Remember how, a few days back I said I had to catch up on photos that I’d taken on my DSLR? We’re back to doing that today. These next few photos are from a walk we took … I dunno, three lifetimes or two weeks ago. Forgive me. I seem, today, to be having the day that a lot of people have been struggling with for the last four or five weeks. It’s something you bounce back from sooner or later, I’m sure.
Anyway, some version of a few of these are going to get used elsewhere on the site. (There are big plans! OK, average-sized plans. Alright, alright, very small plans with no real import at all.) Let’s see how they look!
Neighborhood trees in full bloom:
And I think we found our winner from that batch.
And some dandelions in the yard. This is a tough head-to-head competition here:
I know which one I think, but what about you?
Today on the show we talked computer and network and data security with Andrew Korty, who has the title chief information security officer. It’s easy to imagine a person with a title like that standing behind the captain on the bridge and scowling, but that’s just television. Andrew probably just has three or five computer monitors and a lot of blinking lights and some operating software that doesn’t exist beyond a television set.
I learned some things in there, and you might too. Primarily that I am supposed to pay attention to my IT experts. Who knew?
Won’t you give it a listen?
cycling / Monday / photo / podcast / video — Comments Off on There’s a podcast and a botched bike ride and some pics 27 Apr 20
And how was your weekend? Did you know you just had one of those? We’re all making that joke, now. It’s starting to work its way into television commercials, which is how you know the zeitgeist approves of the usage. But we should also remember that not everyone is in the same at-home condition. And there’s a lot of variance in the stay-at-home concept, of course. And some people don’t have a traditional weekend on Saturdays and Sundays. But you can’t address all of those in one joke, for punchline purposes. You really can’t do it in a small talk shorthand. And you definitely shouldn’t start a long post with it either.
That’s what I learned this weekend.
The cats had a fine time of it. Phoebe at dinner time:
And here’s Poseidon enjoying an afternoon lounging in the sunshine.
And speaking of Poseidon, here’s a cat video:
He never does catch the light. If you sit with that for a few minutes you can make a terrific story. And then you begin to wonder: do cats have revenge stories because of the things we write in our heads, or do we write those tales because cats just fundamentally have revenge on their minds?
Today the cat – light story is about a creature watching a flattened version of a Big Bang. It could be that he has no idea of understanding what he’s seeing. Or maybe he knows precisely what he’s seeing. Maybe that’s where the wonder is.
We could all use a little more wonder these days.
It was a chamber of commerce kind of yesterday, and so we went for a walk in the afternoon.
The flowers I fell for.
No, really, I fell. That was going to be how I started this post, but that sounds scary, and I’m fine. Jammed my shoulder up a little bit. It aches today and it’ll be sore for another day or two and it’ll be fine, I promise.
It was quick trip. The mud slipped out from underfoot and I stuck my arm out, thinking at the last moment I should tuck instead. So I did that, but not completely enough. Mostly it just hurt my pride and got my clothes dirty. So, yeah, I shot a video because if you suffer you should make some art out of it, or something.
That was all the weekend.
Today, I published this conversation with IU’s vice president for research, Fred Cate.
It was fascinating, I asked him to touch on all these different kinds of research, covering a big handful of disciplines from multiple schools on two or three campuses and he got them all. He’s really good at giving overviews. And there’s some great quotes in there. I like the one near the end, about how you’d be hard pressed to find some slice of life in the state (and beyond) not being touched by IU’s coronavirus research. It’s impactful.
I want to talk about all of them.
The view of the sky from just before our bike ride:
It was a weirdly frustrating ride all the way around. But the important thing is that today was hill repeats. Which means finding a hill and going up it over and over again. It makes you a stronger climber and, brother, I need that.
The really important thing is that today hill repeats meant going up the hill just four times before I had another flat. Allow me to visualize this for you:
That’s four flats in the last two weeks, and under Gatorskins, too. Gatorskins being an ultra tough tire meant to protect the fragile little inner tubes. So me and the Gators and the Mavic rims are going to have a long talk tomorrow, because this is getting expensive.
Have a great start to your week, which may or may not be well underway, or even great. But if it ain’t, do try to make it so.
Sustainable Food Systems Science’s Jodee Ellett works with the Indiana Food Council Network and local food councils throughout the state. She explains what’s going on in the food supply chain, how farmers may fare this year, and the growing trend toward community gardening and more.
She talked about the big shock to the system and all the market channels and the loss of farmers markets as a big impact on local producers. Also, some farmers markets going online are seeing tremendous success, she said, but it’s a lot of work.
Also, here’s video of my bike ride!
I was ahead of The Yankee the whole ride. And then I shot the little clips for that video. After that I sat up a little bit because there was less than two miles to go and she instantly caught me — and she was wake back there, too. She’d been sneaking up on me and I was oblivious. So now I had to try to hang onto her wheel, which isn’t always easy after you’ve sat up. I jumped her at the turn and she worked her way back to catching me again, as those last two miles alternate nicely between our respective strengths. And then the sprint into the neighborhood was on.
