Restraint of tongue and pen?

I just sent this off to SGI via the web form. We’ll see if any­one gets back to me. I know I get more with hon­ey than vine­gar, but I’m a lit­tle angry that they can’t be both­ered to sell me some soft­ware or return my emails or phone calls.

With my RS/6000, all it took was one phone call to IBM. $50 and a fax to them declar­ing that I had legal­ly pur­chased my machine lat­er I … Read the rest

Abundance

Atti­tude is everything.

I went to the kitchen not know­ing what to have for din­ner. Through my mind was run­ning the same old litany: “there’s noth­ing to eat in the house. What am I gonna have?” So I opened up the refrig­er­a­tor to rifle through and scrounge up some sort of meal. The litany went some­thing like this:

“Dar­nit, there’s noth­ing in here except some pre­made sal­ad in a bag, sev­er­al cups of rice left over from din­ner, some diet coke, … Read the rest

Overdoing it

I’m con­cerned about the set­up of my new bike, but I don’t know enough about frame geom­e­try to real­ly know what to do about it.

I’m notic­ing that my fore­arms are real­ly get­ting tired when I ride. Much more so than when I ride either on flat bars or on drops aimed a lit­tle far­ther down. I have to reach a bit more to get at my brakes, and that may have some­thing to do with it. On the oth­er hand, … Read the rest

Motivation

I’m try­ing to get myself moti­vat­ed to ride my bike to work, but I haven’t even got­ten past the “stop star­ing at the com­put­er and make break­fast” stage. If I pro­cras­ti­nate much longer I’ll have to take BART or something.

C’mon Steve, get mov­ing. It’s only morn­ing: noth­ing to be afraid of.

No such thing as spare time
No such thing as free time
No such thing as down time
All you got is life­time GO!

Read the rest

More Human than Human

Jus­ti­fied anger near­ly got me killed last night.

I was rid­ing my bicy­cle home from work, with all my lights and blink­ers oper­at­ing. I (usu­al­ly) obey traf­fic laws when I ride, so I stopped for a red light at Mar­ket and Van Ness. There was a cop direct­ing traf­fic as well as the light. I kept my eye on the cop when the light changed, expect­ing him to move one of his hands to indi­cate that we should go or not. … Read the rest

8.6 miles in 35 minutes

Aver­aged 14.75mph on the way to work this morn­ing. I should have left ear­li­er, so I end­ed up being a bit late to work. After arriv­ing, I locked up the bike and took a show­er at the gym. I need to get the cloth­ing part worked out, because I am not dis­ci­plined enough to take it easy rid­ing in and not get all sweaty. I need to show­er on this end of the commute.

Of course, I … Read the rest

Re: jection

Every­one knows what AA is, right? Well here’s an anec­dote about the ori­gins of AA: Bill Wil­son, one of the founders of AA, had tried to get a bunch of gut­ter-drunks sober for months before he met Dr. Bob Smith, the singer of the Cure oth­er founder. He had no suc­cess, and one day was despair­ing of the fact that none of the drunks he’d been work­ing with had stayed sober. And his wife Lois point­ed out, «but Bill, it’s … Read the rest

Bitterness

In pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence, some­one I used to trust wrote the following:

some­times it’s eas­i­er to just be bitter

This is sur­pris­ing­ly true. It is eas­i­er just being bit­ter. I don’t know where I’d be with­out my bit­ter­ness. It is the fuel that keeps me mov­ing and which makes me strong. Bit­ter, I can look my reflec­tion in the eye. Bit­ter, I show up at the gym. Bit­ter, I can keep oth­ers at bay. Bit­ter, I don’t have to hurt. Bit­ter … Read the rest