fontosaurus

This song makes me really happy. (See "Music:") Very worth downloading. I'm also digging the new Pearl Jam. Been a good weekend for music. Saw the Weakerthans on Saturday night. Very glad they didn't play the song that usually makes me cry ("Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure")...haven't been able to hear it since Mooch passing away. I come completely unglued.

The bike side of the equation is awesome. Getting quotes from water-jetting services for my downtube badges. Had a nifty idea for a part-steel, part-bamboo frame. The first one will probably be the frame I build for Kate. Set up a Twitter account for my bike company. Website you've seen. Dwelling on ideas for doing some CAD/CAM work to dev my own dropouts (to have investment cast).

Last topic for the day is football. Thought the Vikes were going to give it away today, but was really impressed with Favre's play to end the game -- and it was a beautiful catch, too. All those Favre haters out there CAN SUCK IT.

Where Did I Go Wrong?
My two best friends from college married each other. They have a schwanky pad in Chicago now. Dave pulls about $120K a year and just got accepted to the Kellogg School of Business for the MBA program. Kristin has been doing her PhD on a full-ride scholarship at Northwestern and just became a Fulbright scholar. They are by no means more-driven or more-intelligent than I am — I'd put us all on equal footing. But man, I look at that shit and think that I really need to start doing something with my life, y'know?

ArduVelo
That's what I'm mentally referring to the Arduino-based data logger that I'm going to build. I've been brainstorming on more data I could add to it, and think I'm in a position where I could make a tool that is both extremely worthwhile for my purposes, and entertaining for the non-cyclist. (I'll be dumping data via a GPRS cellular link to a MySQL database and then building a website off of that.) Right now, I'm doing some research, but I've already got a flowchart for the software sketched out, a way to carry the hardware in a weatherproof case, and so on. This is going to be seriously cool stuff. In addition to the performance data — heart rate, cadence, speed, power output in watts — I'll be grabbing GPS info (latitude, longitude, altitude), and I've figured out ways to additionally grab food/fluid intake information, temperature, humidity, and which gears I'm in, which would be hella cool. I've thought about strapping a small accelerometer to the bottom bracket in order to measure road surface conditions via vibration.

Livejournal/Dreamwidth
Lately, I've been getting sick of LJ. I think the service is overpriced as hell, but from what I can see, Dreamwidth ain't much better. While I've considered making the jump to Dreamwidth, I think what may happen here is that I will continue to pay the LJ overlords and just start phasing out LJ in favor of the DB.N site.

Bike
Not sure if I mentioned the bone-headed screw-up with the crankset on my Cervelo, but I'm ordering a new one on Friday, so I can get that beast up and running again. I've got a bunch of other necessities that I'm ordering, too -- new brake pads for the Salsa Campeón, new valve extenders for the Zipp 404s, and a new computer mounting bracket/cadence sensor for the time trial bike. I hate spending all this money, but that's what the bike shop job is for — to pay for bike parts.

Music
I already made note of this stuff over at Delicious, but if you don't follow me there, a dude from Iceland named Ólafur Arnalds has offered up some free downloads at his site -- a new piece every day for seven days. Classical style stuff — very pretty and relaxing.

Movies
Haven't seen anything lately. Seriously. That's weird.

Dreams
About every other week, I have dreams about some sort of zombie attack. I don't really attach any meaning to them, and they're never gory or anything like that, but they end up disturbing me enough to wake me from a sound sleep at around 3 a.m. This is unacceptable and I have filed a formal complaint against my unconscious mind at the the UN Security Council. I'm asking for economic sanctions.

Analytics
In the "are you fucking kidding me?" category, #11 is a phrase someone put in a search engine that brought them to my blog:



I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY ABOUT THAT. I REALLY DON'T.

First off, let me just say that it throws a wrench into the writing habits when you don't bring your keychain drive with you to the office. That's not the worst thing going, though. My friend, Wren, who works for EA, just sent me a pile of console games, and you know that shit's going to impact my writing time. Madden 09, Tiger Woods 09, NHL 09, and Bad Company for the PS3 and Boom Blox for the Wii.

I'm not quite at the stage of freaking out about the move, the major component of which starts three weeks from Saturday. I need to snag some boxes in the next day or two so that I can actually start packing all my shit for the upcoming move.

Last night was fairly relaxing...got home from the second job, wherein Penn informed me that I'm done for the winter. I can still order shit at the employee rate, and pick up shifts for people, but they're not going to be scheduling me. No worries -- I need the additional free time. After a little while, Kate came over, and we curled up on the couch and watched Iron Man. I informed her that an Iron Man suit makes a very suitable first anniversary gift.

I cannot remember where I was going with this post, if anywhere.

How can the Mall of America be so fucking huge yet lack all the shit I'm looking for? The shorts-and-sandals run was a total bust. Lame. So I drove over to Calhoun and 'bladed a couple of laps. Admired the scenery.

