Author Archives: anachostic - Page 62

Ride to Eat, Eat to Ride

Posted by anachostic on October 4, 2009 No comments

Just a couple of random bike trips for food. The first was to a place I’d not heard of before, although there are a few locations around here: Village Inn. I hoped this would be like a King’s or Eat & Park from the northern area, but was a bit disappointed. I tried the staple meal – burger and fries – but the burger had some seasoning or spice that wasn’t suiting me very well at all. I could only eat a few bites of it.

It’s not all bad. I gave up on the entrée and went to dessert. The chocolate pie was excellent and made up for most of the meal’s failure.

Then I went out to tourist country and ate at a Ponderosa. It’s a location I’d been to before when I was not a local resident. Interesting how differently you act towards attractions when you could go there every day… Not that Ponderosa is an attraction, but Old Town is right there and it’s Halloween, which means they have a big push on the haunted house.

This meal I was treated to the excellent stories of a very special person behind me. My impression is that he sees himself as some sort of consumer superhero. As I understand the story, superboy was performing some bank transaction through the automated telephone service and answered some personal verification question wrong. This immediately locked his account. To resolve this, he called the bank directly. I have no idea why, but he felt it necessary to disguise his voice, taking on the tone of an agitated old man with respiratory issues. “Yes, this is so-an-so *cough cough hack snork* and you have locked my *cough COUGH* account with your damn computer *gag hack*.” During this trial to get him verified, he answered all the questions correctly. If he didn’t know one (and I’m not sure why he wouldn’t know his personal information), he would have a coughing fit to buy time. Using typical hyperbole, he said they asked him a hundred questions. Then using some sort of hybrid of hyperbole and stupidity, he said they asked him for his grandmother’s maiden name, but he answered using her married name. The only thing I can deduce from these facts is that he was faking access to his father’s account (which would be his father’s mother’s maiden name).

Superboy goes off on a tangent. Now he’s pissed because everything’s a ripoff. Drinks are $2.50 (“that’s where they get ya”). The onion rings cost an extra dollar (“That’s a scam. They asked me if I wanted onion rings but never said it’d be an extra dollar.”). But like my Village Inn dessert, it wasn’t all bad (“The 10% coupon I used paid for the extra charge for onion rings”) , but at the same time, he wasn’t letting go. He somehow changes gears and relates a story about how he had to give a 7 cent refund to a customer because they felt they were incorrectly charged tax on a dollar item and how stupid and petty it was. He somehow fails to relate his current bitching about the dollar upcharge to this story.

Please let me out of here.

Singularly Open-Minded

Posted by anachostic on August 5, 2009 No comments

A while ago I was browsing around and someone had mentioned a blog that sounded interesting, so I visited. It was ok for the first couple of posts, then I left. Recently, I hit upon another blog that gave me the same reaction. In both cases, the blogs were trying to be raise awareness. The first about racial stereotypes and the second about racial and gender biases.

I consider myself to be pretty open minded. I’ll listen to anything, but I tend to just collect the information to form a complete opinion. The more opinions you hear, the better able you are make your own. But some people have one opinion and spout it ad nauseam. And sometimes those people think they are being open-minded simply because their obsession is a minority position or some other radical thought. But they’re still closed-minded, or as I say, singularly open-minded.

So, thinking about this idea made me wonder how being open-minded related to being uncommitted. Can you be truly open-minded and still have an opinion or does having an opinion give you an artificial bias? And maybe it has to do with the level of acceptance of differing viewpoints. You can hold an opinion until the opposing arguments convince you otherwise.

And that’s one area I take issue with the blogs that I had read. I can only take so much “selling” at one time. I must have determined quickly that the remaining posts would be more of the same. The more I hear an argument, the less persuasive it becomes. Some of it is: You’re trying too hard. If your idea was so good, you shouldn’t need to go on and on about it. The other part is cynicism. If you don’t shut up for a minute and let me consider what you’ve said, I’m not going to believe any of it.

Now I’m getting all worked up. Thanks.

Trip Log 7/23/09

Posted by anachostic on July 23, 2009 No comments

This actually isn’t a motorcycle trip. It was a business trip. As such, a lot of the details are hush-hush, but the trip itself – travelling – is something I don’t do as much of as I used to.

