I am about to break the Internet. That’s not really true. I have been, however, looking for that unified theory of why the Internet is an essential thing in life. It wasn’t until about 6:30P on Saturday night that I found my answer.
Below is a clip of me when I was 7. 7. The footage is almost 32 years old, and I haven’t seen it since I was, at best, 10 years old. I have not a single piece of recorded audio with my own voice from before my voice changed. I was floored when I saw this.
To set the stage – I went to the Mirman School in Los Angeles. The school was contacted by a game show which wanted to record kids defining words. Those clips would be shown to adults, and they would then have to guess the word. And thus “Childs Play” was born into existence.
I was on the show a handful of times. In fact, the savings bonds from my appearances paid for my first car. I haven’t really thought about it much since I was a child. You know, because I was 7 and 8 when the shows aired. It was long ago pushed out of active memory. In fact, it was written to tape and the tapes were lost.
What is so very incredible about this find, to me anyway, is that it exists at all. Multiple people have gone through the trouble of posting clips and entire episodes of this game show to YouTube. That is amazing to me. Once I discovered one, that it took me 5 minutes to find this clip is astounding. More awesome still (again, from my point of view) was seeing all these other kids from my school as children. Exactly as I remember them. Crazy.
Of all the words I did, this one was the one that was a source of much ribbing from both of my brothers. I was terrible in this one. Awful. I cannot begin to guess how the woman got the word at all, so kudos to her.
I was able to show this to my wife. She has never heard my voice as a child, and pictures are rare. My kids saw this. I am slightly older than my son in this video. I look exactly like my youngest daughter in this video. I sound like a lost little boy in this video. Check out the ‘fro in this video. The busted up and crooked collar. The school emblem on my sweater. It is so many levels of awesome.
But that’s not the best part. For a very small group of people who will see this post, it’s what comes after me that makes this so so priceless. I mean BEYOND priceless. Straight up click bait worthy priceless. Mary Jo and Paul, I give you a gift. Sascha, I’m sorry. Remember, this video is from 1983, and he and I were on opposite sides of the country as school kids. We met at one point during later tapings for a change the producers made to the show, but it was 30+ years later that I was sitting next to Sascha during a press briefing for Windows Phone. Yes. That Sascha. He was on a lot. A lot, a lot. Sascha, you were so charismatic and great in all of the videos, but this one – oh to have had a chance to know you better as a child.
Please be kind…remember, anything you say, you are saying about children. Sure, I’m a grown man now, but please be kind to the kids. The kids! Remember, the world is indeed a very, very small place. You never know when you might run into people again.
This is a story about romance. Romance that is seldom talked about, and seen even less so. To understand where we end up, it helps to back up a bit. On February 2, 2002, I was lucky enough to be married to Christina Hurley. The quote above will make so much more sense at the end of this little story. I promise.
Watson Wedding
The wedding itself was something of a dream. To be honest, I don’t really remember much about the day as I was mostly floating through it. We were married at a small house overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara, CA. We had opted for a small affair, with only about 50 people in attendance. But I digress. We were talking about romance.
She was really quite captivating when I met her. I really didn’t stand much of a chance. When we met in Jan 2000, there were other forces at play. She was supposed to be in Europe, where she had been working for the prior 8 or so months. She pulled the pin on that job and came back to the States early. Upon returning to Seattle, she got a chance phone call from an old friend who was recruiting for a new start-up. My company, as luck would have it. She wasn’t looking for work yet, but figured what the hell. The rest is, as we say, history.
Both Christy and I have always loved to spend our money on experiences rather than things. Before the kids arrived, we wanted to make sure we were taking advantage of travel around the world. We had both had Thailand on our short list of must-do countries, owing in no small part the exotic nature of the locale, the beauty of the scenery, and that neither one of us had been to Asia.
Immediately we were captivated by the beauty of the country. It was relaxation as we could not have imagined. The sunsets were the stuff of storybooks, and we found it difficult to consider returning stateside.
Jokingly called the prom pic.
