Mac & Cheese

We're still here. Busier than ever, but still here.

The bike trailer is pretty sweet. I had Caitie for the first part of the week, and the tides haven't been favorable yesterday or today, so I haven't ridden to work yet. But I did make two runs to the shopping center near my condo with it, and it's going to be fine. The floor is a little disappointing, it's kind of a "semi-rigid" sheet of plastic. It does the job, so I guess there's nothing to complain about. More when I have the time.

I updated the MacBook and iMac to 10.5.3 with no ill effects. Neither update was more than 200MB, so I'm not sure why people are seeing >450MB installs. Maybe the newer machines have more changes to video drivers and the like.

Watched Oprah's two hour interview of Jill Bolte Taylor last week and found it worthwhile. I am by no means an Oprah fan. I don't dislike her, I just find her distracting as an interviewer. But Taylor's a genuinely interesting subject, so it wasn't as tiring.

JBT has been getting a lot of coverage since the TED talk, most of it very favorable. The recent piece in the NY Times was a good example. (Though I think whoever decided it should go in the "Fashion and Style" section was making an editorial comment.) Of course, there is some negative push-back, but most of the criticism I've read is pretty ill-informed. She's not "mystical" by any means. And naturally, there's the usual assortment of wackos who try to capitalize on the attention she's receiving.

I also made my first venture into Windows-land. I bought VMWare's Fusion and a copy of Windows XP Home Edition and Microsoft Office for the MacBook. I have to give a brief next month, and while Office 2004 for the Mac is normally fine for the stuff I do, sometimes certain features are implemented in different ways that make it inconvenient or impossible to use certain files. For instance, a lot of the Excel spreadsheets I receive have those "dog-ear" notes in cells, and the text is invariably so tiny as to be unreadable on the Mac. I have never found a convenient way to universally increase the size of that text, so it was always a pain in the ass to try and do anything with the files in Office 2004. I would default to using CTRL-Scroll to magnify the screen, but that just gives you lumpy tiny text, which is almost as illegible and painful to look at.

But so far, Fusion has been outstanding and Windows XP works pretty much as advertised. The other good thing, from the Department of Rationalization and Self-justification, is that we will be getting our "tech refresh" of our NMCI workstations Real Soon Now™, and we'll be moving up to Windows XP at work! Still on Office 2003 though. I'm more up to date with 2007, here in 2008.

I'm looking after my neighbor's dog this weekend. On this morning's oh-dark-thirty walk, I had one leash in each hand as each dog decided to pass a tree on different sides, which had the rather predictable comic effect of me walking into the tree as my sleep-addled brain tried to figure out which hand to put which dog into as each was pulling about as hard as they could. Sigh.

I have a few other things I'd like to reflect upon here, and maybe I'll find the time this weekend. But life is pretty good, so if I don't it's because I'm having too much fun doing something else. You should all be so lucky.

Cheese Sandwich: Gas

At the beginning of the year, one of the things I "resolved" to do was to try to reduce my energy consumption. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I haven't done much on that front. Fortunately, what I seem to lack in "resolve," "market forces" make up in abundance.

The increase in the price of gas has probably gotten everyone's attention. Now, I can afford to absorb the increase and just carry on pretty much as before. A lot of people can't. But it still bugs me to think I'm putting >$60.00 of a consumable commodity in my tank every week, just to get from Point "A" to Point "B." So I've been thinking about some alternatives.

I thought I might try taking the bus to work once or twice a week. I thought about it, but I probably won't. I may do it once, just to see how inconvenient or unpleasant it is, and maybe I'll change my mind. I thought about buying one of those gas-powered scooters. Less than an a motorcycle, more than a moped. But then there's insurance, taking the motorcycle course, licensing, and you're still likely to get killed by some guy driving a honking big pickup truck on Mayport Road. So, no scooter yet.

One of my friends at work mentioned a guy who rides his bicycle to work. I'd thought of that and dismissed it because it's a long ride, I couldn't carry all my stuff, and Mayport Road scares the hell out of me on a scooter, forget about a bicycle. But she then she mentioned that he rides down the beach!

Of course! The beach! Woo-hoo! No traffic! Nice scenery! But, what to do about all my "stuff?" Well, this is what I do:

The Croozer Designs Cargo Trunk bicycle trailer.

They're temporarily out of stock at Amazon because I bought the last one they had in stock yesterday. It should arrive today because I paid $3.99 for overnight shipping. I really like Amazon Prime.

