I had a meeting first thing this morning. The regular monthly meeting deal. At least I can attend virtually. Pretty much downhill from there. That’s Friday heading into a three-day weekend for ya.
What the world needs now is more three-day weekends. It is a thing that there’s just too little of.
I saw a job ad today, because I spend a little time each week looking at job ads for students, that was remote, but in Washington D.C. And you had to be in the office the two core days of the week. I didn’t know what those days were, but this operation defined them as Tuesday and Wednesday. You also had to be in the office every other Thursday.
And, probably if you got into the interview process, they’ll tell you to be there twice on days heading into a full moon. But you can report to the auxiliary office on days after the stock market closes even.
Who is keeping track of these comings and goings?
Our stated policy, admittedly in a line of work that requires some human interaction, is that you can work from home one day a week, but it has to be a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. There was also a lengthy process that you had to work your way through, a policy meant to make HR happy and, possibly, to discourage the effort from anyone else. Some people take advantage. Others need to be there all of the time. There’s no equitable solution, but at least there was the effort.
Happily, the honor system is still in place, and we can all be professional about these things. Everyone wants to do the work, everyone is findable. Everything gets done. All the boxes get checked off the list, like that meeting, for instance.
Had a nice ride this evening. Sometimes I wonder if I do this just for those few minutes right after you’re done. The heart rate is still up, the endorphins are moving, but you can breathe again, and nothing has gotten sore yet. Those 10 or 12 minutes are pretty special. Anyway, I pedaled through 31 miles to start the weekend. (What a great sentence.)
My avatar was doing about 30 miles an hour there. I don’t look hardly as graceful, for whatever that’s worth. The most important thing is that I crossed off six more stages from the Zwift list. (There are 121 stages, I’m going to do 120 of them. Hopefully most of them during this offseason.) Just 92 to go.
Zwift is funny. Some of these course are realistic. Some are former world championship courses, or other famous locations in the world. Some are in the city, some in the countryside. Sometimes you see things designers included for a bit of ambiance. Like, for instance, this little stretch of one of the Makuri Islands routes. There’s that mountain off in the distance, and then, suddenly, a wild boar is running alongside.
And then, on another course, it just gets absurd. You’re riding through …
I don’t know what the legal system on the fictious Makuri Islands are like, but this is a lawsuit waiting to happen. On the tracker maps, the Makuri Islands use the Solomon Islands as a stand-in, for whatever reason. Tomorrow, I’ll be riding in the North of England.
Pretty great weekend plan, if you ask me. What are your weekend plans?
We had the fog earlier, the snow tomorrow, the rain today. This was the view looking back up the street. I had to wait several seconds to get a shot with the road empty. And then I waited for this guy trudging up the street. You wonder where he’s going, and how he feels about it in the rain. But you only wonder for a moment, because he’s blurry and still something of an abstraction.
You’d think more on it if you could make out details of him and his trudge.
The composition, then, was entirely a choice.
Anyway, I like the way raindrops sit on glass. They both emphasize and distract from what’s going on in their background.
Did a quick bike ride this evening, just ticking off stages on Zwift. (Twenty down, 101 to go.) There’s no point to this, other than to do it, which is the point of everything.
I’m presently working on two cycling goals, both integral to waiting out the winter and rainy weather.
I have made a spreadsheet, you see, to chart my bike riding progress this year. It shows that I am, right now, well ahead of my daily projections, which is to be expected, frankly. It’ll only be later in the year when the daily trendlines become a challenge.
The other challenge will be in riding all of those Zwift stages. The ones I ticked off the list tonight were the first ones with slight climbs in them. They’ll only get longer, and more challenging from here.
Easy night, otherwise. Just trying to glide into the weekend. There’s only Friday to go!
And I will see you then. Until then, check out my Mastodon count. There’s always something useful there. For example …
A new semester began today. A new semester is underway. I am counting them on the access panel in my office. Each trident marks a semester. There’s a lot of memories and successful students in each. I wonder what sort of successes we’ll pack in the newest addition.
That’s a lot of semesters!
Had a nice bike ride on Saturday. One of our friends joined us on Zwift and that made us fast. Somehow I had 13 mile splits averaging 28+ mph. That’s just silly.