To start the whole trip on a great note, I don’t even make it to the airport garage without incident. There are new traffic patterns I was unfamiliar with and when one sign says “Economy parking/post office next left” and a later temporary construction sign simply says “Post office”, I did not make the turn for economy parking. So one loop around the terminal so I can be logged into NSA’s database as suspicious, then back to economy parking from the other direction, which had no construction.

Step 1 complete; I’m parked. The shuttle bus is waiting and I hop on. The bus will stop at the Blue side first, then the Red side. Fine, I’m red. We arrive at the red side and I get off the bus. I’m the last one off because I’m not really in a hurry. The lone luggage bag left in front of the bus is not my bag. Suddenly, I feel I bit more in a hurry. I grab the bag and walk back onto the bus to explain what has happened. The driver was kind enough to drive back to the other side to see if there were some people freaking out that they had the wrong bag. There were no people like that there. I gave the driver my cell number and he said he would take the bag and my number to Lost and Found. Meanwhile, I had to get my boarding pass, with or without luggage.

The trip I was taking for business was at a resort literally in the middle of nowhere. 1.5 hour drive from any metro area. I was wondering if I could wear the same jeans for three days and maybe buy some souvenir shirts to wear the other days. I guess I could have shopped at the airport, too, but that thought wasn’t coming to me then. I walked down to baggage claim looking for Lost and Found. I found instead a security guard, who told me I needed to be back upstairs and across the road. Then he did something extra: he said he’d walk me there. That’s pretty important to my trip because the purpose of the business meeting was to extol the virtues of service, which the security guard had just demonstrated.

So we got to L&F and I fill out the contact form. The lady at the counter, again – pleasant, said that they already received the other person’s bag from the shuttle driver, they had contacted the owner, and that they would handle the exchange. Simple enough, as long as these people – who didn’t recognize their bag had a handle wrap on it and mine didn’t – show up before I have to run to my gate. As it turned out, it was only about 15 minutes that I had to wait and the crisis was averted.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, but the business portion was very good. The accommodations were impressive.

Being a remote resort area, it had a lot of walking paths and lots of greenery. It would be a botanist’s dream.

The only critique I could make, and I regret thinking of it now because I should have filled out a comment card, is that the whole place needed more garbage cans. You walk around a lot and typically you’re drinking something, but then you have to carry your trash around looking for a place to throw it away. I remember only one public garbage can.

So early in the morning we all headed back to the airport. I made the wise decision to walk from the entrance to the terminal instead of talking the tram. It didn’t seem too bad, the map even said 1000 ft to next terminal. Something wasn’t quite right though, because it seemed like I walked through an extra terminal or two. All told (thanks to Bing’s unit conversion), it was well over a mile I walked. Before breakfast. I’m a bastard when I’m tired or hungry, so I had both going on when I got to the gate. Unsurprisingly, a kiosk was very willing to take 8 dollars from me in exchange for a bag of chips, a bottle of Coke, and a bag of candy.

Boarding time. Looks like we’re early. And the staff was giving out coupons for free Internet on the plane. I didn’t feel like Internetting, so I passed. All settled in and ready to go. And we’re not going. Still not. Half an hour later, I’ve worked through 75% of my bag of candy and getting restless. More waiting. Finally, the answer comes out. They were trying to fix the computers for the Internet, they couldn’t, and so we’re an hour late and the coupons can’t be used on that flight (save them for another flight).

We’re back now. I got the same shuttle driver and I’m the only one on the shuttle. Will I lose my bag again? We chatted about the luggage experience and service and other minor topics. I tipped him at the garage. It’s really something I don’t normally do, and really not sure he deserved it, but I intended it to be a nice gesture that showed I was satisfied with the service of everyone at the airport: him, the Lost and Found department, and the security guard that escorted me.

Thank god. I can head home and eat. Oh wait, there’s new traffic patterns at the airport. This new road is nice. There’s my exit up ahead…. but this road doesn’t connect to that exit. Now I’m going off the opposite direction. Damn it. Another 20 minutes of time lost. Finally, the drama ends and I’m in familiar territory and here I am recounting it to the best person in the world.

