Monthly Archives: February 2009

Our kitty cat is back home after a night in the vet clinic.  Yesterday she decided to jump out my roommate’s window (don’t worry – ground floor window) into the alleyway behind our place.  There’s a ton of old construction material and whatever else back there, along with a burley looking stray cat.  We think she landed on something as she approached the ground, cutting a pretty deep gash in her back foot/leg.

The vet said the cut went through part of her tendon, but she’s now sewn up and taped up, and back home.  She’s not supposed to jump for a few weeks, so we limited access to all the high surfaces, moving furniture and placing barricades.  She’s still a little freaked out, but will probably be back to normal in a few hours.

I’m going to start rock climbing.  I spent seven hours “training” at work yesterday, learning about all the necessary climbing equipment – ropes, protection devices, how to fit shoes, etc.  Part of me has wanted to get into the sport for a while now, but I never really jumped into things.  It just looks like too much excitement to continue passing up.

The final logistical details for the ozarks trip have been accounted for, and we’re about ready to go.  Weather.com has the quasi-forecast up to the 9th – rainy, with a high of 64 and a low of 36.  Temperature wise that’s about as close as it gets to the averages, but we’ll just have to see about the rain.  I’m anticipating the worst.

Our houseguest from Italy left this morning, after spending the week with us.  He was a pretty cool guy, traveling the United States to listen to blues music.  His English was about as good as my Portuguese (not too good), but he was really open about it, asking what words meant and what words to use.  I’ve always liked that.

I’m off to work in a few hours, to stand behind a cash register – the excitement is bubbling over.

I can’t find motivation today.  It started first thing this morning; when I woke up at 8:00am, I couldn’t find motivation to get out of bed.  Rolling out of bed an hour later, I was excited about the fresh yogurt and berries I brought home the night before.  Breakfast was great, and after a quick pre-ride check on the bike, I was feeling good about riding my morning away.  Then I stepped outside, and the cloudy sky was accompanied by a chilly wind and the threat of rain.  I dug through a pile of clothes to find my wind jacket and gloves, but that act alone was enough to taint my previously perfect plans.  After an hour of riding I just wasn’t having fun, so I turned and headed home.

I put my weekly load of laundry in to wash while I was in the shower – my favorite practice of multi-tasking – but couldn’t continue my productivity much past that point.  I guess everyone has and needs off days.  I’m pretty content right now just sipping my coffee and slowly typing away.

Ordered some new shirts yesterday.  I get Patagonia stuff at a substantially discounted price, and ordered a decent amount of lightweight Capilene for the warmer months coming up.  I added a few undergarments to the order too…  I’m glad I don’t have enough cash to really take advantage of this perk, because I would have a home full of things I don’t really need, but it is convenient when I really do need things from time to time.

Going with today’s trend, I’m out of motivation to write too much more right now.  I think I’ll go for a walk, over to the park, to see what else I can come up with today…

“Outdoor retailer Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) saw its net income for 2008 dip 65 percent, prompting the cooperative to eliminate 61 full-time jobs, primarily at its Kent headquarters and its distribution center in Sumner.  The layoffs represent less than 2 percent of REI’s full-time work force. REI also said it was eliminating an unspecified number of part-time, hourly positions in about half of its 105 retail stores and in the Sumner distribution center.”  (Puget Sound Business Journal)

The coop trimmed a few jobs off yesterday…luckily mine wasn’t one of them.  I didn’t have the net income figures until after a little internet research – a 65% drop is pretty significant.  My store does pretty well for itself, and we were already running with fairly limited staff, so we’re not cutting anyone yet.  Who knows what the future brings for us though; these are certainly shaky times.

I’ve been away from my fast bike for a few days now, an unusual absence for me.  I lack consistency at times because I lack goals.  Racing doesn’t appeal to me too much at the moment.  As long as I ride twice a week, I can keep my fitness just high enough to hang with my quicker friends.  I think I hit my endurance peak after riding to Alaska, and can do 100 mile days at will and without notice.  Cycling is a love affair void of any obligation on my part.

I’ve been semi-seriously communicating with my local U.S. Navy Officer’s Program recruiter.  We’ll hopefully be meeting sometime next week to discuss things a little more, but the possibilities excite me.  Travel.  Doing important things each day.  All that good stuff.  Military service has always been a sort of glamorous job for me, especially growing up in a military family.  The more I think about it, the more I realize it’s really something I would like to do.

After hearing the lay-off news yesterday, I was talking with one of my more preferred co-workers about our dream jobs in the event we were let go.  I told him I’d like to be a director or assistant director for a professional cycling team.  The reasons:

• Being part of a tight knit team.
• Playing multiple roles each day – part travel agent, part cycling coach, part physical therapist, part chef, part psychologist, part bike mechanic, etc.
• Travel.
• Being under pressure on occasion.

