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Monday

cycling / iPhone / Monday / photo / Samford — Comments Off
3
Oct 11

The mole men are working on the transformer

The sun was low, the shadows were nice and long. I rode 24 miles into the evening twilight. I do enjoy a good ride in mild weather, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to attack a hill that perpetually defeats me.

Should have known better. But since I didn’t know better at least the hill was decent enough to clue me in right from the start. The excellent MapMyRide gives me excellent data on that hill, where it starts and where it ends. From there I can also look at how long the actual distance between the beginning and end of the hill. And I am a wimpy rider, really.

But maybe the local road makers are trying to pull a fast one on MapMyRide and Google Maps. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I feel much better about myself now.

Except for that part where I cut off a pickup truck. The driver had the decency to not honk the horn, or even run over me — I bet it was tempting, and you wouldn’t have blamed him. It was a matter of not seeing him as I glanced over my shoulder while needing a lane change. I moved and suddenly he was there and I was there and the truck was kind enough to give me a little space.

So, if you are or know the driver of a white truck who was complaining about a yahoo on his bike this evening, please pass along my apology and gratitude.

The best part about it was that the next stretch of rode after that is a strong progressive ride. I found myself thinking If he changes his mind and comes this way I’ll be gone!

Because I can outpace a truck, right?

There’s a lack of oxygen in the brain when you’re on the backside of a ride, I’m convinced of it. There’s simply no other way my mind — a thoroughly practical (if silly) and literal instrument — thinks up half the foolish things it does.

The next thing is to develop some speed. As I say, I am a wimpy rider. Now I want to go fast. Or, as I like to think of it, a good earnest and even medium speed.

I neglected to share this:

Because the world needs to know about my light fixtures. Bought this for The Yankee, on special request. Installed it with minimal mutterings. And was delighted to learn, once it was suspended in the ceiling, that the thing actually worked. There was a brief second, an elevated level of cognition perhaps, where it didn’t seem to work right away. The mutterings would have intensified, but the lights lit, the fear was gone, and now we have a moon and stars installation. Note the little moon guy that holds it all together.

Plus!

If you leave it on long enough, and then turn it off …

That is the dying embers of the glowing magic. For the first few moments it sheds enough light to illuminate a small room.

Class prep grading, reading, laundry. The usual Monday stuff otherwise.

The power was out this morning. That was riveting. Seems there was a scheduled maintenance. Ours is a below ground neighborhood, so we never see the hardworking power workers. Maybe they outsource that sort of thing to the mole men.

There’s a contract negotiation you don’t want to miss.

Monday / Samford — Comments Off
26
Sep 11

A knot on my self esteem

Over the weekend I spent a little time in the yard. The lawn needed attention. Across the way a neighbor was using a high tech trimmer on various parts of his own lawn. It looked like a miniature floor wading machine, his trimmer, and he was pushing it around that way too. I was sure he was sending me a message.

So I set out to trim my own driveway and to remove a small amount of green clutter on the curb. I do not have a fancy trimmer, but I made do, grabbing the weedy green stuff and chop at it with the business end of a garden spade. This is all very effective, until I misjudged my distance from the mailbox and stood up right into the bottom of the thing. Didn’t hit it very hard, but it hurt anyway. And now I have a nice just off-center knot on my head.

Before the painful part of the pain had even subsided I thought: I should Google that. What causes a knot? Aside from the trauma, of course.

Don’t look this up.

The first thing I found was on a forum. Someone’s question was:

I’ve got a knot on my forehead (about the size of a quarter) that’s been there for almost a year. I think I got it because I worked in a kitchen at a camp last summer and I was always in a hurry (because my boss was the screaming kind and you had to be fast), so consequently, I would get bruises and bumps rather often. I’m pretty sure it’s from that. However, I am curious to see if anyone has ever had a regular knot that lasted a year long. I’ve never had one that long until now.

