Read that and thought damn that is amazing, wish I could’ve seen the Letterman spot (since I’m usually in bed then). So I hopped over to YouTube and did a quick search and found the clip of his interview.
Tada.
So what does this mean?
Where is the radio? The TV? The newspaper? The reporters?
Oh they’re all there, it’s just with a new twist. A shift in perception. A natural evolution of data delivery.
I can see where print and even video media empires could get freaked out because in a sense they’re losing a business opportunity given the shift. I’m thinking though this is just an augmentation to infrastructure they already have. They just need to aquire a few new tools to remain in the business.
I mean really. What I did this morning wasn’t free, even though it sure felt like it. However, I had to pay for the powerbook and the broadband connection. I did get for free the use of bloglines which I used to subscribe to the BoingBoing RSS feed, which then had the link to CNN and which made me go to YouTube. I see at least four advertising opportunities there. Who knows what else you could try out there. What if I had to pay a penny to view the YouTube video? I’d do it. It’s probably why things like AllofMp3 are so popular.
Anyway, thought it was an interesting thing. Sorry it took me so long to get a glimpse of what the future holds.
This is of course becoming somewhat of a tradition, this whole yearinreview thing.
So, let me try to continue.
Looking at last year I wanted to ride 5,000 miles and ride more than drive the Jeep. I was able to do the 5k on the bike, however it looks like the Jeep had 9,123 miles put on it last year. Something to work for this year perhaps. It was borrowed heavily for a couple months.
I also mentioned a few events that I wanted to do. I didn’t get around to any of the races, but did do the Mt. Baker Hill Climb (2:07), RAPSODY (12:30), and took a beginning track class. Part of me is still on the fence regarding the whole racing thing. The big thing being is it worth the risk of injury. That and being witness to the last Boat Street tragedy made me think about things too.
For this year, I think I’d really like to focus on sprint triathlons, and perhaps to help egg that on I’ll write some “training” related posts to so I can record what I’ve been doing and gauge that against the results that I get. Here’s the Washington Triathlon Calendar for reference.
I’ll finish up with the usual numbers, again these are really more for my benefit when I’m 65 and wondering where my health went.
I’ve been tapped for the 5 things meme. Surprsingly enough, it is from the person I least expected it from. You know this means I’m gonna push the Amish friendship bread again next year.
Ok so, let’s see if I can come up with 5 things, and more importantly 5 people to pass this along to.
1.
I used to live in South Dakota. From about 1980 to 1982 I spent some time in the great mid west. My mother met someone and he was from there, so we moved out there. I loved it actually. We lived on a couple of different farms (ie: rented) and we had tons of animals. Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Pigs, Dogs, Rabbits, and a Sheep. I learned how to shoot a .22 rifle, was a member of the Cub Scouts, and rode my bike on rural gravel roads.
One interesting memory I have from this time was the night I was going to go see E.T. with a friend of mine, but I ended up not getting to go because I lied about not feeding the dog that morning. Interestingly enough, I’ve never seen E.T.. Everytime I’ve tried it just hasn’t grabbed me enough to sit through it.
Living out in the middle of nowhere, I would spend countless hours walking around with my dog. Tracking down random birds, and just roaming through empty fields and such. I ended up befriending many of the animals on the farm since those were about the only accessible friends around. All of my school friends lived in the city. By city I mean places like Dell Rapids South Dakota.
Whenever we’d head into town one of the things I’d do would be to see how far I could stretch a dollar at the General Store (1 bouncy ball, 5 kraft caramels, 4 bazooka gums, 5 marbles, etc)
My first crush was a blonde girl named Jennifer, who was my partner in the square dancing class we had.
2.
Somewhat related to #1, my mother passed away when I was 9, while we were living in South Dakota. She was diabetic and had heart troubles, and ended up having a heart attack. It was this event that lead me to Washington state to live with my father.
What’s interesting about this is that this was of course a major intersection in my life.
Going one way continues down the path of staying in South Dakota and whatever life that entailed. Heading down this alternate path lead to Washington, college, and life as I know it today as a computer programmer in Seattle.
Once in awhile, during extremely introspective moments I sometimes wonder what my life would’ve turned out to be and the people I would’ve met along the way. I also think of all of the people that I have met and what that would’ve meant as well. Everyone who is in my life now, wouldn’t be.
