Took a day of rest today. My legs are really tight and sore and I simply needed to rest them. Besides, it’s Sunday!
Month / March 2003
Glutton For Punishment
With my legs and ass killing me after two days of riding, I still woke at 6am, donned my cycling shoes and rode to Starbucks. With Dan still in town, we agreed to meet there for breakfast to go over a few things. I noticed some very small improvements in my climbing and overall performance, […]
Back In The Saddle Again
It’s been almost a year since I’ve been on a bicycle and it’s been about 10 years since I’ve done any serious riding. So yesterday afternoon I did a 16-mile ride with one of my closest friends, Dan Westman.
Since January, I’ve been working out at the YMCA. Monday is treadmill and upper body weight training and Wednesday is yoga. With all of this activity I figured I’d fair pretty well overall on our ride. Suffice to say, that wasn’t the case. Instead, I was dragging ass on every hill and every climb. 🙁
It was like I was re-discovering new muscles. Even with all my previous workouts, I simply hadn’t used the muscles needed for a climb. It’s hard to explain, but it was as if I just found some new “interior” muscles in my upper thigh that my body was so happy it found them that is decided to set them on fire. Add to the equation that I was attempting to drag my lard ass up the hill and I think you can begin to feel my pain. Continue Reading
Takin’ That Hill Again
Dan and I met for breakfast this morning. We had agreed to meet at Waffle House, each of us riding from our respective homes. Well, I lived up to my end of the bargin, but Dan complained about alergies or something. If I wasn’t such a dead weight on the hills I’d have ragged him […]
First Day
First day back in the saddle. I wrote all about it in the main log [link], but I rode for about 16 miles according to Dan’s cycle computer. Brutal on the hills, but it felt so good to be riding again.
All The Pieces Fall Into Place
I think I’ve finally patched all the holes and mended all the hems on this puppy. The site is finally done. Well, is a web site ever truly done? Let’s just say that version 1.0 is done for the time being. 🙂 I got the archives up and running and the rest of the static […]
Almost Normal
Well, things have almost returned to normal. I stopped for lunch about 4pm and I noticed that all the major networks were carrying the war now and even MTV was doing some limited coverage. Most of their coverage was of the protests in New York City, but at least their attention is now on what is happening.
Of course seeing reporters in Kuwait donning gas masks still adds a bit of surreal effect.
Totally Surreal Morning
This morning was totally surreal. I’m trying to get back to an early morning schedule, so I’ve begun waking up earlier and will keep pushing back the time I wake up until I reach 5am. A few years ago, I shifted my internal clock and was able to wake up at 5am every morning and believe it or not, it was a good experience. 🙂 However, it seems that in the “computer world” things tend to run late into the night and I’ve slipped back to my normal routine of staying up quite late.
So, here I am up at 6:00am and I go downstairs to do my AM Yoga. 20 minutes later, I rewind the video and turn on the TV – the war with Iraq has begun. I quickly absorb the news of what has happened thus far and am glad to hear that nothing severe has happened to our troops thus far. We’re in the early stages, but so far so good.
Nine Inch Nails In Church
I went to church yesterday. They played a Johnny Cash video. It’s a Nine Inch Nails cover called ‘Hurt.’ It blew me away and I cry everytime I see it. My words simply don’t do it justice. The video and about the video.
Come My Friends, Count With Me… Ah ha ha ha
It all started with SETI@Home.
On May 16, 1999 someone turned me on to the whole SETI@Home project and although the idea of finding intelligent life in outer space is cool, my real draw to it was to see how fast I could run the program. For me, it was more of a “hot rod” application more than anything else. How fast can I process a unit? The first computer I ran it on was a 133MHz Sharp Widenote and it took about 36 hours to process. I would compare this to other friends who were running the program as well and then see how my “ride” stacked up. Of course, I was running a laptop and I’d had it for a couple of years, so I was a bit behind the curve, but I later put together a workstation and then began tweaking in earnest to try and be the fastest among my peers. I even started a group for NPUG.
Like all fads, this one ran it’s course in due time. Yet, to this day, I’m still running the little program. There have been other Distributed Computing projects, but none of them really struck my fancy. Some had truly noble goals and what not, but I just had this feeling of “been there done that,” and I just didn’t feel like jumping into another one. Then I ran across something called Project-Dolphin. Although it was a distributed computing application, it was a different animal all together.
Instead of using your computer to crunch data, all this little applet did was count your key clicks and then submit the count to a web server for all to see. At first I thought it was an asinine idea, but as I thought more about it, the idea began to grow on me. I know I sit at the computer and type a lot – hell, my wife has nicknamed me “clicky” – but what struck me about this little app was that it would tell me just how MUCH I click.