I loved being a member of the Boy Scouts of America as a young man. I built friendships that have lasted a lifetime. I first became interested in law, economics, electronics and computers while working on merit badges and participating in scout activities. With my troop, I backpacked across some of the most beautiful wilderness in the inter-mountain west. I served on staff at regular scout camps, as a trainer at Junior Leader Training camps, and attended the 1985 National Jamboree as a staff member.

I have been registered as leader for most of my adult life, and currently serve on the scout committee of the troop chartered to my LDS Ward.

But my relationship with scouting has been dysfunctional for years. Some time ago I began to feel uncomfortable with the BSA policy of excluding homosexuals (and atheists as well, but that's a different blog post...). I believe (and I am confident that scientific research clearly shows) that the range of human sexuality is not a binary state, but that it exists upon a continuum; and that same sex attraction qualifies as an innate and unchangeable characteristic no different from hair or skin color. I'm sure most people have heard this example before, but I know that there was no point in my life at which I said to myself "hmmm, I think I will be sexually attracted to women and not men." I no more made the choice to be heterosexual than I made the choice to have a second toe longer than the first.

It is on this basis, that gender identity and attraction is innate and no different from race, that I find that I cannot support laws and institutions that treat homosexuals differently than their heterosexual counterparts.

With the recent announcement that the BSA is considering changing it's policy of excluding homosexuals, I was asked to complete a survey by my local BSA council. The following is my response in the "other comment" section of that survey.

I am an Eagle Scout, Vigil Honor Member and District Award of Merit holder. I am also an active member of the LDS Church. Over the last several years however, I have been reducing both my financial support and my time invested in the BSA over precisely this issue. The following example presupposes an understanding of youth programs in the LDS church, but should still be easily understandable to those outside that circle.

Imagine a Mormon boy between 12 and 18. This young man also happens to be a homosexual. He has been interviewed and found worthy to hold a priesthood office and fulfill responsibilities in a quorum (openly homosexual males can have the priesthood in the LDS church). He attends the temple regularly with his young men's group (temple recommends are allowed for chaste homosexuals). With the recent change in mission age eligibility he plans to serve a 2-year proselytizing mission as soon as he graduates high school (allowed as well).

Yet, during these formative years, when he should be building character, relationships and skills that will last him a lifetime, he is excluded from camp-outs and activities. He can't experience the fun and learning of working on merit badges, or the pride of receiving awards his friends and fellow Mormons receive. This, solely because the BSA won’t allow him to be a Boy Scout. How can this be just? How can it qualify as being Kind, or Friendly?

While the courts may continue to rule that there is sound legal basis for such an exclusionary policy as is currently in place, not a single person has been able to state to me a rational, ethical or moral argument for continuing what is clearly offensive discrimination and unfortunate exclusion on an unjust basis.

It's time that we moved on and caught up with most of the rest of the civilized world on this issue.

(Note: My response was inspired by this post.)

I posted on facebook the other day that in Utah, your vote in the presidential election is the least important vote you can cast. Congressional, State and Local races are far more important in terms of their day-to-day impact in your life. In Utah one of those important races is the one for my congressional district. The race between Jim Matheson and Mia Love has generated a lot of interest, not just in the district, but across the state and the nation.

There is a lot of outside money at play in this race, and both sides are exaggerating the failings and misgivings of the other. In the case of Mia Love supporters they are, through ads and through robo-calls (including one done by Romney that has hit my house twice), trying to paint Matheson as a liberal, bought and paid for by the interests that support President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and some radical leftist agenda. This is so far beyond misleading that the pants of the people involved should spontaneously burst into flames.

There is a great blog if you are a political data junkie like me called Utah Data Points. One of their main contibuters is a Brigham Young University PoliSci professor and member of the BYU sponsored Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, "a nonpartisan academic research center seeking to increase knowledge about the practice of American democracy." The blog released a post called "Is Jim Matheson a Liberal or a Moderate". The post looks at data on how Matheson votes relative to his colleagues in the House and concludes:

It is readily apparent that Matheson is among the most conservative Democrats in the US House. Of 194 Democrats presently serving, only 4 have a score more conservative than Matheson’s...