I live less than a mile from the beach, so it's just a matter of loading up the trailer, pedaling east for about eight tenths of a mile, then north for a dozen miles or so. I'll have to pay attention to the tide, as it's nearly impossible to ride on the beach near high tide. But I should be able to bike to work at least two times a week. I can shower at the gym if I arrive all sweaty, as I expect I will. Hopefully, I'll expend a few calories along the way. And I'll be reducing my "carbon footprint" too! If you figure (roughly) that two days' commute constitutes about 20% of my weekly fuel costs, I'll probably save something like forty five or fifty dollars a month, so the cost of the trailer is amortized in four or five months. If I use the bike and trailer to run to the store for groceries, or to drop off or pick up laundry, well, that's just more savings and more exercise! I figure I'll get a small styrofoam cooler to carry refrigerated items. It'd probably only take me ten or fifteen minutes to pedal back from the store. The ride to work is likely to be an hour, depending on the condition of the beach. Lots of firm sand, I can ride like the wind. Not so much firm sand, I get a real workout and it takes me a lot longer.

There are other bicycle trailer designs, and I'm not convinced the Croozer cargo trailer is the best or most appropriate for everyone, or even me. It's heavy, made out of steel, and it doesn't have tie-downs on the bed. I've read some reports that things slide around. I'm going to put one of those no-slip pads you put underneath rugs on the bed and see how that works. Plus I'm sure I'll modify the thing to meet my needs. But this answers the mail in terms of being able to carry my laptop bag, a change of clothes, my lunch and any other crap I tend to take to work. And it's nearly instant gratification from Amazon, no sales tax, and reasonable shipping cost. Should be here today.

I'll let you know how it works out.

BSG: Getting Better

The last two episodes of Battlestar Galactica have been much better than the previous ones I've seen this season. (I slept through one.) Probably equal to the best of anything done in the first three seasons. And that's a good thing.

Mary McDonnell is turning in a compelling performance. I just love Mary McDonnell. Sigh. It looks as though Michael Hogan is going to have his turn at bat very soon, and I'm looking forward to that as well. Edward James Olmos hasn't had very much to do, and Jamie Bamber has been relegated to a supporting cast role. Starbuck has been out of the spotlight, and while she's always been a fascinating, flawed character, there's something about her that just can't carry the show when she's the central role. It's not that she's a totally unsympathetic character (Some might disagree, eh Jonathon?), it's just that I can't seem to care about her the way that the Adama boys seem to.

The biggest, or most interesting anyway, moral dilemmas seem to belong to the Cylons, with an examination of the emotional and psychological costs of a technologically enabled immortality through "downloading." While a Cylon can be "resurrected," they must live with the memories of the experience of their deaths, virtually all of them to this point, violent. And now, at least some Cylons believe that mortality is what makes a given life "whole" or meaningful.

In any event, the contortions of the plot aren't as distracting just now, and we're being presented some great performances, and thoughtful examination of moral dilemmas, so the Battlestar Galactica I love seems to be back on course.

There is much rejoicing.

Cheese Sandwich: Happy Mothers Day, Mom.

Saw these little roses this morning while I was walking Bodhi. I grabbed my camera after taking him home, because I I liked the color and shape. Took several shots, this one came out the best.

I love you, Mom.

Social Hygiene: Change Your Mind

A couple of recent articles in the NY Times and The Guardian have something to do with remaining "awake," or the practice of mindfulness.

Much of our thinking is habituated. That is, in the absence of something "new" to think about, or some stimulus to promote "new" thinking, we default to certain patterns of thought. This is sometimes evident in our internal "self-talk," where we might find ourselves returning to certain phrases or expressions of belief, often negative.

You might regard these as "scripts" that run automatically in response to certain situations. Sometimes they're brief, like calling someone a "moron" when they fail to signal a lane change in traffic. Other times, they might be longer, more elaborate recitals of belief. The point is, they're "habits," they're not the product of volitional, cognitive thoughts. When we're running "scripts," we're not being "present" in the moment. We're surrendering our power to experience the present moment in fresh ways to the effects of conditioning.

My own most recent experience of this was on my flight here to California, where I defaulted to habituated patterns of thought to construct the experience of my flight. To be sure, I was tired, cold, achy and stressed, and "thinking different" would have changed none of those things. But my attitude toward the whole experience was something I surrendered to my habituated negative self-talk.

I'm aware of this, I "know" it in some abstract sense. It's fair to say I even have something more intimate than a merely abstract acquaintance with this information. Nevertheless, I often default to habituated patterns of thought, most of them negative and they color my experience of my life. More troubling, these patterns of thought, and my public expression of them, often color the experiences others have of me.

I'm fortunate beyond measure to have some wonderful friends in my life. And so when one of them asks me not to be a "grumpy old man," I may go into denial for a little while, but eventually I know that my friend is doing me a kindness, reminding me that I am who I choose to be.

One of my old habituated patterns of thought was to believe, "It'll get better when..." What Sandy taught me was that "it" would never get better until I did. Getting better is a matter of practice. And I'm happy to note that in many more ways than I could probably list, I am better. But I still have to practice, and try to make practice a habit. And practice doesn't mean I'm always perfect, that I never fail. It just means I continue to practice. To remember I need to practice when I forget. To graciously and gratefully accept the reminders to practice that those who care about me patiently share with me when I forget.

