A Real-Live Update and Stuff
So it's been almost a week since my last post here. I've been really busy at the office which leaves me exhausted at night (my prime-time for writing), so I haven't done much here. So I'm writing this at about 6 a.m. on Thursday morning, and will schedule it to appear later today.
Things are going well. Seriously. Despite the busy factor (which is only going to get worse).
Training has been going pretty well. I'm on-track and hoping to have a solid season. First race is on April 17th.
I start back at Penn Cycle this Saturday. In order to accomplish everything I need to, I'll have to hit the gym early Saturday morning. I'm fine with that.
Framebuilding session, most likely, on Sunday. Left Paul a voicemail, haven't heard anything back. Want to get that 29'er done and off to paint.
Last night, Kate and I had a really good discussion about the future. We're going to start setting up my facilities after honeymoon (so late September), which is cool. We'll file the LLC, find a space to rent, and start hitting it hard. I've had more requests from people for frames in the past couple of months than I thought possible, and I love the idea of putting them on bikes that they'll love. So for now, I must be patient.
Weekly List of Hatreds, the Final Installment?
Note: Lately, I've noticed that when I do the WLOH, I start focusing more on the negative things around me than the positive, and I become kind of a shithead. I don't like that. So, despite the therapeutic value of venting to the whole Interwebs, I'm wrapping it up for now. This may or may not be the final installment, based on how life is going. If I do ever bring this back, it'll be a Thursday-scheduled feature, and I'll counterbalance it with a Friday-scheduled recurring post called the Weekly List of Awesome.
So, without further ado, let's run down what might be the last WLOH ever.
- Having WLOH writer's block until Thursday.
- Falling behind the curve on my short story submission plan for 2010. Had been planning on getting six in circulation, have zero so far. Need to get one out in March and one out in April.
- Overdrafts and the ridiculous costs associated with them. This is like the first time in YEARS that this has happened to me. I'm so damn pissed with myself right now.
- That I feel guilty for laughing my ass off at commercials for products I'll never use. Specifically, Old Spice -- I think their new campaign is really funny, but I'll never, ever, not-in-a-million-years use their product. "Don't smell like sunsets and baby powder. Smell like jet fighters and punching." Yes! But not with that branding!
- I used to always double-space between a period and the start of a new sentence, and recently learned that the new black is a single-space. I've been trying to adapt to that, and it's been making a mess of things. Writings include both types of spacing, and the end result is a friggin' mess that I have no desire to go back and clean up. (So what I'm saying is: live with it, dammit.)
Ignite Recap
Ignite was good. I could be a real shit and leave you with just that summary, but why? So much interesting stuff.
As usual, there's some rumbling from people about the noise and the topics and so on. I think the biggest mistake these people are making is that they're operating under the assumption that this is the localized version of TED Talks. And it's pretty clearly not -- the topic list that's presented ahead of time clearly indicates that. Watching last year's videos would be good reinforcement.
Presentations I enjoyed: "Chicks are the New Dicks", and "All I Need to Know About Management I Learned from Ace of Cakes" were both quite good. I also learned about pivot tables in Excel, something I'd been meaning to do for a long time now.
Every year there's a topic that's interesting, but gets drowned out by the crowd because it's more in-line with a TED Talk. In this case, it was "Japanese Gardens in Minnesota: Examples of Sustainability."
Had a great time. Finally met @DJLindJr and @lindsi. Saw @smuggli, @veloveggies, @rribbitz, and @missashe all for the first time in awhile. Also met @rjdanger, @kilgette, and @DerekShaneLowe, all for the first time -- both via Twitter and IRL. And somehow missed @deseraev again.
So yeah, a great time, good conversation, unlocked two Foursquare badges. I think I talked too much at some points. But still. Had an excellent time. Hoping to see some of these people out on the bike, or in other social situations, rather than in the confines of the Bedlam Theater.
