Let's win this mother out

Back on track

I went for nice bike ride today. I rode from my home to Macedon along the Erie Canal trail and then back to Fairport where I met Jaime and the kids. I asked Jaime to pick me up because my left ankle was hurting. I haven't ridden this far in nearly a year and I've never had problems with that ankle before so I thought I would forego pushing through the pain to avoid an injury early in the season. The total distance was 28.46 miles (45.81 km). I estimate it took me about 2.5 hours so average speed was just over 10 mph. Not very fast, but it's my first ride this season and I had a lot of gear and my bike felt really heavy. Regardless of speed, it was a nice ride. About 2/3 of the trail is paved, and the other parts are crushed rock. The weather was beautiful, albeit a bit brisk with a starting temperature in the low 30's and a slight breeze. After i warmed up I was fine with just a wool sweater on top but I had long johns and some "knickers" (jaime's work out capris) on bottom. A pair of generic, one-size-fits-all cotton gloves was enough to keep my hands warm.

One thing I need to work on is pacing. I tend to hop on my bike and go go go until I'm worn out. I should take breaks for stretching and food more often. I think that may give me a bit more endurance.

I don't know if I'll have time, but I'd like to do a brevet this year. We'll see how that goes.

AAAccK!

This is creepy.

Oh, those Swedes.

This looks like a bike Rene Magritte might have dreamed up.



And the guy's site is here.

Presidential Chord

Where was I when this was happening?!? I had no idea G. H. W. Bush was a fan of contemporary art music! I still regret voting for him. Correction - I regret he didn't live up to my expectations. I'm still glad I didn't vote for Kerry.

Jiminy

We have a cricket that lives in our basement. He's a cool cat. Every night he comes out from his hiding spot and chills on the rug in front of the dryer. He doesn't move or make any sounds. Not a chirp. Even if you shout at him or pretend to step on him he just keeps his cool. I sometimes wonder if he's really old and kind of senile now. Maybe when he was younger he would jump around a bunch making noise, being a real hot head. I bet he's got a lot of crazy stories to tell from when he was younger. All sorts of weird stuff with his friends and what not. Stuff that he almost died from maybe, but somehow the immortality of youth saved him. Sometimes if I keep real quiet and get real close I can see his mouth moving. I think he's singing something, but I can't tell what it is. Then I swear he'll wink as if to say, "It's all good, big ugly man dude." And then like a sage he might add something wise like, "Don't sweat the small stuff." He's a cool cat. He's only got one leg.

No. You look like a juvenile delinquent!

I'm a little confused as to why music videos have continued to be produced after this one was made. After all, it's pretty much the pinnacle of what can be done with the medium. Not only is it totally rockin', but listening to it is a real kick in the pants. I think it not shocking that I would have preferred to name as my most favorite tune the band's other classic Orgasmatron (by the way, not a real person, place, or thing to my knowledge), but said song lacks the philosophical depth found in Killed by Death. Although I do appreciate the laser-green and black, dichromatic color scheme of the Orgasmatron video, I think that Michael Jackson used the green-laser light color to fuller effect in one of my all-time top 5 songs of all time and top fives, Rock With Me. It just goes to show how important a bit of fog can be.

Bent Bike

I picked up this Trek 620 back in St Louis with high hopes to build it up into my main bike. The advantage I saw over my current Trek 400 was mostly the cantilever brakes (more clearance for tires + fenders) and more braze-ons for rack mounting. The nice old lady I bought it from did mention her husband had crashed it once injuring his knee, but the bike was unscathed. OR SO I THOUGHT! Check out the picture and you can see the tubes are slightly bent just past the lugs.


And here is the worst shot I took, but it shows the bottom bulge better than the others:



I was utterly disappointed when first I found the lump on the bottom tube. I think I now understand how it feels to one day in the shower discover a strange new lump on a testicle (or breast for all you females). I have to admit the old lady seller likely didn't know about it and didn't purposefully deceive me. But this experience has made me almost resolve to swear off all elderly women entirely!


Lesson to be gleaned here: please tell me in the comments what lesson I should learn. And please make it funny, because I can't be expected to come up with all the comedy all the time. Those of you who know me will surely understand how true that statement is.

On a happier note, I finally got around to fitting a tire in the 400 with the fenders installed. I had to drop down to the 700 x 28 Panaracer Pasela TG tire. I do miss the extra cush of the 700 x 32's but the 28's aren't that bad if the psi is around 75 or 80 instead of over 100. So here's what the 400 looks like now all enfendered.



When I put the fenders on I removed the front rack, but for a while there this bike really looked like a good randoneering bicycle. Someday I hope to do a few brevets, but until then I'll have to live my long-distance dreams vicariously through my sister's marathon training. Go Diana!

Old Bones

I had a cool conversation with Asher the yesterday. This is how it went.

Conversation with Asher, June 21, 2008

Asher: Daddy, dinosaurs are not real.

Aaron: Actually, dinosaurs are real. They lived a long time ago, but now they are extinct.

The dinosaurs died?

Yes, they died.

How come they died?

Well, they think a giant asteroid from outer space hit the earth and it hit so hard that all the animals died.

And the humans died?

Well, the humans weren't around yet.

We were still in heaven with Heavenly Father?

Yes.

Heavenly Father gave us skin?

Yes.

And bones?

Yes.

What else did Heavenly Father give us?

He gave us our bodies. All of it.

He gave us our bodies?

Yes.

T-rex got off the Earth?

Uh, yes.

And stegosaurus got off the Earth?

Yes.

And mooses got off the Earth?

Well, the mooses weren't around yet.

