Monochromatic Outlook

After repeat­ed­ly ignor­ing my phone mes­sages and emails, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of SGI final­ly answered the phone when I called Fri­day, and gave me the answer to the ques­tion I’ve been look­ing for:

An Irix 6.5.22 license is avail­able to me at US$600.

The sad part is that I’ll prob­a­bly pay it. I have this old Indigo2 Impact sit­ting here use­less because I don’t have a user­name or pass­word for it, and because I don’t … Read the rest

Watched the begin­ning of Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca last night.

Some­times, unex­pect­ed stuff trig­gers me. Last night was an exam­ple of this. I was all excit­ed to reex­pe­ri­ence this series, which was one of my favorites when I was nine. it does­n’t seem to get much rerun play, even with the Sci-Fi chan­nel remake that came out late last year. So when the open­ing cred­its start­ed to roll, I felt a lit­tle chill. And the open­ing mono­logue, “there are those who believe…” racked … Read the rest

My Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca DVD boxed set arrived this morn­ing. Very excit­ing. It’s almost worth not eat­ing this week.

dra­cun­cu­lus and I are going to start watch­ing from the begin­ning tomor­row night. She’s nev­er seen any Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca and she’s in for a treat.

Of course, my mem­o­ries of it are from when I was nine. So it could total­ly suck. Who knows?

I keep on hav­ing my own per­son­al ver­sion of Bauhaus’ Nerves run­ning through my head. Instead of “Nerves like nylon/Nerves like … Read the rest

3 oz tenderloin
3 cups of white rice
3 cups of broccoli
some but­ter for the rice and the broccoli

1220 calo­ries.

First: who the hell knew that rice had so many damn calo­ries? Sec­ond: who the hell knew that but­ter had so many damn calo­ries? OK, well, 3 cups is a moun­tain of rice and 3 cups is a moun­tain of broc­coli, but the broc­coli does­n’t amount to much.

It’s all OK; I’m still short of my dai­ly caloric allot­ment by … Read the rest

Today I ran 5.2 miles in 50 min­utes. Felt a lit­tle guilty hog­ging the tread­mill next to the sign that reads, “max 30 min­utes on all car­dio equip­ment” but I pushed through any­way: 45 min­utes at 6.5mph plus a five minute cooldown.

I think I need a heart mon­i­tor. I don’t trust the grips on the tread­mill. I was run­ning at what I think is a rea­son­able pace and as I entered the cooldown peri­od … Read the rest

For­got about a $255 deb­it card pay­ment I autho­rized last month. I’ve been doing my plan­ning based on this mis­con­cep­tion and now I’ve got about a hun­dred bucks left until my next pay­check which prob­a­bly won’t arrive for anoth­er ten days.

That’s not the end of the world. Basi­cal­ly that means $50 for gro­ceries and $5/day for every­thing else over the next 10 days. I’ve cer­tain­ly lived on less, but you know, if I’d remem­bered the pay­ment … Read the rest

I took the rac­ing bike out for the first ride of the year. It was­n’t as nice out there as it looked a few hours ago, and I turned back real ear­ly on in def­er­ence to the chill, and gen­er­al lack of moti­va­tion. I can say I got in my pre­scribed 20 min­utes of mod­er­ate activ­i­ty, but that’s sort of nothing.

In any case, I got to burn off some ner­vous ener­gy, I guess.

Bicy­cling just isn’t fun the way I … Read the rest

I was giv­en a food plan by my train­er. And a spe­cial book for writ­ing every­thing down in. I have a calo­rie total and a list of alter­nate foods and trade­off val­ues. Sounds like they’ve basi­cal­ly ripped off the Weight Watch­ers point sys­tem with a bunch of cat­e­gories. That’s all well and good, but it’s WORK.

It’s now a lit­tle after noon and I’ve thought about get­ting break­fast a few times. Each time I’ve decid­ed that dig­ging out the food plan … Read the rest

I have a train­er now. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to afford a train­er, but this one seems to know his stuff, so after a few weeks meet­ing with him three times a week maybe I’ll knock back to twice or even once a week. We’ll see how it goes.

He instruct­ed me to not do any weightlift­ing in between ses­sions for now. I’m to con­cen­trate only on car­dio and do the resis­tance stuff only under his super­vi­sion. … Read the rest