Usually, predictability is pretty high. ...you can predict Rob Bishop’s vote 92% of the time and Jason Chaffetz’s vote 93% of the time. These are typical scores...

Jim Matheson, meanwhile, is hard to pin down. You can predict his vote only 78% of the time. That might sound high in absolute terms, but in the highly polarized environment of the US House, that’s a remarkably low score. Only 5 of the 435 Representatives have a lower predictability score. From a statistical standpoint, this low predictability score suggests that Matheson’s Congressional votes often go against partisan expectations.

I am supporting Jim Matheson in this race. That support is represented my much more than my vote. I have been volunteering in the mail operations and by entering canvassing data for several weeks. In this race I firmly believe that Matheson is the better candidate for me, for my family and for our district. It should be noted that in many ways, Matheson is more conservative than I am, and we disagree on many significant issues. When someone has been in congress for a while they will have taken a lot of votes that can be analyzed and debated, but in these areas I think he presents a better choice than Mia Love:

• He's fiscally conservative, but pragmatic, not dogmatic. He voted for several of the various stimulus bills that in my opinion were required and essential to prevent us from falling into a severe depression, rather than the deep recession that we experienced.
• He has a history of voting in favor of public education programs, including Green School grants and other federal grant based education programs.
• While generally "pro-life" he voted to expand embryonic stem cell research, one of the most promising areas of medical innovation.
• He's voted to prohibit job discrimination based on sexual orientation, and voted against a proposed constitutional amendment banning desecration of the flag, thereby protecting our right to free speech and expression.
• He voted against making the Patriot Act permanent.
• He has voted in favor of several infrastructure funding bills that include mass-transit projects and investments in repairing our nations failing roads, tunnels and bridges.
• He voted against making the Bush Era Tax Cuts permanent.
• His positions on tax and entitlement reform tend toward moderate and reasonable modifications that benefit lower and middle income Americans. 
  Source: On The Issues: Jim Matheson 

Chaffetz is far to the right of the Republican party generally, with 93% of House Republicans to his left and only a handful to his right. (see Footnote 1)

I had a somewhat testy exchange of Facebook a few weeks ago in which I posted a link to the Salt Lake Tribune (Trib) and someone (apologies again to that person...) replied that the Trib was far to liberal for their taste. I don't think there is any doubt that the Trib is considerably more "liberal" in their coverage than the Deseret News, but I don't think they are really off center compared to the rest of the country. As evidence that it really wasn't a left biased newespaper, I submitted that at the time the Trib had endorsed more Republicans for major state races than they had Democrats. 

That certainly is not conclusive proof of a lack of liberal bias on the part of the Trib. But I don't think that is really the issue. There is a bias, just not the kind of bias that you would expect. Below are the endorsements the Trib has now completed in the Presidential race, and races for Governor, Senate and all four House races:

• President -- Obama (D) link
• Governor -- Herbert (R) link
• Senate -- Hatch (R) link
• House 1 -- Bishop (R) link
• House 2 -- Seegmiller (D) link 
• House 3 -- Chaffetz (R) link
• House 4 -- Matheson (D) link

I have been sitting on this post for a little over a month or so because I wanted to be clear in what I said, and I wanted to check some of my source materials. I've also been a little afraid of offending some people who I happen to really like, even though we disagree. At the same time, I need to be honest in what I feel and believe, and not sit by idly while those beliefs are ignored.

I am an active member of the LDS church. I try to attend faithfully, contribute and overall live a Christ-like life. The LDS Church demographically is very conservative, especially within Utah. That means, when discussions turn the least bit political, I am likely on the wrong side of the issue for most people in the congregation. This problem arose a few weeks ago in the adult Sunday School lesson. I won't bore you with all the details, but the main flow became one of outrage at the 'persecution' of religious people in this country, as well as the devastating social effects of 'removing god from our schools'.

