlon
How lame is participating in an indoor triathlon? Does finishing one make you a triathlete?
I'll soon be able to answer these questions.
My wife is running the local Lifetime Fitness indoor tri/ this Sunday and guilted me into registering. Luckily I got the very last available slot in the 9:40 wave (i.e., the 8:40 pre-daylight savings wave) so I don't have to wake up at 5am.
I've never been on a spin bike before, so wish me luck.
I'll soon be able to answer these questions.
My wife is running the local Lifetime Fitness indoor tri/ this Sunday and guilted me into registering. Luckily I got the very last available slot in the 9:40 wave (i.e., the 8:40 pre-daylight savings wave) so I don't have to wake up at 5am.
I've never been on a spin bike before, so wish me luck.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Silverlight & Unit Testing
Can it be done for real? Beyond the crappy integration testing that Microsoft provides? This blog post seems to think so.
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