running

I do not know what is happening. / journalism / links / memories / photo / running / Samford / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off on Out goes the best neon in east Alabama
2
Oct 13

Out goes the best neon in east Alabama

This is a sad little story:

Lamar Phillips, the owner of Goal Post Bar-B-Q in Anniston, on Friday closed the doors to his restaurant for the final time.

He said he will sell the business, a fixture of Quintard Avenue since the 1960s, but declined to provide the potential buyer’s name or that person’s intentions for the building.

That Anniston restaurant has some of the best neon around:

Goal Post

I took that picture on Valentine’s Day in 2007. We had dinner that night at a catfish joint. Had I been thinking we would have gone to Goal Post. Catfish was not the best Valentine’s dinner. (Because barbecue is the ideal, of course. And it would have run me $12, apparently.) But we sat right down at the catfish joint, if I recall. Anyway, it was being in the same place that mattered. That year The Yankee was in Atlanta and we spent a lot of time on I-20 going back and forth.

Certain stretches of that road bring it all back.

Anyway, Goal Post was great. The neon is the best in that part of the state. The kicker actually puts the ball through the uprights. You can just see the other parts of the neon fading into the darkness. It looks great in motion. And that kicker has never missed.

Hope they are doing business there again soon.

I hope those American tourists can figure out a way around this barricade at the World War I memorial. I’m more troubled by the presumption that someone would tell you where you may practice your rights.

But the doings at the World War II memorial, just down the mall, are of course getting a lot of attention:

Some of it is disproportionate:

All of this is needless, of course.

The first time I visited the World War II memorial, it was about midnight on a cold December Saturday. It was open, as it was designed to stay open.

The memorial has 4,048 gold stars, each representing 100 Americans who died in the war. “Closing” open memorials with the simple intention of inconveniencing people is, well, simple. But you’ve learned to not expect a lot of nuance out of Washington D.C. these days.

In front of the wall of stars there is the message “Here we mark the price of freedom.”

Here’s a story with a great pull quote: “(W)hen he called the parks service, he was told they would face arrest. ‘I said, are you kidding me? You’re going to arrest a 90/91-year-old veteran from seeing his memorial? If it wasn’t for them it wouldn’t be there. She said, ‘That’s correct sir.””

But a bit of sanity finally prevailed.

It is shameful to make sacred places props, both the closing it and the photo opportunity it turned into for some congress members, but there’s not a great supply of shame in Washington.

And, think, we’re just getting started. We’re going about all of this all wrong, on both sides.

Things to read that I found interesting today …

Speaking of the shutdown, please meet The Most Unessential Man in America, in what is surely a bitterly humorous and demoralizing tale.

Here’s The Onion on the shutdown.

Local reads:

Study: Alabama residents pay 14 percent more for homeowner’s insurance after making 1 claim

4 found shot to death inside vehicle in remote area of Winston Co.

This one is interesting. How Big The Internet Of Things Could Become:

By the end of the decade, a nearly nine-fold increase in the volume of devices on the Internet of Things will mean a lot of infrastructure investment and market opportunities will available in this sector.

[…]

Who wins if any of these scenarios takes place? Semiconductor, network, remote sensor and big data vendors will be the lottery winners of such Internet of Things growth, to name a very few. Big data especially: 75 billion devices all generating signals of data to be analyzed and measured, many of which in real- or near-realtime? That’s got big data written all over it.

Designers and engineers look for opportunities in problems. In something that massively big maybe the idea is to look for the problem. My bet is on networking the data — which is challenging in volume — and predictive algorithms.

Now, what would you do with that, if you knew what to do with that?

Sticking to the newsroom, then, there was an afternoon of grading things. And then, in the early evening, we critiqued the Crimson. High story count, but it needs better art, not their best design. As always there were a few critical copy editing points. A solid effort, but, perhaps, not the one of which we are capable.

That’s what the next issue is for, of course. Check out the what the hardworking students at the Crimson are doing, here.

On the drive home I spent a lot of time thinking about the run I was going to do. What? This is supposed to be a rest day, anyway, and I’m thinking about running? As in, I found myself looking forward to it.

I do not know what is happening.

