Friday, February 10, 2006

Faster! Faster! Faster!

Morning weigh-in: 181#, 12.5% BF

So I worked an hour late last night, leaving at 5:30. My plan was to:

1. Pick up the Iguana (getting new derailleur cables) from Genesis,
2. Stop home to drop off the bike and grab my drycleaning & gym stuff,
3. Get to the cleaner before their 7:00 closing, then continue on to the gym.

Strangely enough, it worked just like that, except I got stopped by a State Trooper, got a warning for speeding, and a ticket for not wearing my safety belt. Could have been worse I guess...

Anyway, went to the gym, arrived a little after 7:00, had a great workout except aerobic (ran on treadmill and did not feel very strong, or fast, or enduring), and was out of there by 8:45. Home, check email, then out again to do get dinner at Which Brew while the regular laundry dried: Gonzo Project were playing, incredible bass player, and I had an interesting conversation with K-Jo's dad, who apparently has been investing in my employer's stock.

A good night, got a lot of stuff done, and was in bed by midnight or so.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Oh, Whoa, Whoa, I'm On Fire

Morning weigh-in: 181#, 6.5% BF

Worked late. Got home last night, ate dinner (baked stuffed tofu, sauerkraut, a salad), did some schtuff, including laundry and computer photo follies, then went for a run around 10:00. Back to the 'puter, then bedtime at 11:30.

Linux Voyager, Navigational Difficulties: My camera's memory card is "double-sided;" there's 128 Mb per side, and which side you're using is controlled by a little sliding switch on the card. I hardly ever fill the card with photos anymore, since I regularly offload the photos onto my hard drive --so what this means that I usually only use one side of the card. Last night I was cleaning up my memory card, and on a whim I checked "the other side of the card" and found a whole bunch of photos dating all the way back to 2003...

What to do? Most of them I know I've already messed with, one way or another, even putting some in galleries, but I'm not sure if I'd archived the full sized files even for those I recognize, let alone being sure about every last photo.

What I wanted to do was check that the full-size versions of the photos are on my hard drive, then erase them from the card, but there are so many of them that to confirm each photo manually would take hours. I'd like to be able to use a simple script, saying something like "for each of these files, look on my hard drive and let me know whether or I've archived it already."

Unfortunately, the directory structure of my photo archives were evolving back then, ie my early file storage didn't follow a standard pattern from photo set to photo set, thus the simple ways to do this are ruled out. To compound the problem, I habitually renamed my photos back then when I archived them, so even sophisticated approaches to "take this file named blahblah.jpg on my memory card, go look for a file with the same name on my hard drive" won't work.

What to do, what to do? I had a lot of fun with find, locate, and grep last night, but those photos are still on my card...

Fire: Meanwhile, my whole upper body is itching like mad, my skin has broken out in some kind of hive/ecxema dealie. This been been going on for about a week; I suspect that it's the result of a minor food allergy -- like maybe that flavored coffee?? -- taken in small doses over a period of time. I tossed the last of that shyte out when I restocked with my normal blend last weekend, so I guess now I'll just have to wait for my body to detox & calm down.

That leaves me in a quandary though: I was planning to do work a little late, do some chores, hit the gym, and finally have dinner at Which Brew while the laundry dries. I'm OK with the rash and the gym, but I'm not so sure about my weight progress and a bar-food dinner; also, though I do want to stop in, see who's there, and say hi, I'm not quite as OK with that rash and socializing. We'll see how I feel tonight.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Hi My Name Is Arnold Snarb

Morning weigh-in: 181#, 12.5% BF

Went to the gym last night directly after work. Felt really good, I was a little surprised but I'll take the win. Dinner was two lentil & spinach burritos when I got home, followed by a little reading and some computer play -- I created a new set of my favorite "nature/outdoors" photos on Flickr.

Reading: Just finished re-reading Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Wow, so good it's hard to believe that it's actually his (second) worst novel. Meantime, I'm still working my way through Wittgenstein's Poker, which just keeps getting better and better.

Just thought I'd mention, Steve Gilliard is on fire today. Then again, the world is on fire...

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Some Photo Housekeeping

Morning weigh-in: 181.5#, 9.5% BF

No exercise or chores last night: I uploaded a bunch of recent photos to my flickr account, including shots from Sunday's chili festivities and a recent hike at Salisbury; I also upgraded to Flickr Pro, the non-free but non-crippled version of the service. Enjoy! Enjoy them all, now that they are all available...

Monday, February 06, 2006

Back to Reality

No morning weigh-in, afraid of the scale today.

Friday night was Which Brew, with the Company Jazz Trio and a lot of cool people.

Saturday was the gym, followed by many errands. For some reason I had trouble consolidating my movement, found myself going home & out several times, wasting time when I wanted to do a little cleaning -- what are you laughing at? I had friends coming over Sunday and wanted to at least have the place straightened up...

Saturday night (actually, evening) was dinner with the Chain Gang at Cactus Blue, an "authentic Mexican" BYO place near Doug. After that they went bowling but I went over to the WB to catch some of Devil's Shame. Good decision, since I ran into Pieter and Jordan, two kids (now late-twentysomethings) that used to be tagalongs in the early MTB days. They used to win races at the junior level, but I doubt if either has ridden a bike since they got their driver's licenses. Nice to see them though.

Sunday was the Chili Contest. 'Nuff said, but I'll say more: we started with a pretty mellow ride around Easton, checking out the ruins of the suspension bridge to Island Park, the old locomotive and RR junk, and the abandoned train station. More adventure bike than workout. Afterwards we met Brian -- recovering from food poisoning, so he didn't want to ride but did go to the chili contest -- and hit Pearly Baker's. After that we drifted around downtown, Mothers, the pawn shop, the Quadrant coffee shop, then over to Porters before we called it a day.