What Is This? A New Post?

Posted by anachostic on July 19, 2009 No comments

You’ve got to be kidding me. What’s the occasion for this? Which freaking song are you still working on?

Well, the impetus for the post is the simplicity of Windows Live Writer. Having a nice WYSIWYG editor makes for less resistance to creating a new entry. But there’s other minor things that happened in the last year and a half that might be mentionable as well.

Currently the recording system is running Vista x64. This was a trial run on 64-bit to see if I could still get by, which I certainly can. Well, except that the CME UF6 doesn’t have a USB driver for Vista (except through a user patch), and no 64-bit driver at all. So, although I never used the USB functions of the controller, it seems I never will, either.

I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of Windows 7, at which time I’ll rebuild the system for recording again. The system has no music software on it yet. I’ll also invest in a nice hard drive or two for performance and volume, although I don’t expect to do much physical recording, instead sticking to MIDI and VST, having the HD space is never a bad thing.

So, you know I have been working on this song… as the joke goes, “When’s your album coming out?” I’ve been playing the same songs for over a year. They haven’t been completed, but I expect when I get the new recording setup, I’ll be ready to put some tracks down and get some momentum. The plan is still the same, to do another CDD-type release – that is, non-sequence-based, more live-oriented.

Otherwise, musically, there’s not much to say. Well, my Mackie mixer has been powered on and running 24×7 for at least 5 years and my Event monitors have been doing the same for at least 2. That makes these devices a great testament to longevity , durability, and ecological irresponsibility.

Degenerative American Literacy

Posted by anachostic on July 19, 2009 No comments

It pisses me off to no end that the word “sammich” exists. It makes me violent. That’s all I have to say.

Back for the Attack, or My Back’s Second Attack

Posted by anachostic on July 14, 2009 No comments

Somewhere around 10 years ago, I had a back “issue”. I wasn’t doing anything crazy, all I did was plug my laptop in to a power strip on the floor and stand up. Well, I didn’t get all the way up, because I was frozen in pain. The pale white, cold sweat kind of pain. Off to the hospital and then home for bed rest. If I remember correctly, it took at least a week to recover.

10 years later, I get an anniversary visit. Again, not doing anything stressful, but maybe I can identify a little more that contributed to it this time. The memories are not so pleasant as each one comes back to me. This time around I don’t have the luxury of higher medication, so I’m getting by on heat, cold, and Advil. I have a business trip next Wednesday; not sure how that’s going to go. But I’ve had a couple observations as I attempt to remain as still as humanly possible to reduce the likelihood of pain.

This is more of a restatement of a fact I learned 10 years ago. Once you have a back failure, you will never be the same. And that was true. Every once in a while I’d get a warning that I was doing something wrong or overdoing something else. I was always careful to take it easy after that. This time, I think I got the warnings too late.

Next, recovering from a failure is like playing Operation. You move slowly, carefully, trying to remain as steady and still as possible, then BZZZZT! – you get zapped. You freak out, nearly collapse from the stabbing pain (or just freeze solid), and you lose the round. You have to start over.

Typical things become scary as hell. Coughing, sneezing, going to the bathroom, all might trigger a slight pain or a massive wave of pain. I am sure it is just like having any abdominal surgery except on the opposite side of the body. Something simple like getting up to get a drink is not so simple.

Time seems to shift around. This morning when I sat on the edge of the bed and had a total seize, when I finally got myself lying down again, I looked at the clock. It was 9:00. The next time I was able to look at the clock it was 9:12. I must have passed out from the pain or something, because it only felt like a minute.

I’m not spouting these observations as complaining or whining. I kind of find them amusing. It’s like I was one kind of person – healthy, active (both overstatements, BTW) – and now I’m a disabled person. To me it feels like a test, like “let’s see how you handle this.” And for the most part, I think I’m doing ok. I’m still as productive at work as I was when I was at my desk. I am getting by with lunch delivered to me. If things get really bad, I might have to have food delivered or drive to a drive-through. I can’t walk for extended periods right now.