And while I was working hard trying to keep up, I had this idea …
Now I can capture videos of my virtual rides! Aren’t you thrilled?
Anyway, I got in 36 miles on Saturday. I didn’t ride yesterday, but I should have, so I did a quick 20 miles immediately after work, today.
More importantly, it is time for the most popular feature on the site. It’s time to check in with the kitties. (They had a busy day napping and cuddling yesterday, by the way.)
Here’s Phoebe, beating up one of her toys. Grab it in your front paws and kick it into submission by your back paws. Excellent strategy, for the most part. And it looks cute, but those little feet and claws will give you a beating!
It was a poor substitute for her favorite spring, which has been lost for a few days. I found it last night. She chased it around and under a chair. I rescued it for her. We started talking about mimicking it with other springs, maybe it has the right number of loops or something. While we wondering about that, she promptly lost it again. No idea where it is, as of this writing.
I know where it isn’t. Poseidon is, very helpfully, looking for it as well. He tells us it isn’t in the dryer.
Every day I open a thing — a closet, a cabinet, the refrigerator or some other appliance — and then close it. Then I open it and close it again, just to make sure that guy didn’t sneak in while I blinked.
It isn’t that I blink slow, but he moves fast.
I’m trying a new thing. I’m closing tabs. (I know! Crazy, right? Next you’ll find me cleaning out under sinks and vacuuming beneath bookcases … )
Anyway, there are a lot of tabs open in my browser(s). I bet you might have a similar problem. Some of them have been open for ages, and ages. Rather than lose them altogether, I am bookmarking some and closing them. (Novel!) And others should be shared, and then closed. So here we are. Today’s contenders.
“We believe we see the world as it is,” she writes. “We don’t. We see the world as we need to see it to make our existence possible.”
The same goes for fish. Only the top layers of the oceans are illuminated. The “sunlight zone” extends down about seven hundred feet, the “twilight zone” down another twenty-six hundred feet. Below that — in the “midnight zone,” the “abyssal zone,” and the “hadal zone” — there’s only blackness, and the light created by life itself. In this vast darkness, so many species have mastered the art of bioluminescence that Widder estimates they constitute a “majority of the creatures on the planet.” The first time she descended into the deep in an armored diving suit called a wasp, she was overwhelmed by the display. “This was a light extravaganza unlike anything I could have imagined,” she writes. “Afterwards, when asked to describe what I had seen, I blurted, ‘It’s like the Fourth of July down there!'”
Bioluminescent creatures produce light via chemical reaction. They synthesize luciferins, compounds that, in the presence of certain enzymes, known as luciferases, oxidize and give off photons. The trick is useful enough that bioluminescence has evolved independently some fifty times. Eyes, too, have evolved independently about fifty times, in creatures as diverse as flies, flatworms, and frogs. But, Widder points out, “there is one remarkable distinction.” All animals’ eyes employ the same basic strategy to convert light to sensation, using proteins called opsins. In the case of bioluminescence, different groups of organisms produce very different luciferins, meaning that each has invented its own way to shine.
[…]
Scales, like Widder, worries that the bottom of the ocean will be wrecked before many of the most marvelous creatures living there are even identified. “The frontier story has always been one of destruction and loss,” she writes. “It is naïve to assume that the process would play out any differently in the deep.” Indeed, she argues, the depths are particularly ill-suited to disturbance because, owing to a scarcity of food, creatures tend to grow and reproduce extremely slowly. “Vital habitat is created by corals and sponges that live for millennia,” she writes.
And if we’re going to learn anything — we’re not, but if we were gonna — it ought to be that there’s an interconnectedness to all of this that is fragile, and important. Even among all of those different zones.
Unlike some services (looking at you, iCloud), Gmail is pretty lenient with its free tier. You get 15GB of storage between Gmail and Google Drive, and for many people, it’s good enough. But a lot of people have been using Gmail for a decade or more now, and it’s not hard to accumulate 15GB of data over that kind of timespan.
Once you do hit the 15GB cap, you won’t be able to add files to Google Drive, and eventually, emails won’t hit your Gmail inbox. If you’ve been finding it harder and harder to avoid paying Google for more storage, here are some of the best ways to quickly free up space.