In this way, suffering isn't the difference between the way I am and the way I want to be. It's the opportunity to live in the moment. Practicing to reduce the difference between the way I am and the way I want to be, is... the way I want to be.

Alive. Awake. Grateful.

Cheese Sandwich: Greetings From the Left Coast

I am in Oxnard, California this evening, trying to recover from the transportation! By some freak circumstance, I actually had a first class ticket from Atlanta to LA. Let me say this, flying first class still sucks, but it does suck less.

Flew in a 767 with some kind of entertainment system with touch-screen LCD displays in the headrests. At least the Games portion of the system was running on Linux. I know this because I got to watch the system reboot three times, every time I tried to play a game. The only game that actually worked was the trivia game, which was really a pretty cool idea, except for the fact that the touch-screen sometimes registered a selection other than the one I thought I had touched.

Also watched Cloverfield for the first time. It wasn't as bad as I imagined from what I'd read about it. Still, glad I didn't have to pay for it. They advertised that we'd be able to watch broadcast TV, but evidently that part of the system was down. The service seems to be provided by DirectTV or Dish Network, I forget which. Maybe they're both the same these days.

We were late leaving Atlanta and our flying time was longer than anticipated due to winds I suppose, then we waited what seemed like forever for our bags to appear. So it was after three before I got on the road to get out of LA, and traffic was already heavy.

Had some trouble finding the motel, in spite of Google maps. I really don't understand motels here in this part of the world. This is the second one that is situated in what is essentially a suburban residential neighborhood, which is to say, there is nothing within walking distance. Plus, these neighborhoods have seemingly high aesthetic standards, so the signage for the motel is deliberately small and unobtrusively placed, to make it hard for tired, unfamiliar travelers to find it! Bastards. At least this one seems to have some complimentary happy hour most evenings with food and beer. I'll head over and check it out, because I'll be damned if I'm going to get back in that Carolla and go looking for someplace to eat!

I've got that weird buzz behind my eyes from sitting on my ass for too long, and concentrating while driving at high speeds on unfamiliar roads; and a knot in my back just below my left shoulder blade, also from sitting too long. (As I sit writing this!) I also seem to have either broken or damaged my Kodak P712, which has been a pretty nice camera for me to this point.

Went to the lobby to get a soda and a candy bar to quiet my stomach until happy hour. I prefer Snickers to just about anything else, but they only have the enormous ones. But I'm too tired to care, so I bought it and ate it anyway. I'm sure I'll regret it.

So, all in all, I'm tired, irritable and achy.

Welcome to California.

Movies: Iron Man

Rocked. Hard.

Robert Downey, Jr. is well cast as Tony Stark, and really makes the movie. Gwyneth Paltrow was an equal screen "presence," though she doesn't get enough screen time.

Sequel, please.

Social Hygiene: Worship

I've been reading Jill Bolte Taylor's book, My Stroke of Insight. It's a short book, but it's good to take it in small doses, in between the tears. But it was reading about how she chose what to think about that reminded me of David Foster Wallace's speech. Reading that again this morning, I was struck by a few paragraphs, which I will reproduce here:

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

"Everybody worships." That resonated with me this morning, because so much of what I read about certain topics sounds like religious text. I've long thought that certain people worship the internet, treating its characteristics as though they were some divine savior sent from heaven to deliver us from our sins. Certainly, they advocate for it as if they were proselytizing salvation. "Moral imperatives," and what have you.

Some people worship commerce. The marketplace is their church. Is it purely a coincidence that the Cluetrain Manifesto is presented as 95 theses? I think not. And if you worship commerce, well then perhaps it seems as if you can never be commercial enough. You need a program, enabled through technology, or "empowered by technology," to manage your relationships with vendors, preferably denoted by a three-letter-acronym (TLA).

What do I worship? Boy, I don't know. I suppose it's one of those things that's rather unconscious while still being right before your eyes. I suppose I'd have to guess that I worship trying to remain awake. Maybe that's what I worship: attention. Not attention from others for me, I really don't care. But my own attention. We only have moments to live, why waste them on things that don't matter? Why spend my time worrying about things in the past or the future? Why listen to the ego-centric monkey brain that gets mad all the time because of an overly sensitive amygdala?

Maybe you can tell what you worship by what you pay attention to. And if it seems I pay a lot of attention to what others pay attention to, well, maybe you'd be right about that. But I would have to offer in my defense that it's a lot less than it used to be. There are quite a few "Big Headers," as Mike Sanders used to call them, that I don't give my attention anymore. And much of that attention goes to this present moment, and to what I'm paying attention to.

Anyway, something to think about. Or not, as the case may be.

Social Hygiene: Moldy Oldy

First linked to this almost three years ago. It's worth linking to it again, especially as a "Social Hygiene" post. If you've never read it before, it's worth reading; or if the last time you read it was three years ago, it's worth reading again: Transcript of David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement address to Kenyon College.

May?

Yikes!