I did get over to Target and picked up Blackhawk Down on DVD. That should provide the fuel for some bad dreams for the next few days.

Beyond that, slow day so far.

I think I might have gotten to that age, where acting less than one's age, might get me killed. (Sorry for the odd formatting...I liked it in the book Microserfs.) Someone once told me that the trick to staying young is to act young. I really took that to heart.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for responsibility and all that adult jazz, but I have definitely endeavoured to keep some of my childish ways. I still see a whole universe in a blade of grass, and still see the good in people (except Saddam Hussein...he's kind of a prick). But back to the topic at hand -- the suicidal overtones of my latest venture.

I've gotten into BMX racing. This is not something for the faint of heart or anyone over the age of about 15. I'm 28. And I'm not the oldest guy out there -- not by any means. My first night out, two weeks ago, I crashed heavily on my 10th (or so) practice run. This left me with three broken toes (they got caught between the spokes of my front wheel), torn up elbows (through long sleeves), bruised knees, bruised ribs (where the bike landed on me), and a torn up shoulder (official final tally: hairline fracture and damaged/torn rotator cuff). Retreat to XTerra. Deploy marketing device, er, first aid kit. Patch up bleeding spots. (This pic is just before I started putting on the bandages.) A week later, I was out there again, but with no crashes.

Today, I've been kind of introspective about this. My shoulder's bothering me enough where it's even hindering my normal road riding. And I've realized that there's more to it than going out and racing a BMX bike -- I think it's more a state of doing what interests me, societal expectations be damned. This is why I write, draw, design fonts, read books about science, and am going to learn to play the blues. The trick to being young isn't acting like a kid, it's doing what interests you without fear of reprisals.

Does this mean I'll stop racing? Hell no. I'm doing it because I find it interesting and fun. Expect to see me in your favorite ER someday soon.

I had the weirdest, most vivid dream this morning just before I woke up. In the snippet I remember, I was walking through a Wal-Mart with a guy who looked like a Zen master. He turns to me and says, "The problem is that you're not living with your soul. You're living with your wallet and your brain." I, of course, made a hasty denial. He opens his mouth to say something, and then the cat woke me up by pouncing on my back. *sigh*

Perhaps I've been a bit worried lately, about what I'm doing with my life. Let's face it, writing code all day to sell insurance online isn't exactly what I'd call "enlightening" or satisfying. I guess I started actively pursuing cycling and writing again because they put a fire in my soul...it's hard not to feel alive while doing either of them. Font design was in danger, for awhile there, of becoming a "business" issue. Not something I want to have happen.

So, last week, after the fire destroyed the servers, I took some time off from Fontosaurus. I hope you don't mind. I needed to approach this with a fresh soul. :-)

I've been writing a lot more, hard at work on A Castle in the Sun, and I hope to get the second chapter on the website sometime this week. (Perhaps even today, if I'm feeling industrious.) And I've been riding a lot harder. Went to the BMX track Friday night, finished third in my category. Was riding up the hill to the starting line after the race, so I could get in a few practice runs, and SCHPONG! the chain drops! I look down, and I'd sheared out two chainring bolts, and bent the chainring (the big gear in front, for you non-cycling types) into a taco shape, just on horsepower alone! :-)

So anyway, I've been trying to get my soul working again the last week. This weekend, I've been making fonts. I hope you like the results. :-)

Well, color me horribly, horribly mortified and embarrassed. This entry will be serving as a public, open apology for earlier terrible behaviour on my part.

I was dating someone years back, and at her graduation dinner with her whole family. The waitress asked me how I wanted my steak, and what I said was, well, a combination of nervousness, tripping over my words, and just being an ass. I said, "Extremely well done, bordering on Holocaust victim."

Oops. What I meant to say was, "Nuclear holocaust." Which, while not much better a thing to say, doesn't carry the horrible implications of my actual words.

Let me clarify: I am not even remotely anti-Semetic. I cannot stand racism, and harbor a great deal of animosity toward white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

So, intentions aside, I screwed up. Big time. I made an ass of myself and was an embarrassment to everyone at the dinner table. For that, I would like to extend my deepest apologies to Denei and the entire Slowik family. I hope that they can forgive me, but I'll understand if they don't. My words, regardless of intent, were inexcusable, and for that I'm truly sorry.

(I'm sorry if this isn't my usual light-hearted fare, but lately, I've been thinking about who and what I have been over the last few years. I came to the realization that most of my arrogant, brash behavior was nothing more than a mask for insecurity and weakness. And I didn't like the realization. But rather than tell myself I was wrong, I decided to do something about it. You see, some mornings, looking in the mirror is like looking down the barrel of a gun. You may not realize it, but you're killing yourself with your actions and your behavior. You may not wake up dead the next day, but what you're doing is pushing people away, and building a life that will be very empty and shallow. And trust me, that's something you don't want. Three or four years ago, I might not have cared about my actions, but I certainly do now, and I wish I could take a lot of them back.)