Depending on how things go with my side project, I might even present next year.
Your Kids Need Parenting, Not Things
I am frequently irritated by the level to which parents will spoil their children with material things, rather than just giving them some personal attention.
Weirdest Job Moment Ever
Not sure why I'm thinking about this now, but the weirdest moment I ever had at a job, I was standing in line at an eatery with my boss, who was in his fifties. Public Enemy was on the radio, and I was bobbing my head with the beat while waiting for my food, not really thinking much of the situation...and then right on cue with the music, Bossman busts out with, "Black to the bone my home is your home/But welcome to the Terrordome."
We never spoke of it. It was too surreal for me to bring up in conversation.
Growing Old
It seems that as I age, more and more of what I write is in list format. This is probably an attempt to save time -- I'm growing older and running out of minutes. Granted, I'm only 37, but still. I seem to be obsessed with maximizing available time.
A few years ago, I tried using the Getting Things Done system. The system has its merits, and tons of adherents, but I seem to do better with just a plain, ordinary checklist with small, finite to-do items, rather than a system with a review process and "50,000-foot views" and that sort of nonsense. Plus, the two best GTD apps out there -- Things ($50) and Things for iPhone ($10) are pricey for what they are. Okay, I can spring $10 for an iPhone app, but $50 for a desktop app? No thanks.
A few months ago, I put Evernote on my iPhone and I'm starting to look at it, finally. I find it especially cool because it's web-based, meaning I can share data across multiple platforms -- I'll be putting the desktop client on my Mac tonight, my netbook once I decided whether to stick with the Hackintosh or go to Ubuntu, and my work PC today. Having one unified source for all this stuff should work nicely.
We'll see. Who knows? I might make my way back to GTD, break down and buy Things (big plus if it's in this year's MacHeist), and try getting all these crazy fucking things in my life under control. Sometimes process helps -- being a former project manager, you'd think I'd know that.
Rambling over.
Weekly List of Hatreds #4
- Buying a book because of the positive reviews only to discover that it's a festering pile of shit that I could have written in my fucking sleep.
- The constant state of being hungry that comes with training for road season. Is this what pregnancy feels like? Seriously, even looking at cat food makes my stomach growl sometimes. And it's not like I'm not eating.
- Being stupid and not getting AppleCare on my first iPhone. (Got it with the new one this week, though.)
- Minor writer's block.
- Smug-ass Prius drivers. I want to cockpunch the lot of you.
- Whomever the marketing communications drone is for one of our local radio stations? Your ads that refer back to the website drive me batshit. Specifically, "Go to our website, call-letters.com, keyword whatever." NOBODY BUT AOL USED "KEYWORD" -- IT DOESN'T REFER TO ANYTHING ANYMORE. When I go to your site what am I supposed to do? Use search? Type in 'call-letters.com/whatever'? Hunt around for a button? Argh. (Okay, this has been bugging me for awhile, the level of vitriol here has built up a bit. I feel better now.)
- That it's constantly freezing in my office.
- Having an idea for an entry on this list, opening up the file, and by the time I get there, the idea has already escaped.
Exhausting Weekend
So Friday, I got home from the office around 2:30 p.m. I immediately plopped down and ordered up Peggle for the PS3, which has been a total joy. One of my favorite features on this thing is that I can take a replay and automatically upload it to YouTube, as evidenced by the mother of all blind-luck shots that I took on Friday at the end of one board:
Kate arrived home around the time I was finishing with the last board in the "Adventure" mode. She played for a bit and then we headed over to the Red Dragon.
It is flat-out impossible to leave that place and not have a hangover the next morning. Our table of 15 people ran up a $500 tab in only a few hours. A good time was had, as always. And Josh, Jumi's boyfriend, offloaded some of his old welding supplies on me, which is awesome. Torch and a set of small oxy-acetylene tanks. Rawk!
We got home, we did stuff, and we went to sleep.