That, or a smoke-jumper.  The guys who get choppered into the woods to fight forest fires – the first responders.  The elite wilderness firefighter.  It would be hard, exciting work.

But so many of the things that appeal to me in those two jobs would also be included with a military gig, along with some sense of civic duty.  I’d certainly be happy in all three positions.

I do most of my work and writing on a Thinkpad T60 laptop (running Ubuntu, not Windows).  It’s about a year and a half old, and has accompanied me on nearly all of my journeys, big and small alike.  It’s the computer I took along on my bike ride to Alaska, where it was more abused than any computer should be.  I was writing for my journal at a small church in Thermopolis, Wyoming when a 2″x4″ fell off of the ceiling, a direct hit on the top of the screen.  It put a small, purely aesthetic crack on the case, but I dusted it off and it works like nothing happened.  It’s survived coffee, occasionally serves as a cat bed, occasionally served as my pillow in boring college courses; almost anything you can imagine.

I will never break this computer, and will probably hide under it in the event of nuclear attack.  I just wish I could say the same thing about the absolutely dreadful AC adapter they make for it.  I just killed my second one last night; it had been on it’s last leg for a few days now.  You could look at it wrong and it’ll break.  The coaxial cable is just too weak where it goes into the computer – with daily use, the flexing will eventually kill the cable.

A replacement charger will cost me $60 – which is about $60 more than I want to spend on obviously disposable electronics.  So last night I thought, “the hell with that.  I know how coaxial cable works…kind of.  I’ll fix it.”  You can think of coaxial like the layers of the earth.  You have a core of tiny wires running through the center (group 1), surrounded by plastic shielding, then the second set of tiny wires running down the outside of that (group 2), then the final plastic shielding – what you see on the outside of the cable.  These tiny little wires are fragile and break with prolonged bending, typically group 1 in my case; when the last tiny wire breaks, the connection is lost.

So, technically speaking, all you need to do is reconnect group 1 to group 1, and group 2 to group 2.  You’ll see sparks if group 1 and group 2 touch each other (hence the separation in the original coaxial).  So I took my pocket knife and trimmed enough insulation to expose some healthy wires, segregated the two groups, and twisted them together.  I was fully expecting to be painfully electrocuted as I plugged it into the wall – or at least blow a few fuses in my apartment.  But there were no sparks, fireworks or explosions.  Success.  The next step, plugging the other end into the computer, made me a little nervous (you can seriously damage a computer with a bad power source).  But the little charging LED lit up as hoped – the charger was fixed!

I’ll hit it with some electrical tape eventually, so I don’t electrocute the cat (or myself), and maybe some more permanent cable connectors.  Perhaps I’ll spend my tax return on the upgraded and sensibly designed AC adapter in the future, but for now I’m going bask in the glory of my shoddy handiwork.

UPDATE:

So I rode over to Breed & Co. to pick up the necessary items to finish the job properly.  I couldn’t just let the fire-hazard sit unfinished.   I spent $7 on some cable connectors, heat-shrink tubing, and some electrical tape.  After about 30 minutes of work, I have a safe and functioning charger once again.

I’m not feeling very creative tonight.  I was in the mood to write this morning, but it was quite rainy as I left my place, so I left the electronics at home.  I would write about my day, but it just doesn’t seem too interesting in retrospect.  I played in the rain, played with bikes, hung a kayak from the ceiling of REI, organized socks, rode the bus, and watched the sun set on downtown.  Nothing profound.

This whole thought process has me thinking about the concept of the personal blog itself – who it’s reaching out to, what it’s trying to communicate, and it’s ultimate purpose.  I’m a student of rhetoric, and rarely begin any social interaction without first considering my audience and my purpose.  But who is my audience here?  The personal blog doesn’t target a particular group – it’s literally open to anyone with internet access.  Do I have a particular argument to make?  Not really.  Some days I have a message to impart, but most days I’m simply writing for me.

That’s really all this is about – me writing just for the act alone.  It’s therapeutic for me to recall the immediate past, etching the details – my mood, my experiences, my thoughts – for a later date.  Casual writing can be such a capable indicator of the author’s mood, especially when the audience is neglected or non-existent.  And if mood is a reflection of personality at any given time, then a frequently updated and long-tenured personal blog should be a pretty solid measure of a person’s personality.

I think that point is my favorite thing about all of this – writing each day gives me the tiniest bit of insight into the enigma that is my mind.  And that’s probably why this blog – and those like it – have the following they do.  Blogs are a consequence-free way to connect to somebody, and have a chance to understand what makes them tick.  The events of a person’s life might not be particularly interesting, and their life might not be particularly interesting.  But life as a whole is fascinating.  Writing communicates so much more than the meaning of the words alone.