During our travels, we did decide to pick up a few things to send them back to Texas for our new home we were building together. When I say a few things, you would think that through the use of the word “few” I mean a small amount. Sadly, the double play of low prices, and “everything is negotiable” pricing caused my wife to short circuit and decided to buy the country.
The pile of stuff
We were fortunate that we had made the acquaintance of a young woman in the area who was willing to help us out with getting any and all purchases back to the USA. She acted as a way point for our purchases, and even offered to get them to a shipping point off the island (where were in Koh Samui at the time). There was no reason not to trust her, so we bought some stuff from her, some stuff from others, and left the rest to faith in people.
Our romance story starts upon the arrival of this package of goods in Texas. After several confused phone calls with various shipping companies and customs officials, we were informed that we could collect our goods from a warehouse quite a ways away from where we lived. Christy and I piled into my small SUV, and we headed off to get the “small box.” I put “small” and “box” in quotes because that is how it was described on the forms I filled out at the customs office. It turns out I am such a silly, silly man who did not consider to ask such basic questions as “how big is this box?” and “will this box fit in a small truck?”
When we arrived at the shipping warehouse, we spent a fair amount of time wandering around simply trying to find someone who could help us. When I did find a guy with a radio, he didn’t think too much of me. It was clear from the outset that I wasn’t on his plan for the day, and he wasn’t rushing to get anything done for me. After about 30 minutes, a forklift showed with a crate. A. Crate. A crate that was most assuredly not a “small box,” and it definitely wasn’t going to fit into my car.
Christy and I sat there staring at this thing, wondering how we were going to get the contents from the box into the car. It was bad enough that this was a crate that wouldn’t fit, but even worse that it was a crate. With nails. Big ones. I started to spin around looking for someone to help me, but, like I said, I wasn’t in the plan for the day.
Christy was becoming a bit alarmed at what was increasingly looking like either leaving one of us here while the other went driving looking for a crowbar, or making multiple trips back to this location. Neither option was really working for me, and so I made a decision to solve the problem. I turned to Christy and said “take off your wedding ring.”
“What? Why?,” she asked.
“Just take it off. You have to trust me on this one.”
She grumbled something and took off her ring and slipped in her pocket. With that out of the way, I went in search of the guy in charge. Check that. I went searching for the young man in charge. One thing I had noticed about the guy who wouldn’t help me was that he wasn’t the guy on the other end of the radio. That guy was someone else, and he was a young-ish male who looked like he didn’t believe in wasting time. He also looked like he would understand the plight I was about to present to him.
I walked up to him, and with my best affected street accent (which is comical for a host of reasons we don’t need to get into here) I approached him. “Excuse me. Can I talk at you for a minute?”
The foreman looked up, and looked through me as he considered the source of the inquiry. His eyes immediately drifted back to his clipboard as he said “I don’t have time right now.”
“Just for a minute,” I implored. “Help a brotha out.”
Apparently I hit the right note, because at this he stopped, looked up again, and replied with a simple “yeah?”
“You see that shorty over there?,” I asked, tipping my head slightly back and to the left to draw attention to Christy, whom I had left standing by the crate.
“Yeah, what about her?”
“I’ve been trying to shout at her for a minute, you know what I’m sayin?” He nodded. “She’s the office manager at my company. She’s been with this dude for like 6 months or some shit. Don’t got no time for nobody sniffin’ around.”
“Yeah,” he responded, though his posture had noticeably softened. He shoulders relaxed and he got a sly smile that told me he understood exactly what I was trying to say. At which point he started shaking his head and offered, “but dude didn’t drive her here. You did.”
He was quick on the uptake, I’ll give him that.
“No doubt. Last Friday she sent out this email to some peeps asking if anyone had a truck. Shorty needed help picking up some things she sent home from a trip.” I leaned in conspiratorially and continued, “Boyfriend has a truck. I figure, dude must be slippin’. So I send her back saying I got a truck and I can be there for her.”
The foreman continued smiling, nodding his head, and said in a low tone “creepin’.”
“Creepin’,” I agreed.
Story time was over, and our foreman had to get back to being officious. Perhaps looking to conclude our bro-ment (copyright!), he asked, “what’s this got to do with me?”
