Doing the Right Things

 fatherhood, fear, health, mr. grey
May 182013
 
Mr. Grey's Rectangles

Mr. Grey’s Rectangles – Age 2

Last Saturday was one of the more frightening days of my life.  I got up in the morning and took Mr. Grey to his TBall game.  At the game I noticed some pain in my chest.  It didn’t go away.  When we got home, the pain was still there.

I googled heart attack symptoms.

Back in 2006, I had an episode like this and it had turned out to be stress related.  At the time, work was driving me nuts and I’d just come back from a trip to London where I’d worked about 10 days straight and pulled about 150 hours building out a PoP in a data center and establishing.  The chest pains came on a Friday afternoon as I was preparing to cut over a couple of WAN connections in Singapore.  I was in the US and was planning to the work remotely.  I ended up in the ER but there was nothing that was found with my heart.

Stress kills.

Around 11:30 last Saturday, my left hand went numb.

When I walked into the ER, I told them that I thought I might be having a heart attack.  They took me back immediately and before I knew it they were drawing blood and hooking me up to an EKG.  Everything appeared to be fine, but they wanted to keep me for observation.  I spent the rest of Saturday afternoon in the ER.  A second blood draw and another EKG confirmed that I was not having a heart attack.

Inflamed cartilage was the diagnosis.

I haven’t been doing the right things.  A friend texted me the other day to say that he’d not seen any activity from me on Strava.  That’s right, I haven’t been riding.  I haven’t been eating right either.  It’s been a mad rush of go-go-go and eating whatever I can whenever I can.

Time for a change. (Stress Kills)

So, I’m easing back into riding, at least I’m telling myself I’m going to.  And I’m working out a menu that isn’t 100% junk.

Lasterday

 cycling, mr. grey
Apr 152013
 

TBallWhen Mr. Grey was old enough to talk, a lot of interesting things started to come out. My favorite was the word “lasterday,” which was his word for “yesterday.” Of course, he only used this word of his for a short time, but it was very cute when he did. He quickly outgrew it as his vocabulary improved and he started using “yesterday” correctly.

Much has been written about the meditative quality of cycling. I often find my thoughts drifting around when I’m on the bike. Usually they have a lot to do with how to be a better father, how to live a healthier life, and how I really should get out on the bike more often.  Today, I was consumed with the word “lasterday.”

I think the reason it was fresh in my mind is that yesterday was a hard day for me with Mr. Grey.  Somehow, it seems like things were easier when he was younger. Perhaps that’s hindsight, perhaps that’s distance, perhaps that’s rose-colored glasses, but somehow, “lasterday” seems to have been easier.

This might take some “gettin’ used to”

 cycling, daily life
Apr 012013
 

8581878687_68fb81b9d2_nI’m upping my game.  That’s what I tell myself.

Riding more.  Eating better.

It’s all part of upping my game.

And it is, but things were starting to feel stale.  I ride the same stretch of the B&A trail 3-5 times a week.  That’s stale.  That’s boring.  That’s, well, de-motivational.

So, I took a look at things a few weeks ago and decided to get re-acquainted with an old friend, my Specialized Rockhopper.  It’s wasn’t a marvelous machine when it was new, but it was what I could afford when I was, gulp, 27.  Now 13 years later, its clunky, rattly and most of all heavy.  The fucker must way 28 pounds.  But I can’t bring myself to plunk down $1300-1700 on a new ride and I know I wouldn’t be happy with something lower end.  So, I’m reworking the old bike.

I pulled the slicks off it and added Continental Trail Kings, 2.2.  Front and rear.  Probably will reconsider 2.2 in the front, it’s a bit unwieldy.  My fork hasn’t worked right since about a month after I bought the bike, so I’ve ordered a new fork for it.  For about $400, I’m all in again and can probably be quite happy with the bike for the time being.

However, I completely forgot what riding a 28 pound bike with big fat knobby tires was like.  It’s slow.  Fun, but slow.  It probably didn’t help that I went into the ride with 89 miles under my belt in the last four days, or that it was windy as all get out today.

Today’s ride was far from “epic” but I did find a little dirt (thanks to some of the good folks in the Severna Park Peloton).  I had thought that I’d found a great little set of trails near the house, but upon riding down the hill and reading the sign, I found that I was unwelcome on my bike.  So, I peddled on and went to Kinder Farm and got a little off-road riding in.

It felt great to be off-road again, but it is a completely different experience than riding on the road.  It’s gonna take some “gettin’ used to” before I feel as comfortable on the mountain bike as I do on the road bike.

I’ll get there.

I’m upping my game.

