Friday, August 13, 2004

Friday the Thirteenth

Morning weigh-in: 172#, 12.5% BF

Major accident on the way in this morning, on the interstate, right at my exit for work. I took the secondary roads in just for a change of pace (no idea about the accident), found it backed up, took tertiary road and it was backed up, got to work about a half hour late. Not sure what happened, but they had the eastbound lanes all closed and there were rumors of fatalities -- possibly a westbound truck crossed the median.

Anyway, I rode Round Valley last night, and felt good though my time (and cardio/fitness) was way off. Unfortunately, my technical was off as well, since my front shock was acting funny -- not enough damping or something, felt very squirrelly in the rocks. I managed to avoid all rain, which was good, but rain got Musikfest so I didn't go last night. Passed out instead for a while, then played with the computer.

Speaking of fitness: I talked to Brian last night, who told me he saw the cardiologist that Dona recommended. The doctor gave him an echocardiogram on the spot, said his ejection fraction was actually in the upper 30's / low 40's, not 25 like that other test showed (normal is 50-60). Doc said there may have been innacuracies in the first test, or his heart has improved (pretty rapidly) since whatever virus attacked him; he's still convalescing, but that's incredible news. The doctor also said that, if it weren't for his fitness level, the worst-case scenario would very likely have meant needing a heart transplant -- Brian told me he kissed every one of his bikes when he got home.

More 'puter talk: I configured the "modem lights" applet to connect to Epix, and things look good that way but there were still slowdowns... I just happened to check out dmesg, and saw a bunch of "PPP: VC compression error" messages, took the clue and ran with it: this (I know now) is Van Jacobson compression of packet headers, and although a Google search revealed lots of problems/questions similar to mine, but few answers, I think I found a way to disable it for now. That's a job for tonight, hopefully.

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