So I ran through the neighborhood in the darkness. Only two stretches of which don’t have good light. One of those, of course, being the short bridge over the creek at the bottom of the neighborhood. There’s a light at the far end and a light down a way from the other side. And, right in the middle of the two sits the bridge. Between having no oxygen in your brain and no light for your eyes it looked like there were goblins and monsters on the bridge.

Greeeeat.

May there be no trolls on your footpaths!

cycling / I do not know what is happening. / running / swimming — Comments Off on The month’s workouts
30
Sep 13

The month’s workouts

This is what I did on the bike and on my feet and in the pool. It was a poor month, when you take it altogether.

There isn’t nearly enough riding (red) to be found. I just started swimming (light blue). This shows an accurate representation for my enthusiasm for running (dark blue). All units are miles.

workouts

cycling / errands / Friday / I do not know what is happening. / links / photo / running / things to read — 2 Comments
27
Sep 13

I don’t say anything bad at all about the DMV

The guy at the local bike shop — I should say My Guy, since he’s always the one that draws the short straw and has to deal with me — says it isn’t an alignment problem that keeps me from shifting rings on the front of my bike. This explains why I could see no obvious problem. My front derailleur, tells me is frozen.

“Do you sweat a lot?”

Do you mean, do I ride in the heat of the day a lot? Yes.

Turns out all the sweat goes right there into the derailleur cage, where the hinge can rust out over time. Which is why, right now, I can only ride in the big ring. (Which is usually where I ride, anyway.)

Maybe I should stop riding in the rain so much, too then.

“No,” he said. “Just the sweat. The salt.”

Rust. Tastes like victory.

And the cost of a new derailleur. And not being able to ride until next week.

Because Amazon can ship you something from across the country in a day, but in a bike shop it will be Tuesday before your part comes in. No matter, I’ll miss one day of riding and, hopefully, it will be ready by next weekend.

On the upside, we did stand over a Trek time trial bike. And I picked up a carbon fiber Trek with state of the art electronic groupo just to feel what 15 pounds felt like. It felt like about $10,000. How anyone could ride something that expensive without fear in their eyes is beyond me.

And I coveted a Colnago. It was a beautiful machine. (It looked like this.) So beautiful, and significantly less than the Trek. We had a moment, me imagining slinging it left and right as I stood out of the saddle, the Colnago knowing I could never handle the ride. So beautiful.

Good thing my Felt was downstairs. It doesn’t need to get jealous. Can’t afford a new bike. It “only” cost two or three grand.

Also, upstairs was this poster:

Bo

That was for Bo Jackson’s Bo Bikes Bama tornado relief ride last year, and a shorter tour this year. He’s raised more than $600,000 in those six days in the saddle. Still sad I couldn’t talk any of my media friends into letting me cover it for them.

But Bo rides a Trek, and Trek loves Bo. And he signed his left thigh. In the reflection off the glass frame you can see part of another Trek in the background.

The Yankee rides a Trek, hence she knows Bo.

Also, the DMV this afternoon.

DMV

We have a satellite office, and the people there are nice and courteous and they know their business. Still, this late in the month, it took an hour to weave through the line. I was going to ask “How did we do this before smartphones?”

Then I remembered: I used to take a book.

But everyone was pleasant and in a good humor. Many folks took a friend. As good a time as any to catch up. A lot of people ran into people they knew. Medium-small towns have those advantages.

I’d rather go to our DMV than our post office — where I have also waited an hour in line.

Also, when you park in a parking space that is for employees only the DMV staff will run the tag and call you up to the desk to move your car. And you get your space back in line. Two people had this problem while I was there.

I might have been one of them.

We went for a run late this evening on the nearby bike and running trail. It is three miles, round trip. I got out a little ahead of The Yankee and, as it got dark I stopped and waited for her so I wouldn’t be shuffling along by myself in the twilight.

This was a mistake because it turned into an all out sprint at the end. I was not prepared for the last 200 yards. But I did break the tape. And by tape I mean spiderweb.

That wasn’t nearly as exciting as I thought it would be.

I’m concerned I’ll soon come to enjoy running.

I do not know what is happening.

Things to read which I thought were interesting while standing in line at the DMV today …

Three bears and one tough hiker

Special Space Camp graduation: 200 vision-impaired students from 25 states, 6 countries

The Economist rethinks ‘lean forward, lean back’ model

Got a great weekend planned?