It’s not larger than it was or colored or anything. It’s just a slightly raised (but not really noticeable – I’ve only had one person ask me about it) surface on my forehead that’s been the same size since I first noticed it a year ago. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t move or anything wierd like that. Is this a normal thing, for a knot to last this long? Will it go away? Could it be cancerous? I don’t think it would be, but then again, I’m not an expert and I don’t know what cancer looks like.

The person who replied, who has more than 3,800 posts on that particular forum over almost seven years, God bless him, wrote a dismissive reply. If it isn’t bothering you, don’t worry about it.

He has a signature file on the forum, and it is a list of his medical condition and the medication he’s using. He may not be an expert on minor cranial accidents, but he’s qualified for a lot of other things.

And then the Mayo Clinic, who tells us not to be concerned if the little one gets a knot in a soccer game. (As a young soccer player that’s a relief, these many years later). The M.D. writes:

Head trauma resulting from play or sporting events is a common concern for parents, but few bumps on the head of this nature result in serious injury.

The forehead and scalp have an abundant blood supply and injury to these areas often results in bleeding under the skin. When the bleeding is restricted to one area, it causes bruising and swelling. Doctors refer to this as a hematoma.

Turns out I have a nice little scratch, too. Didn’t bleed, though, and I didn’t have any emergency room-type symptoms.

What I do have is a phrenologist’s dream (where you will find the clever explanation for this post’s witty title) and a general distaste for browsing medical sites. You can catch anything in those subdirectories.

About 15 miles on the bike, where I managed to catch the flugelbinder of my shoelace in the chain rings. This happened on a relatively flat spot, and I was able to quickly hope off. I stood there for a moment, trying to figure out how to free myself. A simple tug wouldn’t do the trick. So I had to take my shoe off, while straddling the bike. This requires re-thinking your normal shoe removal procedure and a few stupid looking hops. Standing in my sock, I managed to free the shoe.

I’ve learned to not tempt fate more than once per bike ride, so that experience was enough to call it a day. But, still, that’s 15 miles before breakfast.

And after breakfast I graded things. After lunch I wrote a lecture and did research.

Later I went to the DMV. Time for one of the new annual sticker. One person in line in front of me in a satellite office. There was one guy in front of me, leaving just enough time to read every sign in the place. “No cell phones. Do not put your child on the counter, for the childs (sic) safety. No talking, thinking, looking bored or frustrated at the experience. Hey, it could be worse, bub, you could be at the post office. We accept credit cards, and there will be an additional charge.”

At least the line moves fast. The woman behind the counter, and a big sheet of glass, was humorless. I wrote a check, because why pay for the convenience of using my convenient strip of plastic when I can scribble out four lines of ink from their pen? Those taxes on that little sticker — this may be the most expensive one square inch of property I own — have to pay for something, right?

She also intended that I read her mind and just sign the form already. I do this once a year, lady, I forget what is supposed to be signed. Also, there was recently a head injury.

adventures / family / Monday — Comments Off
19
Sep 11

We do not talk like pirates

Talk Like a Pirate Day today, of course, but there are no “Yarrrs” or speeches about torrents or proxy IP addresses. Today is my lovely wife’s birthday, and it just seems wrong to share such a day with a fake slogan. I can talk like a pirate any day.

I just choose not to do so.

I wrapped one a last present, and then pleaded my ignorance about how it got there. She opened her fourth and fifth cards that have been spread out about the house since last week. And then I installed the new present. It only took four tries!

It is a special light fixture, which may not sound like your idea of a present, but she asked for it specifically. And it glows in the dark. You can imagine our entertainment.

The first installation attempt I tried following the instructions. On the second and third tries I operated on the assumption that the instructions were wrong. The sticker said Made in China and, while the English was straight from a solid 101 class, the first screw stripped with less than half-a-turn.

When this happens you immediately move beyond a need for the installation instructions.

On the fourth try, though, I decided to give them one more good faith effort and, what do you know.

And now one of our rooms is lit even when it isn’t.