After the 3rd or 4th comment, I could no longer sit quietly. I raised my hand and when called on said:

I think we need to be careful about the level or exaggeration and hyperbole we use when we talk about being persecuted for our religion. We are all sitting in a church that operates without government interference. We came today without fear that our presence was being recorded and tracked by the government. We can worship how we want and when we want.

We can talk to our neighbors and our co-workers about our beliefs without fear of imprisonment. We can wear religious symbols in public and at work without fear of reprisal.

There are limits on what the government can do with regard to religion, but as private citizens, I just don't see the persecution that keeps being talked about here.

There was a hew and cry about the governments "war on religion", and again comments about not being able to pray in school, to which I tried to respond but wasn't really effective. The instructor (who I respect and is a good instructor I should add) tried successfully to move along from that topic to the next bullet point in his lesson.

That would have been the end of it, had the instructor and I not found ourselves leaving the building through the same door at the same time. He mentioned to me that he appreciated my comments, and the fact that I felt comfortable expressing them. I thanked him, and said I thought he did a good job, and that these discussions are hard for me because I think the separation of Church and State is an important and often misunderstood topic. That lead to him bringing up some specific examples of religion in schools (prayer, religious choral music, etc) and said he would have not problem with a mainstream protestant prayer, or "even a Muslim prayer". I tried to explain my issue with the entanglement of government and religion, and especially the promotion of a particular religion by schools and then I used this example:

Most people who are in favor of organized prayer in schools don't have much of a problem with Christian prayer, and some are even okay with Jewish and Islamic prayer.

But what about that first parent-teacher conference when you find out that the teacher leading little Johnny in pray every morning is a Wiccan?

To which he responded:

Well, there are religions and then there are "religions".

Unfortunately that is where the conversation ended. I had no chance to follow-up with:

• Yeah, but who decides which is which? How do we determine which is appropriate?
• What about the atheist, who, regardless of what you believe, shouldn't be forced by the government to pray at all?
• What about all the places in this country where someone is saying "But what about the teacher leading little Johnny in pray every morning that is a Mormon?" and the response is " Well, there are religions and then there are 'religions'."

It may seem like I am a little late coming to this party, but in reality I have spent the last week engaged in multiple conversations about the president's "you didn't build that" quote, and candidate Romney's spin.

Unfortunately we live in a soundbite society. You might be lucky and hold someone's attention for a couple paragraphs of a facebook update. 140 characters is all you get usually and it's not enough to deal with even the simplest of situations in our modern world.

And now according to the republicans, we have the president saying "If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.", with the clear implication according to the spin, that as a business owner, you didn't build your business. But that is not at all what the president actually said. His full quote, at least the three most relevant paragraphs of the speech are:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me, because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something, there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. 

Clearly any rational and honest reader of that quote has to admit that what the president implied is "If you've got a business, you didn't build [the roads, bridges, Internet, teacher that inspired you and American system that allowed you to thrive]. Any other representation of what is being said here is an outright lie, and instead of continuing to hedge and spin, candidate Romney should stand up to the spin and denounce it.

It will never happen. And that's unfortunate, because beneath that quote is a set of deeper philosophical questions that deserve to be explored.

• What is the role and expectation of government toward businesses, especially when the interests of the business do not always align with the interests of individual citizens or the larger society?
• What is a fair and equitable way to divide the tax burden for common or public goods (roads, infrastructure, military and police protection)?
• Is it fair and equitable to tax different kinds of income at different rates, or even not tax some income at all?
• Are there perverse and unintended consequences when we privatize what was formerly a public good or service (for instance, if prisons are private, aren't the shareholders happier if *more* people are declared criminal and incarcerated, violent or not)?
• How do we, as a society, balance the corporate interest of maximized profits (and by corollary minimizing expenses), against the social interest of workers earning a 'living wage' and being able to provide for the 'general welfare' of their family?
• As the last remaining super-power, are we as a society bearing too much of the world's burden as the neighborhood cop? Are we involved in conflicts we should be avoiding, and avoiding others we should be fighting? Upon what basis do we draw that line?