I do not know what is happening. / journalism / links / Monday / running / Samford / swimming / things to read / Twitter / video — Comments Off on The active Monday post
23
Sep 13

The active Monday post

Yesterday, in that time between afternoon and evening, when the crickets are warming up and the sun is cooling down, we went out for a run. We’ve been running most recently through the neighborhood. We have a great sidewalk path that meanders through the residential areas and the artery that connects different parts of the neighborhood. At times, on foot, they feel far enough apart that you could be running in the woods. But that’s just if you run slow, like me.

There is a roundabout down by the creek bed that has become a good turnaround point for the standard three-mile jog. We ran out together at the same pace and I figured I would run beyond the roundabout, and my lovely running wife would make the turn and then I’d have to try and catch her on the way back in.

Only she ran on beyond the roundabout too, up the hill to the stop sign.

So I ran on beyond the stop sign, turning right and going up the road beyond an elementary school and on. This is one of the routes we ride on our bikes and, indeed, a guy passed me as I shuffled along. I got 4 km, or 2.5 miles and decided to turn around. And then I had to run up the hill to get back to the road that leads down to the roundabout and into the neighborhood.

I ran five miles in the time between afternoon and evening.

I do not know what is happening.

More physical therapy on my shoulder this morning. We’ve added stretchy bands to the routine of motions, movements, pinching and flexing and whatnot.

You meet some interesting people at the therapy place. There’s an older man there working his way back from some sort of accident that left his doctor telling him he’d never do this or that again. The guy left his doctor’s office — I believe his quote was “You don’t know God” — and went to work and proved the doctor wrong. There’s a young guy there who’s trying to get healthy so he can rejoin his high school football team. The therapist is leaning toward shutting him down, and that’s a terrible thing for the kid to hear. There’s a very old gentleman who asked me if I was from Savannah since I had on one of those shirts this morning. He was stationed there with the 2nd Bombardment Wing once upon a time. There’s a lady who works at a nearby deli, and when she visits the staff knows where they are going for lunch that day.

One day you quit going to physical therapy, because you’re better and that’s what you do, but you miss out on learning a little about a lot of people.

In class today we talked about story assignments that the students are working on. We talked about photojournalism. Usually that’s a pretty good lecture because there are plenty of great pictures. And so it was today. After that I scribbled on students’ hard work and they thanked me for it. Life is good.

After that I hit the pool. I swam a mile tonight in my little crawling, breaststroke-esque style. I did 75 yards freestyle, which is a significant improvement for me. More than four strokes before I had to stop! I felt like climbing out and celebrating on the deck.

I ran five miles yesterday and swam one today. I do not know what is happening.

Here is the best video you’ve ever seen about science, a capella, string theory and puppet Einstein.

Things to read: The interesting material I’ve found today that I wanted to share with you.

Two stories that probably say a lot more than anyone realizes: Why Alabama’s rural counties are at risk as Obamacare approaches and Alabama’s rural residents are poorer, older, and less educated – and have far less access to health care

Twitter’s TV Pitch Comes of Age:

“Tweets drive discovery, ratings, and engagement for networks and advertisers, and that means more tweets. It’s a virtuous cycle,” Matt Derella, Twitter’s vp of sales, told a room full of ad industry folks. “We want to be the preeminent compliment to the TV experience. The social soundtrack is about TV multiplied by Twitter.”

The 3 Future Waves In Design, And How To Ride Them:

Twenty years ago, computing was just coming into its own as a medium to which designers could usefully contribute. Since then, it has become the source of just about every major opportunity for product innovation. Audio devices are essentially small computers. Mobile phones are small computers. Everything from medical devices to sports equipment is being augmented by computing. Today, as the once difficult feats of functionality and usability become table stakes, our focus is shifting toward driving greater systems-wide thinking and more beautiful, humanistic experiences. Computing-driven products are no longer islands. They exist as parts of greater systems and brand experiences. The product design industry has collectively responded to this challenge over the last few years; but as we do, new waves are coming that will drive product design going forward.

About the Dexter finale …

And, finally, three things on the campus blog today:

Witness to massacre

Media names the wrong guy in shooting; he’s upset

Interactive Obamacare map

That should be plenty for today. More tomorrow. There’s always more tomorrow.

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