I don’t even need to say much else, just read this quote from the Detroit Institute of Art site.

From 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., boxers from Detroit’s famed Kronk gym duke it out and Mexican masked wrestlers, Revolucha, hit the mat in a ring taking center stage in Prentis Court. Ann Arbor’s The Bang! provides the backdrop with a dance party adventure mixing everything from rock’n’roll to ‘60s soul, from BritPop to HipHop.

Yes.

(That’s on a Thursday night by the way.)

I’ve discussed my love of rock music in the Spring, and while that still holds true that’s not what I’m taking about now. Unfortunately Spring always seems to be one of the busier seasons as well. Not necessarily at work; work is just always full-tilt so it’s hard to say one season is particularly busier than another. It’s with everything else going on. Weddings, graduations, festivals and such. A good time of the year to be sure, but pretty draining.

That’s a big part of the reason I haven’t posted here lately. It’s been on my mind and in fact I’ve had plenty to say; just not enough time. Between the crazy deadlines at work, serving as a judge for the MSU Engineering Design Day competition again, various social engagements and homeowner responsibilities it’s been tough to scrape together much time for myself.

April has completely evaporated and May looks to be even worse. My sister is graduating and then needs help moving from East Lansing. I have several friends getting married not to mention the various parties that are associated with each. Then there will be my weekend of personal enjoyment, aka DEMF (note the countdown to the right). The lineup looks killer this year and I fully plan on spending all three days down in Hart Plaza.

But despite being so busy things are good. The trees are getting green and birds are chirping. The last few days have been a bit cold for my taste, but honestly this is a great time to be in Michigan. Actually, all the weather in Michigan that isn’t January-March is pretty awesome in my opinion.

I’ll have another post soon about some of the cool stuff I’m working on from a musical perspective.

I’ve had a back and forth relationship with coffee, at least in the morning. I’m a big coffee fan, but I can’t say I’ve ever been one of those people who immediately drink coffee when they get up. More often than not I’d have coffee in the evening, either as something of a perk-me-up when I was in college for those late night coding sessions or just after dinner to relax.

These days though you’re more likely to spot me at work with my blue stoneware mug hovering near the kitchen looking, shall we say, sunken eyed.

I can’t say for sure when the change came, but lately I’m definitely interested in having a couple cups (two creams one sugar, thanks) when I get to work in the morning. Not super early (it tends to bother my stomach) but let us say 9:30 and 10:30 could both be considered coffee o’clock.

Doesn’t really seem to wake me up much, it’s just kind of pleasant I guess. Maybe I’m just further satisfying the social roles placed on me, the high-tech office worker.

So far the early part of Spring here in Detroit has been somewhat interesting. It warmed up, and then promptly decided to drop 10 inches of snow a couple days later. Well, the snow is gone now and the sun is even starting to make a few appearances.

And while it’s 50 (a heatwave compared to how it was just a couple weeks ago) I still want more. This little preview of full blown Spring and Summer has got me impatient for long days, shorts and patio furniture. Still even this is great. We’re past those 3-4 months of weather suck and on to the truly great weather that we can have here in Michigan. Sure the summers might be a little sticky, but then again at least it’s not Houston. (Sorry Andy.)

Last Thursday I went to Chicago for four glorious days of friends, fun and not-giving-a-damn. The punishment for taking a few vacation days of course is now I’m really under the gun at work, which is why I haven’t written this post till now. That’s also why it’ll be pretty short.  But here’s the highlights!