But being in this condition makes one wonder, what if I was like this for the rest of my life? That’s an answer I’ll not share.

Trip Log 7/5/2009

Posted by anachostic on July 5, 2009 No comments

Today I decided to do a follow-up trip to the beach. I had discovered another park with beach access that came highly recommended, so I headed out to that one. This time, I was a little more prepared: I took my GPS and an atlas.

Let’s set something straight first. This trip, I did not get rained on. That’s an accomplishment in itself. But the whole trip wasn’t a success. I started out like I usually do, getting a bottle of water at the store on the way. I should plan better for refreshments. Then I made the run with only a brief stop for gas. I found a place to eat right near my turn for the beach.

After a much-needed meal, I headed back the road to the park. It was a very residential area, which seemed odd that a public beach would require travel through such an area. But while slowly weaving through the roads, I saw signs directing to the beach. Odd. Once I got in the actual park, it seemed pretty empty. I wasn’t sure if that was due to my late-day timing, or because the park wasn’t well-known. A couple minutes through the park I got my answer.

The roadway to the beach, which is really just a big sandbar, is being renovated. So I parked the bike and went walking to see how much I could see. The answer: not much.

There was a nice picnic area and some benches for looking out at the water. The beach itself was hidden by trees that must line the road heading to it.

So, this trip is rescheduled for the fall. It seems like a nice place, and if it’s anywhere as uncrowded as it was today, it seems like a very nice place to visit. Unfortunately, it is a couple of hours away. I can’t remember the travel time for the usual beach, but maybe it’s comparable.

Cannibal Toast Crunch

Posted by anachostic on June 29, 2009 No comments

And this past weekend I’m having lunch at a restaurant and see a commercial for Cinnamon Toast Crunch. A couple of pieces floating in the milk, then a third piece swims around like a shark fin. The first piece gets sucked under the surface, then the second piece frantically tries to swim away and gets pulled below. The third piece surfaces and licks his lips.

I think I get it. The message is that the cereal is so good it eats itself. Cute. Then my imagination kicked in, which never ends well. I only wish I had the artistic skills to realize my visions. That really would not end well.

So, cue the eerie music on a scene of a gingerbread house in the woods. As it slowly pans in, you hear frantic, gasping breaths and some struggling. Cut to a close scene of a Teddy Grahams bear tied to a decrepit examination table. Pull back to see another Teddy Graham bear standing aside wearing a dirty, stained smock. A makeshift nametag crookedly hanging on the smock reads “Dr. Ted”.

Dr. Ted passes his hand over an assortment of sharp and pointy implements and settles on what seems to be a bone saw. He takes the tool, places it at the wrist of the restrained bear and slowly begins sawing. The victim screams and struggles in vain. No blood. They’re cookies, for god’s sake! Ok, maybe a close-up scene of some crumbs falling to the floor and the screaming and sawing continues.

The paw has now been separated and Dr. Ted holds it up. The victim is in shock, staring at his own sawn-off paw. He (or she. A female would be so much more dramatic.) musters enough strength to scream “Why are you doing this?”

Dr. Ted pauses for a second and stares blankly – as only Teddy Grahams can do. Then a distorted smile stretches his face and he replies softly, “Because you taste…so…good.” At which point he takes a savoring bite of the amputated cookie. “Mmmm.”

Fade to black, then flip on a weak hanging light, flickering, showing an excessively shadowed box of Teddy Grahams seemingly trapped in a corner. Maybe the box will shiver a little. I don’t know.

I suppose a lot of people wouldn’t appreciate my sense of humor. Maybe it was because I was in a crappy mood because I got supremely drenched on the bike on the way to lunch. Nothing catches people attention in a restaurant like a person soaked from head to toe (except I wear a helmet so my head was dry). Ride bike=get wet. I wonder if I should be renting myself out to some drought-stricken communities. As long as I keep my mouth shut, I suppose I’d be fine.

Trip Log – International Ride To Work Day 2009

Posted by anachostic on June 16, 2009 No comments

This is the first year I get to show my support for 2-wheeled commuting, and I’m proud. This is going to be kind of a rough one, because it’s my first ride on a dangerous interstate, the first where I am carrying a load (loaded backpack) and it’s going to be about 200 miles round-trip. But that’s ok, because on Ride To Work Day, I’m going to be out with bunches of bikes and it’ll be safety in numbers.