Personal estate (as has been before remarked), from the difficulty of tracing it, cannot be subjected to large contributions by any other means than by taxes on consumption. Hamilton Number 12

 

It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end proposed -- that is, an extension of the revenue. When applied to this object, the saying is as just as it is witty that, "in political arithmetic, two and two do not always make four." If duties are too high, they lessen the consumption; the collection is eluded; and the product to the treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. Hamilton Number 21

Picking a dinner menu is not the easiest thing to do in our house.  One occupant is a pretty picky eater, the Maestra rarely eats meat, and on any given day one or more occupants may be trying to "watch what they eat".  So, when I came across a nachos/taco salad recipe that looked good, but was based on ground beef, I decided to experiment.  It turned out great so I wanted to share:

BRS Tex-Mex Beans and Rice
1 15oz Can Chili Beans, Pinto Beans, or Black Beans - Drained, rinsed and coarsely mashed.
1 15oz Can Black Beans - Drained
1 12oz Can Condensed Tomato Soup
1 1/2 C Instant Rice, uncooked
1 pkg Taco Seasoning
1 1/2 C Water

In a large sauce pan combine all the ingredients and stir well. Bring to a boil on high heat. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer 5-10 minutes (stir once or twice) until rice is cooked and tender.

Makes about five 1 cup servings.

For Taco Salad, serve 1 cup over a bed of chips and top with shredded cheese, shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes and your favorite salsa.

For Burritos, server 1/2 cup in a warmed tortilla wrapped with shredded cheese and/or your favorite toppings.

Note - I prefer mashed chili beans as the base, but almost any canned bean would work.

And if you were wondering what BRS means - it stands for Baumgart - Ray - Steiner; the three valid surnames in our house.

When we left off I was explaining how I wasn’t worried about things moving fast because basketball season, and my responsibilities as a coach were going to start in a few weeks. Then Jenna surprised me by showing up for my sophomore’s basketball games. We had formal dates, like dinner after the symphony (she played, I watched); and informal dates like me reconfiguring her wireless network while she sat suffering from a cold in her comfy reading chair (I couldn't stand her dropping connections while I was trying to chat with her from my apartment).  This led to standing dates like “dinner and Monday Night Football”. The big debate quickly became whether or not we were an exclusive couple or not. I think Jenna was worried that I was too new to the dating scene, and that she was a rebound. I kept telling her that I didn’t care if she was seeing others or not (maybe a little white-lie) but that I wanted to be the easiest-to-deal-with guy in her life (totally the truth). I think the debate lasted about 3 weeks before we realized we didn’t want to see anyone else and wanted to see where this led.  

Turns out it led to Moab!  We decided to get away during the Christmas break and spend some uninterrupted time together. A road trip to Moab and visits to Arches and Canyonlands was perfect. We rented a romantic apartment overlooking the town, ate bagels for breakfast and packed sandwiches for lunch. (Attractive and frugal? How lucky could I get?!)  We hiked to iconic landmarks like Delicate Arch, had nice dinners, and watched movies in the evenings. It was during this trip that I really began to have the feeling that I had known Jenna for years, not just the few weeks and months that we had actually been together. Everything was easy; everything was comfortable. Jenna has a great mix of practicality and pragmatism, balanced with a clear sense of adventure, and tempered by a deep spirituality.

It took a few more weeks for me to get around to proposing, but to tell the truth, I suspected before Moab, and knew for sure during that trip, that I wanted to spend forever with my wonderful sweetheart.  A New Year’s proposal would have been cliché, and I didn’t have a ring.  But by the end of January I was packing the ring in my glove box, and waiting for the right day.  That day was February 5th.  I was more excited than nervous, and I was ecstatic that Jenna, “the one I chose”, accepted the invitation to build a life with me.

We began our official life together on April 1st, 2011. At this point, we have been married almost a year though it feels like forever, and just keeps getting better and better.

There are times in life where even the littlest things threaten to push you over the edge, so you just ignore them.  Dealing with blog posts was that way for me for a long time but I think I am over it...