• Hung out with my childhood friend and good buddy Evan of The Sapiens Thursday night. Had an awesome German dinner where we each drank two liters of beer out of a glass boot so large that we had to put a deposit down on it.
• Reaffirmed that Mexican bakeries are the greatest thing ever, by getting some seriously tasty pastries at roughly 3:30 AM for dirt cheap.
• Got over my first hangover by staring at aquatic life at the Shed. I love that place. It was kind of nice to go by myself for once and just stare at whatever I wanted.
• Rested my legs after the aquarium by taking in a couple shows at the Adler planetarium. I hadn’t been there since I was a little kid, so it was pretty cool to go back and take it easy.
• Met some great people my college buddy Chris works with at Sears. They do some surprisingly cool work over there. It may be fairly different industries, but it was amusing to see how similar my job is to some of the people that I met there.
• Epic Saturday involving car shuffling, relaxing, meeting more new people, lots of beer to celebrate the unofficially-official St. Patty’s Day, cab rides to Wrigley and clubbing.
• Meeting up with my old coworkers from Crowe. In some ways this was the highlight of the trip and it made me realize that if there was anything at all I missed about that life it was that handful of people that I met up with in Chicago.
• Sunday spent recuperating, more car shuffling and one of the best gyros I’ve ever had (outside of Detroit’s Greektown that is).

Chicago is a fantastic city with tons of stuff going on. In many ways it’s my favorite city in the US. But despite that, it isn’t home. I seem to be one of the lucky (unlucky?) ones who can appreciate Detroit for what it is, and am comfortable and happy here. Still, I love visiting Chicago and there’s no question I’ll be back in a few months.

The LA Times has reported that CA will begin subsidizing E85. Now, I know that I’ve made my views relatively clear, so it should come to no shock that I’m not really pleased with California’s decision to push this form of energy (at the very least in its current incarnation). What is a bit shocking (at least to me) is that California is - for the most part - quite well informed when it comes to these things and often makes some good decisions. This one is not though and seems more like hopping on the political E85 bandwagon.

Just as a refresher the reason why I think this is a horrible idea is because E85 produced from corn (which is what they’re hinting at in the article) has net impact on the environment that is worse than gasoline. This is due to the fact that refining ethanol from corn is a very inefficient process. Couple that with the fact that with the fact that current E85 powertrains actually have lower fuel efficiency and higher emissions than gasoline or diesel engines and it’s just silly. Oh and as I may have mentioned before the jury seems to be leaning toward the fact that the ethanol emissions may in fact be worse for the environment than those from pure hydrocarbon based fuels.

Last two issues aside, I would have thought that the fact that it takes a good deal more fossil fuels to create ethanol from corn would be enough to prevent this from happening. The really odd thing is that it’s not like California is even completely unaware of this. Their 2007 Climate Action Programs document states:

[...] When used as a trans-portation fuel, a gallon of cellulosic ethanol (made from rice straw or sugar cane) produces 70 percent less greenhouse gases than a gallon of gasoline. [source (PDF)]

So clearly someone over there understands at least part of what’s going on. Why then this move? It’s a pretty bold one and somewhat troubling too. Up till this point I was rather happy that E85 wasn’t pushed more heavily in California. To me it showed that they realized what the problems with it were and they were holding out for a more sustainable energy product. This then goes back on that in a big way, not only for that state (with its huge population) but because California is in many ways a trend setter when it comes to environmental policy.

The fact alone that it will become a state law in 2010 that all fuel sold in the state will become an E10 blend (nearly double the current ethanol in the mix) will have far reaching impacts. Throw subsidies into the mix and at worst you will get a lot of adoption (which will not be good for the environment or our economy) and at the very least you tie up government funds in a poorly thought out program.

For the past week or so the 16-story atrium fountain here in the Compuware building has been turned off for maintenance. It’s actually rather weird to not hear that white noise in the atrium; I noticed it much quicker than I would have thought.

I’ve heard it off before now. They stop it late at night, but it’s more interesting during the work day. The massive open space without that water to dampen the noise lets everything echo quite a bit. Just walking to the gym on the second floor you can hear people across the lobby near the main entry talking; the acoustics aren’t so much pleasant as they are interesting.

In general there’s something about running water that’s soothing though. Most people will agree to that, but the reason why I think has to do with white noise in general. Maybe because it’s harder to hear our own thoughts, or for some easier to focus. I guess it depends how much you like thinking.