So imagine my distress when I roar out onto the interstate at 75 mph and there’s no other bikes out there. I counted two on the trip out and three on the way back. That was a real disappointment. But, I still remained focused on getting to work and back alive.

So first, riding at 75 is nothing like riding at 55. I had heard stories that as a vehicle approaches 70, the wind resistance increases at an exponential rate. This, I discovered first-hand. It was extremely similar to my experience doing indoor skydiving, except instead of 15 minutes in the wind tunnel, it was an hour and a half. I could not have done it without my CrampBuster. Although my hand did get a little cramped anyway, the ride would have been impossible without being able to relax my grip occasionally.

So midway through the workday, clouds gather and thunder sounds. No rain, though. The storm just passed to the south of work. I checked the radar before leaving work and saw I would pass between two strong storm cells on my route home. More good luck. And my luck continued until I reached the final waypoint. I had travelled too fast and caught the tail end of the one cell. Merging into traffic, things suddenly slowed down to about 30. That either means there’s an accident or a downpour brought traffic to a halt ahead. Noticing the shoulders of the road changing from wet, to puddles, to pools I guessed which one happened correctly. I also relegated myself to getting drenched yet again. And it happened. A good 20 minutes of steady rain compounded by semi trucks passing by with their excessive road spray. But still made it home in one piece.

Post-trip evaluation, I was soaked (nothing new there), my hands were numb (that’s new), and I was pretty exhausted. I cleaned up and went out for dinner in the car. After riding the bike exclusively for four days, the first thought I had when I pulled out of the driveway in the car was “This car is HUGE!” And it looked huge. The far corner of the hood looked like it was a mile away. It felt huge. It was like floating in a boat, where the motions I made on the steering wheel were disconnected and delayed. It is unreal what a perceptional difference there was.

Riding the bike to work every day is completely impractical for me right now, but if I lived closer to work, it would be a easy decision.

Motivation – To be the best you… what were you saying again?

Posted by anachostic on June 12, 2009 No comments

There an inherent problem with anything that is claimed to be motivational and that is the cynical counterpoint. Dilbert has done a pretty good job of poking holes in many motivational mantras. The de-motivator meme has obviously run its course, but had some very good ideas early on.

Motivational messages are processed differently by different people, not unlike candy. Some people gorge on motivation books, videos, seminars and have nothing to show for it. They are useless without another fix of motivation. Others only need a bit of motivation to keep them going – a quick pick-me-up. Fortunately, I find myself in the latter camp. I generally only need a reminder every once in a while of why I do what I do. That’s not to say I don’t have slumps or have a cynical outlook on “business as usual.” I try to not let the external influences get me down.

But anyway, I did a quick Youtube search for motivational videos and watched the first one. Somehow this was supposed to inspire me. The video was about some football players that didn’t think they could beat their next game, so the coach tried to demonstrate “giving your all” using a couple players.

The coach made this guy carry another guy across the field. The subject didn’t initially think he’d be able to make it half-way. To prevent him from giving up when he met his mental finish-line, the coach blindfolded him. Then, as he started to falter or complain, the coach encouraged him as only a coach would: by screaming and yelling in his face. Finally the guy collapsed and the coach said proudly, “You made it to the end zone.”

So if you were to use this video as motivation for your employees, what exactly would you be saying? My primary take-away: we want you to work yourself to exhaustion. We don’t care if you are completely useless after that. There is no sense in saving reserve energy. If we feel you have any energy left in you, we will harass you until we wring it out.

From a psychological standpoint, I enjoyed the blindfold trick to keep the player from giving up. But from a practical standpoint, it maps out poorly. If you set a mental goal, that should be a realistic checkpoint to evaluate what you’ve accomplished and how much more you can do.

The bottom line is, motivation comes from within. It can’t be fed to you and it can’t be beaten out of you, although many would disagree on that. I think I’m going to have another read of Gung Ho!, a good example of how people motivate themselves.

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