And there we had it. Now I just had to thread the needle. “That box a’int fittin’ in my car, yo, and you know I a’int got no crowbar. Imagine what a Shleprock I can make dude look like when I get shorty and all her stuff back to her apartment. Ya feel me?”
Foreman considered this for a moment and turned around to walk away. I lost him! Damn it! Dejected, I started to turn around when I heard the tell-tale double beep of his radio. “Joey, come back.” Foreman was on my side. I started to turn back around when I caught his eye, with a slight twinkle in it, and he said to me “Don’t worry bruh. We got this.”
I quickly walked back over to Christy and told her that we were sorted. She looked at my quizzically and asked “what was that all about?”
To which I responded, “there are some things that are better kept under wraps. Let’s just say he and I came to an understanding.”
Not one to miss a beat, Christy looked up at me, with a touch of doubt in her voice, asked, “what did it cost you?”
“To be honest,” I replied, “I really don’t know yet. I figure this is at least $40.”
It didn’t take long for Joey to return. Or rather, Joey and his boys. 4 very large looking me emerged from somewhere, each brandishing a crowbar. My first thought was to turn and run, but I had to trust that Foreman was a true as a romantic as I pegged him to be. Joey walked right up to me and asked, “that your truck?” To which I simply nodded and the crowbar quartet set to work. Within seconds they had dismantled the box. To be honest, that’s all I could have hoped for, but the Foreman’s crew crushed it for me by taking the contents of the crate and started loading my truck. They loaded my truck. Loaded. Truck. Mind. Blown.
I could sense alarm from Christy, and she made it plain when she tugged on my shirt and demanded, “what exactly did you say to those guys?” I was speechless, so I didn’t really have anything to offer. In just 5 minutes, we were ready to go.
As if understand his role of Foreman Godmother, he returned, this time with a smile and a wink. “You all have a nice day, and make sure this pretty lady gets her things home.”
“We will,” is all I could muster, but knew that I had to do more. I reached into my pocket for my cash, and got the hustle up on over to the foreman. I pulled out $40 to slip into his hand as I said, “thanks for the hookup. Shorty asked me if I wanted to go to dinner on the way back. I can’t thank you enough.” As I finished those words, I palmed the cash to his hand.
With a move that screamed of practiced efficiency, he put the clipboard under his arm and unfolded the two $20 bills. He considered them for a moment, and then folded them back up as he looked me dead in the eye and said, “take her to Red Lobster,” as he handed me the money back.
It’s rare that we hear stories about male driven romance. We see hapless boobs on TV and in movies who don’t seem to have a clue about romance. Well, romance as Hollywood would sell it to you anyway. However, I would submit to you that this was a romance story that played out, 10 years ago, in the warehouse on the outskirts of Houston where one man understood the stakes of love, and he pulled out all the stops to help out another man.
The story wouldn’t be complete without a glimpse into Christy’s reaction in the car upon hearing what really happened. “You guys are unbelievable! They did all that to help you get laid?”
Yes. Yes they did. But that was an outcome, not a reason. They did it because they believe in the romance of a young man trying to impress a woman. A young man who would do anything for that woman. They didn’t know we were married at the time, but they could tell how I felt about Christy, and deep down inside, we all want to see the nice guy get the super model.
It’s been 12 amazing years. I know that I don’t deserve my wife. She is better than me by almost every measure. Honestly, if I could make it happen, I would kiss her in the high school cafeteria and then walk out while everyone slow clapped and the outro music played. How very 80s cheesy movie of me, but that’s how I feel every day I am with her. The painfully uncomfortable in his own skin geek who tried way too hard to fit in who somehow convinced the all american girl next store beauty that he was worth her time.
What is to follow is a bit of faux ranting. I saw Pacific Rim a few weeks back with my best friend. I’m not sure we’re friends anymore, because immediately following the movie he was treated to a 30 minute stream of consciousness about everything that was wrong with the movie. His response? “It was fun.” Groan.
I have read review after review after review glowing about this movie. Let’s call it what it is. A big budget, over the top, overly simplistic movie playing on the basest emotions of boys hiding in mens’ bodies, which tugging at strings of nostalgia, all in an effort to convince us that no, no, this effort is different.