I remember back in college my buddies and I would often pick the section of the library near the ventilation system because that background noise helped to soften other conversations and let us retreat into our own thoughts. Something about that background noise (even when we had headphones on) was very conducive to concentrating. And it was also nice if we had to talk to each other we didn’t have to feel like we’d be disturbing everyone else.

I’ve always liked the water feature here at work quite a bit and I hope they hurry up with whatever they’re doing and turn it back on again.

Last night after Aikido I headed into the city and enjoyed the late-night portion of the first day of the Winter Blast. I met up with several friends in the lobby of the Compuware building and we quickly made our way to one of many heated tents to check out Echos of Pink Floyd (a Detroit based Pink Floyd tribute band). The tent was packed and everyone was really digging it. These guys were good, no question.

A few beverages later we found ourselves outside toasting marshmallows downtown over roaring fires. The place was packed I was happy to see. Everyone was very friendly and having a good time. We even took turns holding a giant chunk of ice meaning it was your chance to talk.

All in all it was definitely a good time. I’m looking forward to going back tonight and checking out the DEMF preview.

In part 1 of Why I hate E85 I examined some of the background principles at work and why alcohol based fuels can actually be good. This post will be more about why I think corn-based E85 is a waste of time from a technology stand point and bad for our economy.

The cliff-hanger I left with was that flex-fuel vehicles are a not designed to be run only on a fuel with a high amount of ethanol, hence the term flex-fuel. After all that talking I did about octane ratings, compression ratios and energy extraction it should be obvious why this matters. You have to run a flex-fuel vehicle at a low compression ratio so that normal gas doesn’t pre-ignite or knock. So what you get is an engine that can’t extract as much work from a larger volume of fuel (richer air/fuel ratio) and that means lower miles per gallon.

It’s not even better for the environment. With a non-optimal compression ratio the E85 fuel actually gives off more emissions. And despite what the advertising would like you to believe, ethanol emissions aren’t that great.

But it goes deeper.  Julius beat me to the punch and did a great job talking about many of the reasons why corn is a horrible choice to create ethanol. I won’t bother reiterating any of those points here, just read the post yourself and ask yourself why politics is interfering with the logical choices we should be making to insure a responsible energy policy. This is the main reason why I dislike E85.

Another ridiculous fact is that often the price of E85 and gas are locked. So if gas goes up 10 cents, E85 also goes up 10 cents. Now E85 is 15% gasoline, so if it goes up 1.5 cents that would make sense. Unfortunately people are used to fuel costs going up together and so they take advantage. Everyone wants to get rich quick.

If we were selling cars with power trains designed to run only ethanol as well as creating the fuel from a source that was actually renewable (like switchgrass) then I wouldn’t have to write this post. Unfortunately our current policies are half-assed attempts that are not only ineffective but might actually cause more problems.

From an email I exchanged earlier with Julie:

The security guards in my building will always say “Happy Friday” in the mornings when you come in or when you’re coming back from lunch, etc. It’s very refreshing and always makes me smile. Well today as I was was coming in there was a new guy. I scanned my badge and walked passed the desk and when I didn’t hear “Happy Friday” it stopped me dead in my tracks.

I turned and shot a sidelong glance at him and he said, “Can I help you?”
What I replied must have seemed somewhat rude, “You’re supposed to say ‘Happy Friday.’ People count on that. They need to hear it.”
“Why?” was the stone wall answer I was hoping not to hear.
“Well,” with what must have been a small amount of panic showing in my voice at this point, “that’s just what we do here. Friday isn’t just another day. It’s a state of mind. It makes the fact that you’re here on what should be the first day of weekend OK. Isn’t it good that it’s Friday?”
He looked at me for a minute and then said “If you think it’s that important I will. I have to work the weekend shift though, so my ‘Friday’ starts on Tuesday–”
I cut him off, “I will tell you ‘Happy Tuesday’ if you tell me ‘Happy Friday’. Come on man, what do you say?”
He smiled. “Happy Friday.”