Naturally, I’d have a whole separate set of people in my life.
Different? Yes. Better? Who knows. It’s a hard question to ponder. Do I have a better life now because my mom died? And how are we defining better?
3.
I used to draw. I used to love to draw as a matter of fact. I was fairly good at it, but definitely not a natural.
I was encouraged to draw from an early age, and my step grandmother was a painter so I was able to explore that medium during summer visits. If you’re ever over at my house, the painting in the master bathroom is one that I did. My wife had it framed for a christmas gift a few years ago.
In high school I took every drawing class you could take aside from independant study. Actually, now that I think about it, I think I did do an independant study focusing on portraits.
Alas, the furthest I ever took it was to start a portfolio for the Seattle Art Institute, but I never pursued it further. I was decent, but it would’ve been hard work to be really good at it. There were also a couple of other people who were just downright on a different level than I was, and that was the realization that I had. I was good but probably not good enough to get in.
Do I regret that? Not really. I tend to like to think that I can explore my artistic side of things in the things that I produce code wise. May sound phoofy and such, but it keeps me going.
I also dabble very slightly in photography, every once in awhile coming up with a good shot here and there.
Perhaps one of these days I’ll pick up the pencil again and see what happens.
I mean trance, house, and progressive trance. It’s my juice of preference in the music scene, but I’m pretty wide open to all kinds of music. Rock, Jazz, Alternative, Classical, and even some Rap and God forbid Heavy Metal (really that was back in high-school). However, you’ll find me frequenting more DJ concerts than anything else. Artists such as Tiesto, ArminVanBuuren, and Ferry Corsten are among my favorites.
It isn’t about the crowds, it isn’t about the glow sticks and it’s not about the nightlife. I’ve got a related post that has been brewing for a few weeks, so I won’t go into this too much more and save it for that.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love my job. More to the point, I love technology, the internet, computers, and how to craft software to make interesting and cool things. With that said though, and if money was no object, I’d take an honest shot at following in the footsteps of the guys above.
I tried sushi for the first time today. A group of old college friends decided to meet up, and sushi was the destination. It was decided that Saito’s Cafe would be the place.
I ended up having Saba( mackeral) and the spicy tuna roll. The Saba was a bit fishier than I was expecting, and the tuna roll pretty much tasted like I’d expect sushi to taste. That is to say I dipped it in a heavy bath of soy and wasabi. This perhaps washed out any real flavors that I should’ve been expecting but that’s the way I did it.
I guess I can take it or leave it. I think in the end I’m more at home with Thai food. The other benefit has been having fishy burps all day. Tasty. There were pictures taken, so I’ll update when I get them.
Well, another season of cyclocross is over, my third to be precise. I decided to stick with the category 4 because honestly I haven’t put in the effort to move up.
A good friend recently commented that they found that hard to believe, especially given all of the riding I have done this year. All I can say is that it takes effort to get from one level to the next.
Yeah you can ride a lot, but if you aren’t really pushing yourself you aren’t going to improve. It’s the same reason why you can be rather overweight and yet still do the STP. Walking vs sprinting. Same situation if you’re working out, going to school, trying to lose weight, whatever.
It’s all about pushing the comfort zones appropriately. I remember back when I was lifting more seriously that one of the guys working at the gym said that getting to 10% body fat was a real effort.
True that.
So anyway, I was able to finish off the season with the final race down at Kelley Creek this past Sunday. The weather was cooperative but it had done some damage the few days before. It was muddy and just overall a hard ride. It was the first time that I was seriously thinking of calling it quits. By the last lap it was feeling like I was barely keeping the bike up in some sections.
The joy of the smoker’s cough if you know what I mean.
I ended the season 38th overall out of 130 all racers.
That sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Perhaps I’ll just leave it at that.
It’s true. I did finish 38th overall with 6 of 7 races (total scores are taking your highest 7 of all 9 races). I missed 3, but really only 1 given that 2 are dropped. This means I could’ve gotten perhaps up to 30th overall.
Of those 130 people, really only about 60 raced more than 4 races.
To really get serious you have to start talking about training zones, lactate threshold, anaerobic threshold, intervals, tempo riding, and all that jazz. So who knows. We’ll see.
It was one of those mornings. Two weeks since I’ve actually been on the bike (that wasn’t attached to a trainer).