We carefully saved the box and are preserving the old fixture because, as she said “That one is going with us if we ever move.”

Told you she liked it.

We had the traditional Japanese birthday dinner, surrounded by our new best friends, a 13-year-old in a poodle skirt who was just learning the joys and intricacies of ginger and wasabi and that she can’t trust her father for anything, ever, and a family of five, who eat there each week, who just bought a new car, who’s oldest plays fall baseball and who’s youngest is an unholy terror.

Also, the Japanese place in town does a Halloween costume contest ever year. Our chef has won the prize by going as Buddha and almost burned himself alive as Nacho Libre. Capes are flammable, and get this guy away from me.

The Japanese steakhouse is very instructive.

We also had a delicious slice of Oreo ice cream cake from the local place walk-up shop and tsettled in for a nice DVD date night.

She announced to the room in general that it was a great birthday.

Auburn / history / iPhone / Monday / photo / Samford — Comments Off
12
Sep 11

It was either the quilt or Microsoft Word

Oh the things you can get done on a Monday!

Set some hours. Wrote a lot of emails. Volunteered myself onto a panel. Worked on my car. Read and tinkered with two papers. Watched some television. Washed my car. Vacuumed the floor mats.

The floor mats, people.

Sure, when you throw it down into one fast list it doesn’t seem like much, but there’s some heft to that list.

At least three of those things involved Microsoft Word, after all.

And since you’re not interested in any of those things in the slightest, have some pictures. I found this quilt hanging at the city library yesterday:

The quilt was sponsored by American Field Service of Auburn, which now has a different name, I believe, but is a youth organization. Each panel is a little bit of the local history — and judging by the content, somewhere from the mid-late 1970s — so this safely fits into the realm of folk art. Here’s Old Main:

Old Main, built in 1859, was the first building on Auburn’s campus. Classes were held there. It served as a hospital during the Civil War (when the university was closed). It was destroyed by fire in 1887 and replaced by the iconic Samford Hall.

Here’s the lathe, which has now remarkably been mentioned here twice in the span of eight days:

Built in Selma, Ala. during the early part of the Civil War it was intended to make military supplies for the Confederates. They tried to move it to Georgia to keep it from being captured, and it was ultimately buried in Irondale, near modern Birmingham. It later was moved to Columbus, Ga. and worked through the end of the war boring cannons. After the war it was used in the coal iron industry. In the 1950s it was presented to Auburn. Also, the legend goes, if you stand in front of it under a full moon and say some random thing or another it will move three times and make all your dreams come true. Or something.

People don’t talk about it much anymore, I guess most everyone who can relate to it are all gone now, but the rail depot was a vital part of the community. It even figures into the football lore. The depot still stands. It was a realty office for three decades after the trains stopped rumbling through. Now it is empty and is considered a state sight in peril.

Reading that link you’ll learn it was the third one in town, designed by a student in 1904. The last passenger ticket was sold in 1970. Here it is today.

journalism / links / Monday / things to read — Comments Off
12
Sep 11

Things to read

I write these for a blog for work, and just reproduce them here. Like everything else around here, it is an evolving project, evolving right before your eyes, even! They get a bit too long, so I’m breaking them up in both places. Here’s a chunk of them for today, though.

A collection of some of the best 9/11 — 10 years on newspaper covers from around the country. There were many terrific ones to see.

Of all of the great pages to see, this is my favorite. The infographic style is also an example of turning a now decade-old story into something contemporaneous. If you read nothing else, click that link and read the first lines and then the bottom right corner. Here’s the supporting story.

Seems the Guardian overreached in trying to do a realtime feed of Sept. 11. The article talks about the still developing boundaries of Twitter. I think it just as importantly speaks to the “We made this culture” culture of Twitter, which is still evolving, and being driven by the masses, not what a news outlet thinks. Also it gets to the importance of listening in a conversation. Guardian tried something, the audience didn’t like it, told them and the paper, to their credit, listened.