First, this blog, as well as two others I maintain were all running on BlogEngine.net 1.6.  BlogEngine.net is an excellent platform, but there was an issue with comment spam, and my admin console had an error that I just couldn't bring myself to troubleshoot after coding all day at work.  Finally, I decided this week that I had put these problems off long enough, so I upgraded all three sites to BlogEngine.Net 2.5.  I am really happy with the new features, and I think that as long as I leave comment moderation on the spam problem will go away.

Second, over the past 18 months my development team was reorganized three times, and in the midst of that completed a huge project. We are transitioning to more of a maintenance mode for a while, so the stress level has fallen a little.

Finally, I met and married my sweetheart.

The story of how we is intricately tied to bits and bytes.  In October 2010 I joined OKCupid.com and started answering profile questions.  After a couple weeks, and several very strange interactions, I was sent an automatic match email by the system that included a picture of an attractive woman with an intriguing username: Affettuoso.  

Like any good computer nerd, I tried online translators to see what the name meant, but I didn’t get any definitions that made sense.  I clicked through to the OKCupid site and checked out the areas where we matched and differed on the profile questions.  I thought she might be someone interesting to get to know, and maybe go out with once in a while. So... I took the plunge and sent this mystery woman a short message telling her that I was familiar with a couple Latin languages, but I wanted to know what her username meant. 

A day or two later I got a reply that her name was a musical term, (it means to play ‘warmly and with feeling!), as well as a few other personal details.  While I was on the site, I was all of a sudden shocked to see a chat window pop-up under Affettuoso’s username.  And thus began our first electronic get-to-know you session.  By the end of that chat session I knew that Jenna was someone I wanted to get to know.

We chatted on and off over the next few days, but my favorite early message was an email she sent me the next Monday, “Personally - I think you should just bail on the rest of the day AND the appointment and meet up with me and go to the zoo or something - its BEAUTIFUL outside!!”

I was nervous that, even if just joking, she was ready to meet me outside the virtual world. I couldn’t skip out of work and appointments, but we set a date to have dinner that Thursday (Thursday Happy!).  Turns out we didn’t make it that far - we had a quick introductory date over milkshakes at Arctic Circle on Wednesday night.  It was late and after not just work for both of us, but after musical practice for Jenna.  She said not to think bad of her because practice had her frazzled, but I was more impressed that she was willing to take the risk of meeting when she wasn’t completely put-together.

We hit it off in person, and went to dinner the next night as planned. It is true that she ‘cleaned-up well’, but the beauty I was seeing was coming from somewhere far beneath the clothes and make-up.  I brought Josh to her musical; it was a convenient excuse to see her since Josh got school credit for going to plays or musicals.  We began to make some more time for each other, and were chatting, texting, IM’ing and talking all the time.  I think we consumed terabytes of bandwidth - thank heaven for unlimited texting plans and fast internet connections.

I wasn’t worried about things moving too fast because basketball season, and my responsibilities as a coach were going to start in a few weeks...

To Be Continued...

My how time flies!  I can't believe it's been over a year since I have posted to this site.  And what a year it has been...

Work

In the last year I was promoted from Web Code Monkey (that's an official title, I'm positive) to Code Monkey Leader.  The projects I supervised went from being in minor maintenance mode to substantial new development mode.  The team expanded to the point where we had to reorganize, or else I would have been supervising 15-20 people which would have been unmanageable for me.  I am now able to focus my time on leading and mentoring a lean team of 5-6 highly qualified web developers.  This group really pushes me to stay ahead of the technology curve.

Home

Since the last post Mrs. GeekCyclist and I separated and divorced. I can't say that I have no regrets, because in the back of your mind there is always a little voice saying "could I have done something different?"  That said, I am happy with the decision, and moving on with my life.  We share legal and physical custody of our wonderful boys, and are doing our best to be supportive parents. I am finding there are a lot of joys and frustrations with the single life, but those are stories for other posts on other days.

