Monochromatic Outlook

I think these are the best, but here’s the bunch:
http://brightroom.com/view_user_event.asp?EVENTID=4395&PWD=&BIB=2723
Per­haps you have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion. Don’t know how long that link will
stay good for.

I should have my offi­cial time by Friday.… Read the rest

Very slow start to the Bridge to Bridge run this morn­ing. It was very con­gest­ed and hard to get past any­one. My split for the first two miles was 21:06, and the field cleared only very grad­u­al­ly from there. But I still hit my mark over­all, com­ing back to a (by my watch) 1:05:26 fin­ish, aver­ag­ing an 8:46 pace over the whole 12K course. That’s an 8:07 pace … Read the rest

Since I haven’t run all week and because tomor­row is the Bridge to Bridge run, I want­ed to get a run in today just to get back in the swing of things, but not to burn myself out. I usu­al­ly fol­low (more or less) the LSD (long slow dis­tance) method, but today I want­ed to just get out and burn fast.

I picked a flat course (Urbano Dri­ve) and chose a tar­get time of 30 min­utes. I ran as fast as … Read the rest

If he can’t face John Ker­ry with­out break­ing down in gib­ber­ing ter­ror, what the hell makes you think he can stand up to Usama bin Laden?

I mean, sure, Ker­ry had some key advan­tages, like not sleep­ing through his debate class­es because he was too hung over. And hav­ing an IQ high­er than 80. So I guess it was­n’t a fair fight.

I don’t pre­tend it will help Ker­ry win, though. I seem to be out of touch with Amer­i­can val­ues. … Read the rest

In the last few years, I’ve seen George W. Bush do and say a lot of things. I’ve seen him tell bald-faced lies in the State of the Union address, I’ve seen him fum­ble over sim­ple sen­tence syn­tax, I’ve seen him dead­ly seri­ous and hav­ing wacky fun.

Before tonight, I’d nev­er seen him whine like a beat­en dog.

He’s gonna be elect­ed Pres­i­dent for four more years; I’ve got no doubt of that. But it was nice, for once, to see him … Read the rest

Like every­one else on the plan­et nowa­days, I get unso­licit­ed com­mer­cial email. It seems to come in waves, and I get the same sorts of sub­jects over and over and over.

Two things make me think that spam­mers are not the most savvy of marketers:

1) OK, if I’m gonna be cheap and cut cor­ners and risk get­ting some nasty fake copy of the real prod­uct I want to get, I’m gonna try that with some­thing that does­n’t mat­ter. Cheap … Read the rest

Wow, right now Clive Thomp­son is rock­ing my world. Rarely have I been so inter­est­ed in what some­one has to say unless I know them per­son­al­ly or ahem want to know them per­son­al­ly, if you get my drift. But I’m total­ly addict­ed to col­li­sion detec­tion, his blog.

This thing is great: SineClock

http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/000977.html#000977

It’s a con­stant­ly-chang­ing tone gen­er­a­tor that pro­vides some feel­ing of the pas­sage of time even in an office cubi­cle. I can see how some … Read the rest

A beau­ty can only ever be skin deep,
But if I’m hon­est that’s all I ever real­ly need.
–Love and Rock­ets, All In My Mind

I’ve often won­dered at the mean­ing of the lyric above. At first glance it sounds like an hon­est admis­sion of con­cern only with beau­ty: If I’m hon­est about it, all I real­ly want is some­one beautiful.

On the next read through anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty aris­es: per­haps instead of exter­nal needs, the line refers to one’s per­son­al aspi­ra­tions. If I … Read the rest

I guess all that hill work is pay­ing off. I ran a most­ly-flat 6.55 miles in 53:32. That’s creep­ing down toward the eight-minute mile zone. This rocks!

Except it did­n’t real­ly rock. Stu­pid iPod kept on being too finicky. Who­ev­er thought it was a good idea to base a portable dig­i­tal music play­er on a spin­ning disk should get a stern talk­ing-to. I think it needs to go in for repairs too, ’cause I get about … Read the rest

I’ve been look­ing for a new goal, a new mark to hit. I think I’ve found it:

http://www.runsf.com/

The US Half Marathon, San Fran­cis­co. It’s in a lit­tle under a month, so I have to stay focused. I’m stat­ing the goal right now: to com­plete the half-marathon in under two hours.

The longest dis­tance I’ve ever run before is 10.5 miles, so a half-marathon at 13.1 is a bit of a stretch, but it’s not over­ly ambi­tious. I’m … Read the rest