As a welcome back gift, I noticed the white caps approaching me as I looked south at log boom park. Nothing like a great headwind to get back into the swing of things.
To cap it off, I was coming to a stop down on 43rd and 11th to make a right. Had the red so slowed down into what we’ll call the poor-man’s trackstand. That is to say I’m pretty much stopped but I’ll move forward a few millimeters at a time. Well, when the fenders are on, I get toe overlap, and in front of a couple delivery trucks waiting with me, I did the classic tipover.
I’ve been doing cross this season again (3rd year), and have been able to do 5 of the 8 races so far. The weekend after next is the series finale down in at Kelley Creek. I’ve been doing about as well as I always do, which is to say midpack. I’m still fighting the mental game of being ultra competitive and the physical game of actually getting into really good shape. One thing that was sort of cool was a couple races ago I won a pair of Northwave Kameleon shoes. Quite a surprise, and a total random drawing.
I don’t really talk about work here, and I’ll continue that. However, I’ll give mad props to my coworkers, I love working with them. In the new gadgets department, I scored a Cingular 8125 and the previous generation iPod Nano. With the new phone, I’ll get a chance to explore some mobile development and see what’s up with that.
I was down and out with a cold recently, so I was able to catch up on some movies ( 40 yr old virgin, Mission Impossible 3, Clerks 2, Serenity, and DaVinci Code).
In more related biking news, I’ve finally broke the 5,000 miles in a year mark. I passed it last week and I’ll have to fess up that about 350 of those miles are on the trainer. This is the 3rd year I’ve been shooting for this, and now that I’ve done it it feels a bit anticlimatic. I think it is because around August I realized I was going to make it. In any sense, it doesn’t feel like that much anymore, so I’m continuing down the dangerous must-always-improve path of seeking 10,000 in a year by 2008.
The winter months have also brought the start of the Indoor time trials, I’ve done one (with almost exact results to the last one done in March) and I’m scheduled for every other Tuesday, January through March.
Nothing much going on in the side-project scene. I’m going to be decommissioning Podfeeder.com shortly after the new year. I just don’t have time for it and it’s lost it’s glimmer (in my eye anyway). I’ve got a few ideas but we’ll see how things go.
I’ve very recently signed up with Twitter which is an online status system. You can IM/SMS/Web/Email what you’re doing (in short 165 char bursts) to let people know what you’re up to. May sound funky, but for friends/family it sort of opens up the next level of communication/networking. If you consider what they’re doing, and how they’re doing it, it opens up some pretty interesting uses.
My first encounter was coming up Boat street from getting some cheapo normal/flat pedals for the cross bike so some family visiting could take it for a spin. I was jamming up (and really probably going too fast ) and was taking a left on Brooklyn to head up to the BGT.
There’s a car that is just pulling up as I’m approaching. I put out my left hand pointing to the left, letting the driver know that I intend on turning. There’s a glitch here in the system though. Without knowing you’ve made eye contact (dark tinted windows) you have to enter your turn with the thought that the driver did/didn’t see you.
You generally want to assume they didn’t.
The other glitch is that to take a corner (and especially when going fast) you need both hands on the bars.
So I did, and about halfway through the turn I’m seeing the car start to move forward (I’m thinking now that the driver did see me but thought I was cruising straight past, and they were then reaffirming no cars were coming and starting their left turn). So they start accelerating (not fully) but enough to get my adrenaline going and you start vocalizing “Hey yo, watch what you’re doing”. It wasn’t a close call, well it could’ve been much closer, but close enough. No screeching of brakes or anything. Something to put you on high-alert.
Then of course on the way home two separate bikers decide it would be best to pass the slower people in front of them at the exact time I was coming from the other direction. This is analagous to passing someone in a car when oncoming traffic is present. You really shoudn’t do it.
The final goodie was up at Log boom where you cross the road there. It’s a yield for bikers/pedestrians so that auto traffic coming down from the hill can just breeze through the intersection. Well I arrived there and stopped and a car stopped to let me go (which again technically they shouldn’t need to do (and really is sort of a peeve of mine since they’re breaking the “flow” rule )). So of course some audi TT driver comes zipping up and lays on the horn.
Sorry dude. That’s 5 seconds you’ll never get back.