Something’s Changed — The Browser May NOT Be King

 computing, culture, internet, social media, storytelling, technology
Mar 132013
 

Screen Shot 2013-03-13 at 9.35.40 PMA little over three years ago, I was pretty much convinced that I could live my computing life in a browser.  At least my personal computing life.  At that time, I was saddled with a Windows XP environment and Lotus Notes 6.5 as my day-to-day tools at work.  My home computing experience was centered largely around Ubuntu because I’d gotten completely sick of XP’s sluggish performance.  At home, pretty much all I needed a PC for was iTunes — so that I could get my music on my iPod.

At that time most of my activity was in a browser:

Email:  Gmail
Social Networking: Facbook.com and Twitter.com
Docs: Google Docs
Photos: Picassa, Flickr
Banking: Online Banking &  Mint.com
Blogging:  Wordpress
News: Google Reader

In 2009, virtually none of my web activity was through a mobile device.  I had a flip-phone with no data plan until November 2009 and when I got my first Blackberry it was a Curve with crappy performance and a tiny screen.

Since then, so much has changed.  I got my first iPhone in 2010 and it revolutionized my mobile experience.  I soon found that apps were easier to deal with than mobile safari — especially on sites that required java or flash.  In 2011, I got my iPad and then my Mac.  I distinctly recall using my browser on the Mac for a lot of things even then.  I used it for mail, flickr, facebook, etc.  But, that would change quickly…

Today, I use the browser mainly to browse sites, not for apps.  Pretty much all other things, I use an app.  Gmail has been replaced by Postbox.  Reader has been replaced by twitter and instapaper, and sometimes Reeder.app.  Photos, are dealt with in iPhoto.  I use Office for docs (though I hate any doc that could be a simple text file or an email).  Social networking, I use tweetbot for twitter and the browser for facebook.

So what happened?

It would be easy to say that this is what happens when you move from an unstable computing environment to a stable one.  Or when you move from one where user interface is second or third in line in terms of priorities.  But there’s something more to it.

I think it comes down to a few things.  First, I ditched Windows and Linux for an Apple ecosystem.  Second, is that I became accustomed to using apps on the mobile devices and I liked their interfaces enough to get their counter parts on the Mac.  Third, Google royally screwed up with interfaces with their ugly new red color scheme — it reminds me of Lotus Notes 6.5.

I tweeted about my experiences this morning.

It’s always interesting to me how my brain comes to terms with things at just the right time.  Today Google announced the death of Google Reader.  I’m not mourning it, but I will miss it somewhat.  The truth though is that, Google Reader has been dying for a while.

Another truth is that when you depend on the cloud, you are at the mercy of those who offer the services.  Google in particular has a history of creating useful “products” for that help them “learn”.  Google Voice helped them with voice recognition.  Gmail, helps them with search.  Google+ helps them in ways that we don’t even understand.  We think of these things as products, but if they are free, they’re not products.  They are either ways for a cloud provider to learn from you or you are the product.

 

Common Sense is uncommon on bike trails

 cycling, irritants, rants
Mar 092013
 

The only thing common about “common” sense is how uncommon it is.

I was reminded of this today as I was cycling on the B&A trail and noticed that once again (as the weather warms) the trail is full of people not thinking.  It’s not all about cyclists vs. runners either.  Both cyclists and runners do stupid things on the trail.

Headphones

If you wear them and are playing your music so loud that I can hear it as I pass you, there’s no way you’re going to hear me say “Passing on your left” or anything else.  I get it, running is boring and really should best be saved for getting away from bears or the police.  I don’t get cyclists who ride with headphones, but that’s another post entirely.  Please for the love of god people, don’t endanger yourself and others by wearing headphones while you are running or cycling on the trail.

Walking 3 abreast 

Okay, the trail is only 8 feet wide.  Three bodies with a comfortable distance between them, easily takes up the entire width of the trail. There simply isn’t enough room for opposing traffic, on foot or on bike.  You’re endangering yourself and others when you do this.  (I won’t even get into the folks who do this while listening to headphones.)

Riding your tri-bike on the trail

How many times have I seen some idiot on the trail riding down the trail, well above the speed limit, tucked in the areo position on his areo bars?  Come on, this is a really bad idea.  There are so many folks on the trail, especially in the spring and summer, that this really should be avoided.  The areo bar position is not only unstable if you need to react suddenly, but you don’t have access to your brakes.  If you think you’re a pro, then get out on the road where you’re only a danger to yourself in the areo position.

Stopping with a stroller in the middle of the trail

Come on people, do you really want to endanger yourselves and your kids by stopping in the middle of the trail.  Again, as a parent I get it, sometimes Junior just needs some attention.  Sometimes you’re just not completely present as a parent.  Theres a lot to juggle.  But really, would you do this in the middle of the street?  Pull off to the side for your chat.

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