Cycling

It's been a while since I have biked to work consistently, but there have been a few happenings on the cycling front:

• When I moved to my new apartment it became even more convenient for me to run errands on my bike.  So while I commute infrequently, I can often be seen riding around Magna with panniers full of books, groceries, or workout stuff.
• I started teaching a "Be a Bike Commuter" workshop for the University of Utah's Lifelong Learning program.  It's a 2.5 hour workshop on equipment, practical concerns and safety of urban or transportation cycling.  I love doing the class and I think the participants enjoy it.  It seems like they do since the U keeps asking me to come back.
• I've started to downsize the bike stable.  That comes with apartment living... By spring I hope to have the Roubaix, and a nicer mountain bike;  I still have a couple of bikes to sell.

Mortality

This may seem like kind of a downer, but in reality it's helping me focus my life a little more.  In the last year a friend lost his wife to cancer. Shortly after that one of my best friends from high school and a fantastic musician/artist lost his battle with an aggressive cancer.  We also lost the former Mrs. GeekCyclist's father to a massive stroke.

Psychologically these deaths threw me for a little loop, but as I look back they are helping me to realize how important it is to cherish every moment and treasure every relationship.  There is something to rejoice in, and something to learn every day and I don't want to sit idly by while life passes me by.

Well - Maybe not the Utah Department of Transportation.  The praise should probably be heaped upon Salt Lake City and West Valley City.  But I am getting ahead of myself...

Back on the Bike

In the last 11 months, my Garmin GPS tells me that I have ridden my Roubaix only 23 times.  The other bikes in the stable have rarely been removed from the storage hooks.  It's been a sad time for two-wheeled vehicles in the GC household.

That has changed the last couple of weeks.  I have managed two long (2+ hrs) training rides, and this week have commuted home from work by bike both Monday and Tuesday.

Someone has been busy while I have been driving instead of riding.

Impersonating Lewis and Clark

Anyone who has a lengthy suburban-urban commute discovers the issues of 'crossings'.  The old explorers and pioneers had to cross daunting obstacles; most frequently large rivers.  In the urban setting the equivalent for the bike commuter is major highways and freeways (although in my case a river comes into play as well).

For me to make the commute from Magna, Utah to downtown Salt Lake City I have to cross some combination of:

• Interstate 15
• Interstate 215
• State Road 201
• Bangerter Highway
• Multiple Railroad Lines
• Jordan River

There are only a limited number of possibilities to cross each of these - for instance, I can cross State Road 201 at 5600 W, 3200 W, Redwood Rd, or use the Jordan River Parkway.  Other than the parkway, all of these crossings are major funnels for automotive traffic.

 On of the more convenient routes allowed me to cross SR 201 at 5600 W and then go under both I-215 and I-15.  The drawback there was that the route traveled through a major industrial area with fairly narrow roads and heavy truck traffic.

All of that was a long lead-in to my discovery that after 9 years of bike commuting, and putting up with chip-seal, re-pavings that eradicate the shoulder, and the actual removal of lanes from certain roads, my two primary routes have been dramatically improved.

California Ave

This stretch of California Ave has always been somewhat treacherous.  It was narrow. The shoulder was deteriorating and crumbling.  The road is heavily traveled by garbage trucks and tractor trailers. In the last 9 months it has been widened to two lanes eastbound and one lane westbound, with a wide shoulder westbound.  They even added an optical attenuator at the intersection at 5600 W rather than an impedance loop so all you riders with carbon fiber bikes can still trigger the light rather than needing to run it when it won't change.

Lake Park Ave

There is a business park in West Valley City that I ride through frequently; especially if I want to ride the Jordan River Parkway as part of my commute.  The problem was that the roads in the park either dead-ended, or dumped you up to a much busier road.  During my 'down time' West Valley City completed Lake Park Ave to connect to 5600 W. It's a very bike friendly route. The shoulder is pretty wide; they added traffic calming roundabouts; and at least a portion of the new roads in the area are marked as bike routes.

So thanks, sincerely, to whichever government departments or agencies (or the developers, these are business/industrial parks so maybe it was the developers that paved the roads).  The changes you have made are not trivial in the life of a bike commuter.