Author: splicer

It both­ers me that it’s so hard to find good fast reli­able ser­vice for a motor­cy­cle. My Tri­umph has been in the shop for over a month wait­ing on a fan.… should be a pret­ty sim­ple part to get a hold of, but there it is. Six weeks lat­er and it’s still sit­ting in the shop. The Moto Guzzi is just get­ting reg­u­lar main­te­nance plus a replace­ment for the fend­er that spon­ta­neous­ly cracked in Jan­u­ary. It took eight months for … Read the rest

I’ve just installed ver­sion 7 of iTunes, and for the last few min­utes, the sta­tus win­dow has been list­ing all the music in my library along with the words, “Deter­min­ing Gap­less Play­back Information.”

This has been my biggest prob­lem with dig­i­tal music play­ers for years. The MP3 for­mat in par­tic­u­lar has poor gran­u­lar­i­ty. The files are lim­it­ed in length to incre­ments of some­thing like two-tenths of a sec­ond. So play­ing one next to anoth­er inevitably leads to a pause … Read the rest

After last Sun­day’s dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance at the Cable Car Chase, yes­ter­day I went out for the DSE Run­ners Potrero Hill Run. I pushed hard, had fun, and broke the nine minute mile on a course with one par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty hill. It’s been a while since I’ve seen eight-some­thing instead of nine-some­thing on my pace, and it’s quite welcome.

The trou­bling hill in ques­tion is the South side of Ver­mont Street, which most peo­ple don’t real­ize is the real twisti­est … Read the rest

On Sat­ur­day I signed a lease to share stu­dio work­space at Art Explo­sion. I’m going to spend some time there today with the friend with whom I’m split­ting the space and I’ll get my key after the lock­smith opens on Tues­day so I’ll be able to come and go as I please.

I’ve final­ly bro­ken out of the block I’ve had for far too long and I’m draw­ing again. Most­ly I’m doing exer­cis­es to try to regain con­trol over … Read the rest

The pre­view for the new Jet Li movie quotes Lao Tsu as writ­ing, “know­ing oth­ers gives you strength, know­ing your­self makes you fear­less.” That caught my atten­tion, because I’d nev­er seen a trans­la­tion of chap­ter that put it that way. My friend Peter Shark says there is no such thing as an accu­rate trans­la­tion of the Tao Te Ching, and I tend to agree with him, but I hope that by study­ing mul­ti­ple trans­la­tions and ask­ing that I might learn … Read the rest

5.67 miles in 54:39 (unof­fi­cial). That’s rough­ly five min­utes longer than I ran the Cable Car Chase in 2004, so the result is slight­ly dis­ap­point­ing. My days of rest to allow my legs to recov­er did­n’t seem to help and I have what seem to be huge knots at the inside base of each calf. I’m going to sched­ule an appoint­ment with my chi­ro­prac­tic and mas­sage prac­ti­tion­er this week to see if there’s any­thing that … Read the rest

Yes, integri­ty is its own reward, but I some­times find myself sur­prised at the ben­e­fits of my attempts at being a more hon­est per­son. I’ve heard it said before, but it’s eas­i­er. I don’t pre­tend to be per­fect­ly hon­est, but I am bet­ter than I used to be. 

It’s eas­i­er for the obvi­ous rea­sons. It takes a lot of effort to main­tain a fab­ri­ca­tion. Some peo­ple are real­ly good at it, but keep­ing track of what I’ve told whom is … Read the rest

My legs were telling me not to go, but did I lis­ten? No. I ratio­nal­ized that since I was tak­ing a short­er route that it would be a nice easy run. My short route, how­ev­er, is my hill route. I end­ed up pun­ish­ing my calves a bit too hard as well as what­ev­er it is that con­nects my hip to my thigh. I def­i­nite­ly need to take it easy for a few days.… Read the rest

Yes­ter­day evening I went back to the gym. I haven’t been in a while for a vari­ety of rea­sons, but I guess most­ly because it’s eas­i­er to just put my shorts on and run if I want a work­out. It was a pret­ty abbre­vi­at­ed vis­it, but I touched a num­ber of bases. I found that while my thumb is still a bit achy from a sprain a few months ago that it can sup­port weight in a num­ber of direc­tions … Read the rest

Actu­al­ly, my plan was for four runs: Mon­day, Tues­day, Thurs­day Fri­day. Instead I ran Mon­day, Wednes­day, Thurs­day, Sat­ur­day. Total miles this week: 17.65. I watched my pace slow as the week went on, so for next week I think I’ll short­en two of the runs and maybe make them hill runs. I can feel my legs wish­ing I had­n’t gone out today, but that’s tem­po­rary. I’m not plan­ning on rac­ing tomor­row, so the vari­a­tion from my planned … Read the rest