Oh. (Pause) What was the thing called?

Asteroid?

What color was asteroid?

I don't know, probably brown or black.

I think it was brown.

Okay.

Remember in The Land Before Time there were brown things that killed the dinosaurs?

I guess so.

Yeah, those dinosaurs could sing and dance!

Yes. Okay, good night.

New Yaw-kers

Well, it's 0-fish-al. We be livin' in NYC, but there's still quite a bit of St Louis to get out of my sistema. Actually we're in NY state. Most folks up here don't have much of an accent of any sort. I've some people up here pronounce the name of our fair city as Rawch-ster instead of the honky way I say it (Raw-chest-ur). I'll work on that.

The house is great. It has central air conditioning and that's pretty much the only thing a house needs in my opinion. But to make it even better we have a garage, a nice basement where I can (theoretically) spend hours and hours tinkering on bikes or whatever else, a huge front and backyard which will commandeer my theoretical bicycle tinkering time in order to care for it.

Orientation starts on Monday, and the closer it gets the more trepidation I have. I know I'm not alone in this, but as a new intern I feel overwhelmed by suddenly being a "doctor" because like almost all interns I've forgotten the majority of what I crammed into my head in medical school. It's a good thing residency programs get a new class of dummies (maybe I should speak for just myself...) every year and I'm sure they know what to do with us. Or at least I sure hope they do. If I can do it without violating any HIPAA regulations I will be sure to post about a few of the more entertaining ways I make a fool of myself in the next year or so. Stay tuned!

Bicycle Fixation - Common Sense

Here is an article about perception, really. Also about how what we see as normal can sound pretty outrageous when placed in a certain context. One of my favorite quotes from the article:

And I thought, if some alien intelligence were to look in on this spectacle, which for us is normal daily life, they would consider us mad.

You'd be hard put to design a system more wasteful of money, natural resources, time and human mental well-being. To add insult to injury, it often even fails to deliver its basic stated purpose: convenient transportation of goods and people from one place to another.

Yes, it is about riding bikes.

A better way to educate

Forget math and science, the world would be a much better place if this is what our kids learned in school.






Well, apparently the video above is no longer available. Try this similar, though more professional and less ridiculous version of the same Rambo move here:

You down with OSS?

From time to time I get the hair-brained idea to switch from my beloved Apple-made applications like Mail.app and Safari.app to open-source alternatives such as Thunderbird for email and Camino for web browsin'. Well, I recently did it again.

In the past Thunderbird has never worked for me. This time is different though. Leading up to switch Mail.app had really been bothering me. It unexpectedly crashes and quits probably a couple times per week. Also, there is an annoying bug (or is it a feature?) that makes quickly cruising through lots of emails a frustrating ordeal. Basically, after deleting a message the next message becomes the message being actively viewed. If I immediately scroll the newly-appeared message, then the message is automatically (and annoyingly) deselected and the viewing pane goes blank. Then I have to use the danged mouse to reselect the message I had read the first few lines of. It's an annoying bug.

Thunderbird, on the other had, doesn't do this. Also, it's not crashing as often as Mail.app. And maybe it's all in my mind, but it feels "snappier" and more stable or solid. Also, I'm using the side-by-side view and I really like it. I can't seem to find that view in Mail.app.

Mail.app wins for aesthetics though. Thunderbird's look just isn't as refined as Mail.app. I've tried a few themes, but none can match Apple's GUI finesse.

The Achilles heel of Thunderbird 2.0 is poor integration with AddressBook.app. Auto-fill for addresses just doesn't work very well without that. I'm trying to find a solution for this, but I've read that version 3.0 arriving in 2008 should fix this. This may be the only reason for me to switch back to Mail.app.


On the web browser side of things, Safari is pretty nice and I love the ability to rearrange tabs. It is fast, looks good, easily syncs bookmarks with .mac, and crashes all the time. Since Mac OS X 10.5 Safari has always felt less stable to me and I've had way too many crashes.

Camino doesn't do this. It feels rock solid and I like the subdued look. I miss the tab rearrange-ability, but I can handle that until Safari becomes more stable.

So why not Firefox, you ask? Because Camino is more under the radar and therefore if you use it you are cooler. And using a Mac is all about being cool.

Mind exercises

http://puzzles.nigelcoldwell.co.uk/index.htm

I ran across this link while googling prime numbers. Pretty fun stuff. Let me know what you think.

ALL41&14ALL

These are for Dad and Nate.

The "Chin Strap":



And the "Musketeer":

Our presumed home

Here's a fancy "hyperlink" to Jaime's blog with pictures of the house we bought (closing is pending on June 6). You'll have to scroll down a bit. The pics of the huge house at the top of the post are not the house we bought, but just where we stayed while house hunting.

Rochester, NY

We've been in Rochester since Monday looking for a house to buy. We bought one on Thursday and it is sure nice to have found a little place to call home. It is small, affordable, humble, on a quiet street, and has a nice yard. Hard to ask for more than that. I may get around to posting pictures later.

Total Immersion Swim video

This is a pretty good summary of the Total Immersion swim philosophy.  I'm reading the book and watching the DVDs right now trying to learn to swim efficiently.  I still have trouble with breathing and wasting energy, but I'm really enjoying all the pool time.  My speedo is pretty sweet, too.

Self Portrait 1

"But where did the lighter fluid come from?"

The Final Countdown - please say that will literally be the last time.  These guys go through cello bows like Slash goes through guitar picks! The Final Countdown will totally be the next piece I start working on. Yeah, right after I learn a couple other classics like My Prerogative (Bobby Brown version) and Oops I Did it Again.