I love movies. I will link to or reference many of my favorites in this post to drive home that point. I did not love this movie. It was “neither fantastic, nor outstanding.”
Where to start? This is in no particular order. Spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen the movie, do not proceed. The tl;dr version – if you want a ridiculous alien plot that tugs at nostalgia, but you can watch over and over? Tim Riggins saves the world – err, Battleship.
As I entered into 2013, I made a commitment that I would read more, and I certainly have started well. Loads of good content, from the Kindle Single (a great format I finally tried this quarter), to graphic novels, to memoirs, to history, to psychology, to straight up adventures and fantasy. There’s probably something in here for everyone. This is the approximate order in which these were read.
Title: Django Unchained #1
Author: Reginald Hudlin
Rating: 4/5
Review: I haven’t seen the movie, but the hype got me interested. I wanted to see how the graphic novel would play out.
Title: Serenity: Those Left Behind 2nd Edition
Author: Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews
Rating: 3.5/5
Review: I’m a sucker for Serenity, but I always feel like I am missing something when I read the comics or watch the episodes. That there is some cache of content somewhere that explains other things that I am simply not getting.
Title: Serenity: The Shepherd’s Tale (Serenity (Dark Horse))
Author: Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon
Rating: 3/5
Review: See previous. The story here could have been so much more, but it just had a bunch of semi-complete thoughts.
Title: The Wisdom of Compassion: Stories of Remarkable Encounters and Timeless Insights
Author: His Holiness the Dalai Lama , Victor Chan
Rating: 4.5/5
Review: Totally off the beaten path for me. A great listen. Some redundant content, but well worth the time investment.
Title: Old Man’s War
Author: John Scalzi
Rating: 4/5
Review: Made my way through this much faster than Red Shirts. I like the concepts, though it did feel like it just kind of ended. Will be interested to read other content from this universe.
Title: Killing Floor
Author: Lee Child
Rating: 4/5
Review: This is not my usual gene, and I admit that I started with the series because of the movie. The story tells like it could be real, which is to say that at no point did I feel that I was reading about some super human detective or some ridiculous plot line. The antagonists didn’t make any glaring errors that cause the suspension of disbelief to crumble.
Overall a very entertaining read. I won’t be rushing into the next novel straight away, but I am curious to read the second book in the series.
Title: Silver Linings Playbook
Author: Matthew Quick
Rating: 2/5
Review: This is an overly simplistic plot with excruciatingly annoying characters. The protagonist male is comically self-absorbed in a post-traumatic state. It is hard to understand what that must be like, but as it is written, it is hard to see him as anything more than infantile. The mother and father characters are cliche at best. And the character of Tiffany made me want to pull out my hair. Who behaves this way?
My wife and I read this book together…mini book club if you will. Sadly I take ownership of making this pick. I got sucked in by the rave reviews of the movie. Shame on me.
Title: Getting Started with MakerBot
Author: Bre Pettis, Anna Kaziunas, Jay Shergill
Rating: 3/5
Review: Fine intro, though very repetitive. I had my interest piqued by the book Makers by Anderson, and am playing with the idea of venturing down the path of machine purchase for use and learning tool with the kids.
Title: Django Unchained #1
Author: Reginald Hudlin
Rating: 3/5
Review: Was a bit surprised at how very short this one was compared to volume #1. Almost nothing happened.
Title: 48 & Counting
Author: Jonathan Clements
Rating: 3/5
Review: I would have given this 4 stars, but unfortunately the characters are a bit one dimensional and the story feels a bit too forced. Bring a recovering finance guy and cyclist, I can appreciate the mixing of the life experiences.
The author is correct - the striving and the suffering is why I put in the miles. The races are icing.
Title: Before They Are Hanged
Author: Joe Abercrombie
Rating: 3.5/5
Review: I wrote this review a few weeks after reading the book. Not much stuck. It progresses the story a bit, but whereas the first iteration pulled me into the universe, this one felt like one giant tease, setting everything up for the third volume. Really, really annoying use of inner voice for one of the main characters. Either use it for everyone or no one.
