fontosaurus

And rain be damned, too! I broke down and went for a ride. I couldn't help it. 34 miles of hammerfest in the rain and chill -- and it FUCKING RULED -- today was one of those days where I remembered why I started riding in the first place. Even when the conditions were miserable, I was hauling ass, and the heart rate was only around 150 (my max is around 204 these days). Got it into the big ring in front and did some intervals that got me into the low 190's for heart rate. Mmmmm. Endorphin rush! And even the rain couldn't wipe the grin off my face.

Going to go play Chez Geek with Dave and Kristin in about an hour. I guess I can take the down time to clean up my bike, which is fucking filthy -- sand, mud, water, and road grime.

Fuck, I love to ride. *happy sigh*

Well, I've been laying in bed for an hour now. My cats have been lounging around with me, instructing me in the fine art of being lazy. They're such an inspiration.

I'm supposed to be riding a century right now (that's a 1-day 100-mile ride for you non-cycling types), but with the way my back feels, it's pretty much out of the question. Major drag. I was looking forward to it.

Dave and Kristin are coming back into town today -- they were in Iowa yesterday for a wedding. We may be getting together to play some Chez Geek today...or tomorrow. Who knows?

For those that don't read my postings over in the Macintosh community, I'll recap here. Friday, I dropped mso off at the airport. I came home, and my parents were unloading all sorts of toys from the back of my stepmom's Grand Cherokee. My stepmom got herself a top-of-the-line Powerbook G4 (the titanium monster), a new iPod, etc. (I tell you, that iPod is going to disappear into my boxes when I move out). My dad has decided to make the switch and will be buying an iBook of his own, shortly. Then my friend Dave called to tell me that he might be getting an iMac and a bunch of video production stuff. Too cool! Looks like I'll be teaching a lot of people the innards of OS X.

OS X good. Windows bad. Remember that.

The quote of the month is from Neil Gaiman, in response to people saying "Information wants to be free."

"No, that's pizza," I want to tell them. "Pizza wants to be free. Concentrate on liberating pizza from evil pizzerias. Information, on the other hand, really hates being free, and is never happier than when manacled to a wall, like Kirk and Spock in some piece of late 70s bondage-oriented slash fiction."

I'm starting to feel pseudo-guilty for not having read any of the Harry Potter books. Part of me feels that since Joe Average loves them, and Joe Average is also a retard, that they can't be that great. Then people like my buddy Batgar (and I think even mso did) tell me that they're great, and I get more and more curious. Tonight when we were at Old Chicago, Batgar says, "Remember that sense of wonder you got from the first Star Wars movie? I got twice that effect from the Harry Potter books." Damn. My reading list is long enough as it is.

And on the reading front, someone sent me a book from my Amazon.com wishlist. Now I remember why I run the Fontosaurus site. Anyway, the book was The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey. This is the book that became the bible for everyone's favorite group of eco-terrorists, the Earth First!ers.

Writing. I'm trying to get motivated to put the finishing touches on A Castle in the Sun. For those unaware, ACitS is the book I've been working on since last fall. Thematically, it's about growing up without a positive male role model, and how that affects your view on life -- goal-setting, what to do if by some miracle you actually achieve your goals, and so on. It's primary character is a professional bike racer in his rookie year. There's lots of parallels between it and my life (I was never a pro racer, obviously...and sadly), and I'm trying to make the writing eloquent and not a diatribe...it's hard to find the right balance, given that I'm writing it in the first person. I'm told that perspective isn't used much anymore. I'm also writing in the present tense, just to make it really weird. It reads nicely, I think. I just have to finish it up. (Don't get me wrong, I've written the ending already...it's just in strong need of final editing.)

In other fun, I've been talking to mso about starting a writers' group here in the Twin Cities. We could probably find a groovy coffeehouse in Uptown that would be happy to have us. Maybe I could use a group like that as the incentives to finish A Castle in the Sun. Anyway, I couldn't find any good writers' groups indexes on the web, so I registered writergroups.com, and I'm building a database-driven site that should be capable of managing itself. I think I need that support to get my shit together and actually write. Perhaps I'll call Uncommon Grounds later this week and see if they'd be willing to host us every other Wednesday or something like that.

The jobhunt isn't going particularly well. Not a lot of web design/dev/producer jobs available right now. Hell, I'd be happy with $55K, doing drone-work coding. Registered and set-up hosting for mso's site for her comedy -- bitterfatbitch.com -- I couldn't believe it was still available. Wow. maus asked me to do the design/UI for the porn site he wants to do, and he can pay me. Hallelujah. However, I'm taking that with a grain of salt until he talks to me about it while sober. The money would be helpful right now.

Game-playing has been keeping me sane. Chez Geek has been a lot of fun, thus far. Been getting my usual Scabble fiesta going, which rules. mso bought a learn-to-play-chess set, and she and Kellie are going to figure out the game. I'm tempted to buy her a copy of Bobby Fisher Teaches Chess, but I think the board/pieces she got will suffice. She's a smart girl...once she starts getting ahold of strategy, I'll bet she'll be able to kick my ass at that. I'm also wanting to find a group of people to play Apples to Apples with, and eventually scrape up some people to play Axis & Allies with. That would be good.

I should probably be asleep, but I think it's time I actually sat down and cranked out as much of writergroups.com as possible. Maybe I'll play some Roller Coaster Tycoon.

Who the fuck knows? All I know is it's time we kicked Israel out of Palestine. I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm just anti-genocide. I mean, Christ, is it obvious to anyone else that what Israel is doing to the Palestineans is the same was what Hitler did to Europe with his Leibensraum campaign? To Ariel Sharon I say this: the land given to you was a gift from the UN. The Palestineans are only asking for 22% of what you forcibly took from them. HAVE THE DECENCY TO GIVE IT BACK AND MAYBE YOU WON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE TERRORISM ANYMORE, YOU JACKASS.

And on that note, I am going to bid you all a pleasant goodnight and go get writergroups.com up and running.

Peace out, lil honkies.