It is a slide show, but it is one of the more useful slideshows, if you’re in a space saving mode.
There. One of my phone browsers is now down to 43 tabs. It is good to make progress.
And we continue making progress in the Re-Listening project. I’m playing all of my CDs in my car. In order, that is. Not all at once. That’d be … noisy.
But some of it would sound good! That’s why I’m listening to them individually and, here, I’m just writing a few notes. These aren’t reviews, but just for fun and filler, he said 1,075 words into this post. Anyway, this installment is a greatest hits, and it seems weird, somehow, to go on and on about a record that was full of charting hits.
So let’s get to it quickly, then. Greatest Hits and their massive success aside, some of these Tears for Fears tracks were juuuuust a tiny bit before my time, initially. Oh, the big ones I know well, and you do too! But there was a sense of achievement in discovering new-to-me and thoughtful and quality Tears for Fears songs. “Woman in Chains” peaked at 36 on the Billboard Hot 100. Lovely song.
“Mad World” was not a hit in the 1980s, which was why I listened to it for the first time in 1996-or-so, but it did get some spins in 2004, reaching number 30 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and topped the Adult Alternative Songs chart. Then it landed in a video game commercial, was the subject of a few successful covers and appeared on a game show. It’s become something of a standard filler, I guess?
“Laid So Low” was the single off the actual greatest hits. And, sure, it was released in 1992, but this is quintessential 1980s. It was a top 20 Euro hit, settled in the top 40 in Canada and elsewhere. The song was a top 20 hit in the UK, France, Italy and Poland; a top 40 hit in Canada, Germany and the Netherlands; and reached the top 10 on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Curt Smith wasn’t in the band at the time, so that song was a Roland Orzabal special. He kept the band name active during the rest of the 1990s, but 30 million unit sales means you get back together, eventually. After nine years of silence, they started talking, playing and writing together again.
“The Tipping Point” was a project that took seven years to produce, but it came out to good reviews in 2001 and made the top 10 in a lot of national charts, including the U.S. It also hit number one on the US Billboard’s Top Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Album Sales charts.
Not bad for two guys climbing into their 60s, he said, hopefully, from halfway through his 40s.
cycling / Friday / memories / photo — Comments Off on My Bob Barker line was my third-funniest joke of the day 6 Jan 23
At the end of the day, as I was walking out of the office, I ran into the guy who locks the doors. He’s a fine fellow and we always have a good laugh. He was doing his last task of the day, slamming that bolt home, as I was leaving the building.
Did you just lock me in?
“Yep, you’re stuck.”
I will take that personally, then, for two days.
He laughed, and I instructed him to have a good weekend. Just, you know, in case that was somehow helpful, as if the man hadn’t yet thought of that possibility.
But the best part, aside from sending him home with a chuckle, was that I got to use the sincere expression, Have a good weekend, pal.
I once had a friend who used that pal to great effect. Sometimes I use it, and it makes me smile, thinking of him. You never heard the comma, because you were so busy being touched by the sincerity that came with that “pal.” He is a park ranger these days. I bet he’s great at that.
Anyway, there was a lot of bright sunlight to enjoy today. I am cold, but happy.
This was the second time this week I’d seen the actual sunlight and blue skies. It did not disappoint. I will accept the cold — this being January and all — but I will need some sun in exchange. That’s not asking too much. Otherwise it is just the usual, relentless, gray.
As if I needed to see it again, and from another perspective, to verify it, here’s the mid-afternoon view up through the giant skylight in the commons.
It’s gray 165 days a year here, and we have this giant window set up. This time of year I’m always amazed people don’t just sit there and stare up in wonder when the skies are blue.
Part of that is because there’s no one here right now. No students, anyway. Some of the professional types were in the office, getting ready. Classes start on Monday. This, then, is the last deep breath in. The normal rhythms will return. And, sometime in mid- or late-April, spring will finally show up. May it get here soon.
Got back on the bike this evening, and had a nice 27.7 mile ride. Should have gone longer, but there are dinner considerations to consider.
I considered I normally like dinner.
But, after the semi-impressive bonk on Wednesday, sitting up after 80 minutes and feeling as if I could ride all night was an encouraging sign.
