May 2002

Running again

/ personal

I just got back from a run.

This wouldn’t be news for most people, but everyone has a story. Mine is that on two separate occasions, I’ve broken my hip and my pelvis, and I’m still walking around with eleven screws and a plate in the left side of my pelvis from the latter accident. So ever since, I’ve been a bit leery about running. I tried it a bit after I recovered, and sure enough, it was kind of painful. So I backed off, thinking perhaps I needed more time to really recover, and I’d try again. Well, it’s been over two years since I last tried it, and over the past few days I’ve been talking myself into trying again. Tonight there was nothing else I particularly wanted to do, it was hot, and I’ve always enjoyed running on hot nights, so I pulled on the lycra and the shoes and went for a loop around the neighborhood. 1.7 miles. Not much distance, but OK for a start. I did feel a tiny sting on the outside point of my trochanter, but I consider that an annoying pain, not a worrisome pain. And a little tightness breathing, but that’s normal. Overall I felt pretty good.

We’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I want to be able to stick with it this time. I don’t like taking crap from my body.

Mixed messages

/ tidbit

Bumper stickers spotted side-by-side on the same car:

My child is an honor student at Bowie High and Follow me to the Yellow Rose (a well known strip club).

File this one under “Things I don’t understand” (that file-folder is very thick, yes). I don’t have anything against strip clubs or high schools, but the juxtaposition is pretty weird.

She-Devils

/ movies

Chicks in leather hotpants, hotrods and vintage motorcycles, and enough piercings and tattoos to start a sideshow–and that’s just the audience.

The Alamo Drafthouse, quite possibly the most wonderful movie theater ever, held a drive-in double-feature at the defunct Longhorn Speedway. She-Devils on Wheels with Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! With two live bands for entertainment, and Satan’s Cheerleaders to introduce everything. But wait, that’s not even the good part: Tura Satana and Haji were there in person, signing autographs, answering questions, and generally creating an aura of lascivious legitimacy at the event. Did I get pictures? Oh, you bet. Including one that answers the question (in case you’ve ever wondered) “What does a woman with fake tits look like by the time she’s a grandmother? As disturbing as that question sounds, the answer is moreso. I’m not talking about Tura or Haji, by the way (Tura’s gained some weight, but still looks pretty good; Haji just looks great)–I’m talking about a member of the audience.

Admittedly, not all was perfect. They had set up a PA at the front (for the benefit those of us not in cars, like me), and it was getting its signal from the back by low-power FM–but with a useless antenna, so the audio frequently was overwhelmed by static. When Tura and Haji were taking questions, a mound of fire ants got riled up, and I’ve got some bites to show for it. And finally, the second feature hadn’t even started at midnight, so I bailed and came home. I’m not complaining–I had a good time.

More notes on the upgrade

/ technology

More notes on the upgrade to OS X. Just installed Quickeys X. I have been a longtime user of Quickeys, and while I probably didn’t get as much mileage out of it as some people, I found it to be extremely handy. So I am extremely disappointed by the new version, which is much less capable than its predecessor. Some of this is perhaps excusable–the software clearly had to be re-written from the ground up for OS X, and perhaps some features were intractable to implement. But there are others that they simply dropped–like inserting a custom-formatted date (which I used all the time)–which clearly would not have been difficult to implement. What had previously been a handy macro type that zipped you to a certain directory when in an Open File/Save File dialog, or opened that directory when in the Finder, has been confusingly split into two separate types, and the one that zips you around when opening/saving files operates so slowly that it’s almost not worth using (and can be easily stumped).

Perhaps with time, I’ll figure out how to bend this version to my will, but I suspect that I wasted my money on this. There’s a freeware macro utility for OS X, and that’s probably a better deal (hell, the price is right). I’ll have to check it out.

It’s not easy being green

/ current events

“Imagine. Ice skating in the deep South in 90-plus degree weather, on an ice-rink completely powered by solar energy.”

I love the idea, but I’ve recently learned that the greenhouse gases associated with the manufacture of solar cells are pretty significant. So there’s no easy way out. The Rocky Mountain Institute has long promoted the concept of “negawatts”–that is, making more energy available by not using as much of it in the first place. I think this should be our highest priority.

360 ride

/ cycling

30 mile ride with Caesar today, northbound on 360. Wind out of the south. Fast. Whee. Light traffic. Caesar showed me a shortcut that I like.

Oh my God, it’s full of stars!

/ tidbit

One of the lines from 2001 that sticks in my head is when Dave gasps “Oh my God, it’s full of stars!”

That’s my reaction to the new Hubble photos. One of the images shows 6,000 galaxies in the background, and if I recall correctly, the field of view in that image is equivalent to that of a dime viewed at 70 feet.

Death to Smoochy

/ movies

Just saw Death to Smoochy. Good movie–clever, sharp dialog, manages to balance sweetness with sharpness pretty well. And I saw it at the Alamo Drafthouse, which is always a plus. As usual, they were playing something weird-but-appropriate before the movie started. In this case (unsurprisingly), it was footage of the Evil Purple One, though mercifully without the sound. I asked the guy who came to take my order if he could perhaps bring some “mild hallucinogens to help make Barney easier to stomach.”

Follow-up on censorship

/ tidbit

Follow-up time:

Turns out the blogger I mentioned in this conundrum never asked for the offensive website to be removed, he just mentioned it to the index’s, uh, curator.

The amazing Jenster (who doesn’t have a web page, otherwise I’d point a link at her), who tipped me off to the dating-hell story believes the story to be a fake. She points out in particular A) the time-zone problem in international chat sessions; B) the extreme improbability that the guy would be able to meet her in the baggage-claim area after they had both taken international flights from two different points; C) the improbability that someone who hopes to have any credibility as a tech writer would have ever fallen into a situation like this in the first place. I think she’s on to something, which raises the question (if you’re a linguistic pedant like me, it does not beg the question): why invent such a story?