fontosaurus

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.

Well, I woke up with a gem of a headache this morning. All these interesting posts from my friends and I can barely string together two complete thoughts...so I must refrain from commenting, lest I look like a jackass. (Not that I don't already. See earlier picture. Ha!)

Mooch is asleep on my pillow. I keep trying to break her of that habit, but it is impossible. It's nice to know that she loves me so much, but her snoring in my ear is really getting old.

mso, you need to keep popping those cough drops.

timmyeatworld, I will not bite off your toe. That's just sick. What did you do to it, anyway?

koroshiya, I totally understand your issues with dad. I have a hard time forgiving mine.

digitech, if you're the center of the universe and everyone loved you and you always got your way, you wouldn't be spoiled, you'd be that goofy judeo-christian god.

That is all for now. I must pursue and kill a bowl of raisin bran. Kellogg's variety. Yum

Welcome my new friend, snappythecat. Snappy is one fucked-up individual. :-D

LiveJournal Connect! Enter your username in the left box, someone else's username (or a * for a random one) in the right box, and press the button! -> Suppress Explanation Mutual Friends Only Coded by sachmet

And the other cool thing is that my mom is taking me out to dinner tonight. How cool is that? Mom rules!

Can I say, for the record, that LiveJournal's interface on the website is a clunky piece of crap? Tens of thousands out-of-work web geeks in this country and they can't even hire one decent UI designer? What's up with that?

Beyond that, can't say that I have much to complain about, besides the obvious lack of employment. And the fact that my hair is starting to thin out...probably due to stress...and now I'm starting to get stomach problems, just to add to the fun. What's next? Bowel cancer? Shingles? A nice hemohorragic fever?

(I'm not always this cranky. I promise.)

I've always wanted to type that. I mean, I've been lurking on Slashdot for years, and never had the opportunity to make the first post. So I'm doing it here. Whee! And no one to mod me down. Special thanks to MsO for getting me involved in this. I've needed a no-general-purpose blog for a long time now.