wiredfool

Out on the track again. Got shelled again.

On the bright side, I wasn’t the first person pulled from the miss and out, but on the not so bright side, I just don’t have the ooomph to be in the pack when the speed picks up. It’s like I’m racing in my own little time warp, reacting to attacks about half a lap after they take place. Pack jumps, Get gapped, pack pulls away, I get up to speed, pack slows down eventually, I get back on just in time for the pack to jump again.

I think that this is the difference between fitness and residual fitness. I have enough residual fitness to get out for a couple of laps, but past that I’m racing against people who have actually trained this year. And that’s not the most successful way to do it.

The view fom the drive home was almost worth the whole trip. Westbound on 520, going over the floating bridge on a clear evening. Ruddy orange glow behind the dark purple teeth of the Olympics. Skies turning to dark blue over my head and behind me. Wind in my hair. Did I mention that this requires a convertable for full effect?

Sorry for the late notice, I just noticed that the month was ending…

June’s meeting will be held on Tuedsay the 27th, at 7pm. I’m sure that we will have something to say about the new 6.2 release. The meeting will be at the office of Socialecology, at 1818 Summit on Capitol Hill.

• Snowcrash – Neil Stephenson
• The Diamond Age – Neil Stephenson
• Sewer Gas and Electric – Matt Ruff
• Skinny Legs and All – Tom Robbins

I’m back on the velodrome, and things are about where I left them. A month ago, I had a bit of a wreck during a race out there, and between recovering from that and enduring the rain, I haven’t raced in a month.

It was good to get back out there. I’m still not really in shape to be in contention, as I was dropped like a rock in the first race about 2 laps from the end.

The second race picked up where that one left off, and I was dropped 2 laps into a 4×3 points race (4 sprints, every three laps, it’s a 3 mile race.) Got a good time trial workout in that race though.

The last race was pretty similar. A 5×3 Win and Out, where the winner of each sprint wins that place and gets to quit the race. My experience was the same as it ever was, so I pulled up and jumped back into the pack at a lap down. This was more fun, since by the time I had warmed up, the fastest three riders were out and the pack was sort of fractured. For a few laps I was in the pack, dealing with the jitters of a cat 4 field with new track riders on the first race back from a wreck. It felt good to get over that hurdle.

Seems that Dylan is the music of the day for the userland side of the net. (“Brent” and “Dave”)

I’ve been going through Blood on the Tracks and Highway 61 Revisited today. I can’t name a favorite. Blood on the Tracks stands as a complete work, starting from Tangled up in Blue, going through Idiot Wind, You’re going to make me lonesome when you go, and finishing with Shelter from the Storm and Buckets of Rain.

All said and done, I’ve heard maybe two of these songs on the radio. They don’t amount to as much when they are not played in their order. Each song is a setup to the next; Shelter from the Storm just doesn’t mean as much when it’s packaged as a #45 of 100 hits of the 60’s.

‘You’re an idiot babe, it’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe’

Then again, there’s the cathartic end of Highway 61 Revisited. Desolation Row, that is a wall of noise asthetic in harmonica and guitar. The whole album structure reminds me of the Cowboy Junkies; who generally set up the last song on an album to be quietly jarring, a soft harmonic lead in, and an disharmonic resolution.

So napster fans, is there a way to find entire albums? I’m looking for a clean digital copy of “The Name of this Band is the Talking Heads”. I have a decaying vinyl version and far too much computer power for my own good.

I think I’m a little too wired into the programming thing. My electronic life is
leaking into the rest of my life, and it worries me a bit. In the
programming world, I’ve determined that languages are easy to pick up, but
familiarity with the APIs are where the work is.

Yesterday I was going to a different grocery store than I normally do. My
current default grocery store is undergoing renovations; moving items
around and dropping 4 or 5 products that I usually buy. I had been
to this other one once before, and I wasn’t very impressed at the time.

This time, I looked at it, noticed a better wine section, better bulk teas,
and thought, ‘Ok, the API is different but better.’ I’ve got to change
API’s anyway, I might as well evaluate which one will be the easiest to go
up the learning curve.

Stores know about this. They design their layout to be comfortable enough that the shoppers know where things are, and that they feel a bit out of place if they go anywhere else. I was at the point where I could do a full shopping run in half an hour. But now that I don’t know where anything is, all of the stores are on equal footing again. (Except for Safeway, whos privacy policy annoys me)

Great Scripting News Dinner last night. I’m sorry I had to eat and run, but I had Cowboy Junkies tickets and their show was scheduled first.

Good Show, Good dinner, Good conversation.

DonorLink has finally been released. Really.

Donorlink is email relationship management software, allowing for mass customization of personalized messages and directed responses from donors and other contacts. All “frontier”, all web based. There’s a ERROR (xml-rpc) back end for donation portals to ship data into the system for subscribing organizations, and a whole suite of reminder, categorization and datamining tools for the database.

And there’s about 6 months of my life in there too.

And now, we will present rules for Miata owners. If you take nothing else from this article, take this: Wear Sunscreen.

The rules:

1. If it’s 75 degrees and perfect weather, Your top must be down. If it is not, that is a Miata Foul.
2. Exception to rule #1, if you have a hard top and are en route to a place to store the hardtop.
3. No Automatics, For they are an abomination
4. Have Fun, Wear Sunscreen

As much as Seattle’s weather sucks for 9 months of the year, there are days where everything is just perfect. Like today.

It’s 75 degrees, sunny, no clouds, no humidity.

So I’m on the balcony in a comfy chair; eating local bread (essential foods fremont), drinking local beer (pyramid pale), reading a local novel (tom robbins), and listening to canadian music (cowboy junkies).

Oh, and the laptop ethernet cable reaches the balcony, cause it’s too nice for indoor weblogging. :>