Saturday morning, I woke up with a IQ-dampening, but not suicide-inducing, hangover. I had some fluids, chatted with Johnny Surprise on GChat, and then I got my shit together and headed off to Frostbike. I had a pretty good time there, met a lot of cool industry people, and saw some really cool stuff. I've got a write-up forthcoming, and will probably post it tomorrow, after I've had a chance to test out some of the sample products I received.
Hit up Target briefly on the way home, and when I arrived, Kate was still asleep(!). She finally got up around 3 p.m. We lounged on the couch together for a bit. My new copy of the Paterek Manual arrived, and I wound up reading a large portion of that. I looked up, it was 11:30, and I decided that I had missed enough of the Cutters Ball where it would be better to go to bed and save the energy for Sunday's framebuilding session up at Paul's place.
Framebuilding went well, as it always does. Paul was making his final preparations for NAHBS, so I stayed out of the way as much as possible and accomplished the following:
- The 29'er received some finishing work in the HT/DT fillet. There's a low spot I need to drop some 56% silver into next time so that I can finish that.
- The commuter bike got blueprinted, and I finished the shaping of the BB lug. Then the seat tube was mitered and brazed into the BB shell, the steerer tube and fork crown brazed, and I raked the fork blades and started slotting them for the dropouts.
- The pursuit frame didn't get much attention -- all I did was silver braze the stainless dropout faces onto the rear dropouts.
After the hour-long drive back to the Cities, Kate dragged me out grocery shopping, after which I passed out on the couch.
This morning before work, I got some work done on the WP template I'm going to use to make the Pallas Athena Bicycles site, read some blogs, and found a possible new site template for this blog.
My weekends are more exhausting than my work weeks.
Weekly List of Hatreds #3
- People that live vicariously through their children to the point where they use their kids' images instead of their own on their Facebook profiles.
- Walking out of a meeting and thinking, "We really needed to spend 45 minutes on this? It's a 5-minute subject."
- Foot cramps while in the middle of my workout.
- The insane cost of CNC'ed materials in small batches. Economies of scale can be so annoying.
- Not having won the lottery yet. Not that I ever will, mind you. It'd just be helpful about now.
- The devil you know.
- The devil you don't.
- Having to wait 12 weeks until the start of racing season (the Durand Road Race).*
* On the other hand, this is a good thing. I need the training time.
Upcoming Weekend Plans
Friday:
- 60 minutes E2 ride, morning
- Work, morning and afternoon
- Red Dragon, drinking, evening
Saturday:
- Frostbike, morning and afternoon
- Weights, evening
- Cutters Ball @ the Angry Catfish, late evening
Sunday:
- Framebuilding class, morning, afternoon, evening
- Recovery day, no active training
To-Do List:
- Clean computer monitor
- Eagerly await arrival of the Paterek Manual
- Build new playlists for workout iPod and for iPhone
- Rip more music and movies
Currently Reading
The Constitution
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.@nickhobart dude this one is SLAYING me. http://www.dontevenreply.com/view.php?post=84 [fontosaurus]
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Dude. Last hour VERY productive. Spent it trying to get a migrated contact lens out of my eye. Fuck. [fontosaurus]
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I'm at Wells Fargo (425 E Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis). http://4sq.com/6e3CnI [fontosaurus]
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Checked in at Wells Fargo
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I'm at Don Pablo's - Roseville (2700 Lincoln Dr, Roseville). [fontosaurus]
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Checked in at Don Pablo's - Roseville
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I favorited a YouTube video -- Cycles http://youtu.be/-0Xa4bHcJu8?a [fontosaurus]
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have my Friday off, so here's my Follow Thursday: @mightywombat, @veloveggies, @Scoutwell_Cat, @kilgette, @actualmiles, @DoWhatITellYou #ff [fontosaurus]
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Man, talk about enabling commerce. http://is.gd/aeKE9 [fontosaurus]
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