I had to kick four times to get a clean wheel. She’s fast.
And your weekend? Was it functionally much different than your week? Unless, of course, you’re going into work still, in which case I apologize for the joke. But that’s all we can do with it, is joke and laugh, and then work from home or wish we could, or, in far too many sad cases, wish we could work from somewhere.
I get to work from home. I’m very fortunate indeed. And not a day goes by that I don’t spend a lot of time thinking of that. I do it a lot more than during the walk from bedroom to kitchen to home office, too.
One of the things I got to do today for work was this little program …
Elizabeth Malatestinic teaches human resource management in the Kelley School of Business at IUPUI. So she’s the one that onboards. I don’t know if she’s the person who came up with that term. It seems unlikely, but I didn’t think to ask. Anyway, she does HR, and we discussed what we should be able to expect from our bosses, what they can get out of us right now, managing the work-at-home dynamic and some other things. It actually is an interesting and useful conversation. But you’re only going to know that if you take my word for it and press the play button.
She has since decided to give it a try. She does it with a sense of panache that can inspire us all:
Poseidon has been studying yoga as well. Less interested, but nevertheless:
He’s a nice cat, when he’s being cuddly, and not a jerk to someone.
That cat is going through toddlerhood and adolescence simultaneously, and he’s going to be doing it for the rest of time, which is definitely something to look forward to.
On a walk yesterday we passed some carefully planted roadside trees and it reminded me of how I always make the same disappointed joke every year about maples being nature’s first quitters. It’s true. They are. It is disappointing, and then brilliant, and then just sad like all of the rest. But give the maples their due: They are some of the first ones back on the job, too.
Which is part of the twisted logic of acceptance: Oh, look at the beautiful early leaves! … As we approach the last week of April …
I am showing off the mask a friend made for me. She is crafty and has skills and a desire to help others and even me and I am very fortunate, plus it matches my eyes:
And a shadow selfie from today’s ride, which was notable only for the hill repeats.
You’re supposed to go up a hill for several minutes, descend and then start over again. Only I manage to do it based on the distance, because looking for that quirky tree or, like today, the discarded mattress on the side of the road is easier than staring at my bike computer. So looking at the data now, I went longer the first time, a bit shorter the second time, and then faster the next four times before slowing down for the next several climbs. Hey, it’s all slow and uphill to me. Also, I had negative splits on the back of the ride, which better be the case after 45 minutes or so of going uphill.
At one point this car was coming from the other direction right at the place where I was turning around. The hill continues on, so I have to keep riding, waiting for the car to pass so I can try to do a 180 at a suboptimal speed. Except this guy slows, rolls down his window and says “Steep ain’t it!?”
Hadn’t noticed, neighbor. Hadn’t noticed.
photo / podcast / Thursday — Comments Off on Listen to an actual pandemic expert, and also me 16 Apr 20
Another damp and gray day, so yesterday’s sunshine was all a ruse, a dastardly plot to lull one into a false sense of spring. Because why should you have a proper spring a month after actual spring began?
As burdens in life go, this is a small one. But if you’re going to tell me its spring, it should be spring. That’s not too much to ask. And it should be almost an article of faith. In fact in some cultures, it has been. But, as we are people of our times, let us put it in the modern context: if we can’t trust the planet who can we trust?
Probably the planet is getting us back for something we’ve done. No doubt we deserve it.
But think of these trees, these poor, tricked, trees!
Like we need things that can do this to deserve a sense of revenge …
Those are all photos from a week or so ago, pictures I took on my Canon and promptly forgot to upload. Now we’re giving them their fair shot at notoriety.
I talked to a real-life person today …
Epidemiologist Shandy Dearth is from the Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI in Indianapolis. We talked about monitoring the pandemic’s progress and staying safe and a whole lot more.
I don’t know all of the ends and outs of an epidemiologist’s day, but I have enjoyed learning how they all talk about their work and the way they relate it to the rest of us.
After the interview we talked about types of epidemiologists. I figure, once I finally learn how to spell the word I should figure out what kind I want to be. Would I take on the casual, c’est la vie, attitude? Would I become a worry wart? Would I just figure the chips are going to fall wherever chips fall, and that’s into my mouth, after they’ve been on the floor? Would I be the founder of Extra Hands, LLC, a firm designed to do my work, so my hands never have to touch anything and get dirty? Would I drop a spoon and play devil-may-care since a dirty spoon shouldn’t separate me from dessert?
Epidemiologists must spend a lot of time in public resisting the urge to tell people to get their germy germs off my lawn and away from the water fountain.
But they do get to call themselves disease detectives, though, which is really cool.
