On the Road, part 1

Heading to Houston for Coder Camps.  School starts Monday! Drove from Vancouver, WA to Salt Lake City, UT today.This is a 3.5 day trip hence the "part 1" in the title.

The last few hours I've been listening to Blink by Malcom Gladwell (audio book version). Heard two stories of attempts to improve outcomes (in war and ER diagnosis) by using automated/ computerized systems. One worked, the other did not. The one failed because it flooded the user with to much information and required too much effort to manipulate that information. The other succeeded by filtering out all but the most essential information.

Too much data can be a very bad thing. Information overload leaves users unable to tell the signal from the noise. Users end up making essentially random choices and their brains make up a justification for the choice which feels valid but isn't. I have no conclusions to draw from this right now (must sleep soon), but it seems like an interesting and valuable thing to keep in mind as a Web/Software Developer.

Some things I learned today in no particular order:

• You can buy fireworks year round in Idaho.


• Boise lies at the foot of some very pretty mountains.


• There are plateaus in central/southern Idaho.


• The speed limit in most of Idaho is 75 mph.  That seems fast until you hit Utah where is 80 mph!  Oregon/Washington seem very tame now with our 55/65 mph speed limits.


• The mountains in northern Utah are amazingly beautiful.


• Idaho has really nice roads, but they need better signs. Thank you GPS.


• Utah does not, apparently, believe in illuminating their freeway system. Very difficult to make out the lanes on a rainy night between Ogden and Salt Lake.


• Driving fast does not hurt your gas mileage as much as going over mountains.  From Vancouver, WA to La Grande, OR I drove 65-70 (mostly 70), went through some major elevation changes and averaged 29 MPG.  From La Grande to Twin Falls, ID I drove 75 mph, had to adjust speed due to traffic more frequently than the first leg of the trip, but it was pretty flat the whole way; I averaged 33 MPG.


• The traffic in Southern Idaho on I-84 is 40% semi-trucks.  It felt like 80% because that's all I was passing in my lane and I was not getting passed by many cars myself, but then I counted traffic in the opposing lanes and its 40%. (based on a survey on 50 vehicles on a Thursday afternoon).


• When bored after a long day of driving I start counting cars and trucks in the opposing lanes of traffic.