Also, I was underwater at one point. Look to the left of that graphic. Biggest ray I’ve ever seen.
So I made a spreadsheet to chart my bike riding progress this year. I wanted to create a graphic that would illustrate how I did against specific daily averages over the year. One line will represent improving last year’s totals by 21 percent. The other will be a line that, if I can keep up with it, would mean a 42 percent increase over my record-setting 2022.
It’s ambitious, but it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. Right now, at least, I am well ahead of the blue and green trend lines, as you can see by that purple line. I’m wondering if/when the more ambitious goal will slip away from me.
Oh look, this mountain has its own weather system.
I’ve probably shared a version of that before, but it amuses me, which is the point.
Don’t worry, though, I won’t share that chart again for quite some time.
It is remarkable to me how light things get when it is time to go back to work. It seems having a normal schedule prevents me from finding and doing fun things to tell you about here. The nerve of the real world, no?
So this is my day, today, be it ever so humble.
I did 16 miles in about 45 minutes and then quit. Everything was wrong. It was just immediately fast and hard and not at all what I was hoping for, which was a ride that would have lasted about twice as long. Instead, I had a bit of mild-to-medium nausea, there was no more energy, and I was threatening to overheat.
I bonked. Bonked like a rookie who knows nothing about nutrition, and did it in under an hour. Very weird. But, I guess, lunch had been some time back and maybe there hadn’t been enough carbs. There certainly wasn’t enough glycogen.
I felt a bit better after dinner, at least. But by then I was just … tired. So the rest of this isn’t terribly substantial, sorry.
But, hey, I set five PRs on Strava segments. And I finished 8th out of 460 on one of the sprints. I did the math and I managed to hold 30 mph through that segment with no virtual draft, or even a real awareness that I was about to enter a sprint. (Also, I am in no way a sprinter. Or anything else, really.)
Here’s a quick update to the Re-Listening project. I know, I just put two pieces in this same space yesterday. But those were to get caught up from before the holidays. Since I drove to two places in town yesterday to run errands I spent more time in the car. It’s an odd thing about temporal mechanics around here, but it takes 27 minutes to drive nine miles. Between that and waiting in line at the car wash, I managed to listen all the way through another CD.
I actually skipped one CD yesterday, because life is too short to listen to awful music. A record promoter gave me this disc, and I couldn’t get out of it. I should have tried harder, I know. I knew it then, too, when he compared the lead singer to “an off-key Kurt Cobain.” This was, mind you, a silly one-off conversation 26 years ago and I remember that comment. How out of place. How weird. How wrong. But at least the guy got to drop a name, I guess.
Anyway, the guy singing on that CD wasn’t Kurt Cobain, but closer to Chris Cornell. He didn’t have all of the tricks, and he sounds simultaneously bored and impressed with himself. The guitarist is noodling around, seemingly aware of the limitations by his chord structure or what he had to play around, gamely looking for something new and different. But there’s not much variation, and life is too short for awful music.
I wanted, here, to do the thing where I look all of those guys up and say they all went on to be successful restauranteur, fire fighters or boat charter captains. All four guys have incredibly common names, though. So one of them could be a judge. Another might be an auctioneer. One is probably just really good at D&D. The guy that did the cover photos has had a good run as a photojournalist. Seems to be in Florida now.
Anyway, after that came my 1996 cassettee-to-CD upgrade for the Hootie and the Blowfish debut. Probably you’ve heard of it. It finished seventh on Billboard’s 1990s pop list. Only Alanis Morissette, Whitney Houston, Shania Twain, Garth Brooks, the Titanic soundtrack and Celine Dion, respectively, fared better. They won a Grammy and were certified platinum 21 times in the United States. So, yeah, I needed to get an updated copy, I guess. Because you never heard this stuff on the radio.
(Aside: Lilly Haydn was, is, and likely always will be, incredible.)
Anyway, I really dug the band (last August their second album, Fairweather Johnson appeared on the Re-Listening project)
and I still do. Something about the Carolina yelling appeals to me.
Oh, there was a 25th anniversary edition released in 2019? Guess I should pick up a copy of that.
But, first, I’m going to sleep off the bleh feeling.