Title: Emperor: The Gates of Rome
Author: Conn Iggulden
Rating: 4/5
Review: I loved the series Iggulden did for Ghengis Khan. I knowingly suspend all disbelief at the overall historical accuracy of the tale. With that said, he’s a master story teller, and I can’t wait to read the next installment.
Title: Band of Brothers
Author: Stephen E. Ambrose
Rating: 5/5
Review: Second time reading this book. I watch the HBO series every Veterans Day. Love Ambrose as a writer. The story is well told, and the characters come alive.
Title: Red Country
Author: Joe Abercrombie
Rating: 4/5
Review: As a standalone unit, I think this work is better than the 3 part series from which it was spawned. At the time of reading this one, I hadn’t read book 2 of the First Law series. I have since. I have not read book 3. Abercrombie does a good job of storytelling here, and he lets the characters do the story telling without any of the annoying inner voice stuff from book 2.
Title: Matterhorn
Author: Karl Marlantes
Rating: 3.5/5
Review: This is a well written tale of the Vietnam War. I can’t speak to the authenticity of the situations and characters, but it felt very forced – “Hollywood” even. While you get the sense that the main character grows, there is this overwhelming sense of helplessness and pointlessness of the war which overshadows the complex relationships which you would expect to build under such circumstances. I cared way more about some of the minor characters than I did about the main ones.
Title: Here’s the Deal
Author: David Leonhardt
Rating: 3/5
Review: This single starts in with what appears to be a non-partisan view of what is going on with our economy. Unfortunately it ultimately ends up being somewhat left leaning, which is fine, but not as advertised.
The analysis is hitting the right subjects but isn’t asking the right questions. Comparing the USA tax rate to Spain and suggesting that we aren’t doing enough for taxes, but completely ignoring the complete mess that Spain has become is quite misleading. You don’t get to fit the data to conclusions. It’s intellectually dishonest.
On the topic of heath care and related costs, isn’t the right question to ask: what is the break down of all the components of specific costs which are rising the fastest and why are they rising so much? I get that we all want top dollar healthcare, but shouldn’t decreasing costs ultimately materialize if we improve on things that were working well enough even 5-10 years ago?
Title: Navy Seals Training Guide: Mental Toughness
Author: Larz Draeger
Rating: 3/5
Review: Good lessons to be had in here, and glad to see the author took a point of view of making this content accessible for everyday folks looking to accomplish big goals, and not getting mired in military life or combat ops.
What took the star rating down are the unforgivable typos and grammar errors. Especially given the root of the SEAL ethos of excelling in all that they do, I find it inexcusable that this work comes off as a poorly produced self-published affair. That alone particularly hurts the credibility of the message and process delivered. In one of his own interviews the author is given the steps to take to accomplish a big goal. It does not feel like he followed that process or he would have sought the advice of someone who has been successful in this sort of project who would have insisted that the author have a professional edit and typeset done.
Title: Gutenberg the Geek
Author: Jeff Jarvis
Rating: 5/5
Review: I usually find the pundits of the net to be insufferable self-promoters, but in this instance Jarvis has delivered a well written piece on historical technology, but assigned it with a modern day pundit’s view, while at the same time leaving himself out of it.
This is only the second kindle single I have read, but I very much appreciate the long form read in the :30-:60 read time package. The quality of the two singles is making me think that perhaps the long form novel (I.e. 600+ pages) is in trouble when living in the world of instant book downloads. Excessive choice makes time more of a commodity, and Jarvis delivered enough to peak interest in a topic, but doesn’t cause me to try and suffer through 500 pages of historical narrative, the length of which is rooted in an author being pressed to fill pages.
Title: The Great Derangement
Author: Matt Taibi
Rating: 3.5/5
Review: Matt is a great story teller, but his lack of maturity gets in the way too often. He lashes out like a petulant teenager, mistakenly assuming that rage and frothing vitriol is a necessary and required step to convey his opinion and observations.
Title: Before the Swarm
Author: Nicholas Grifin
Rating: 4/5
Review: This was not a normal topic for me, but the Atavist has produced some interesting work, and I am busy exploring Kindle singles as a form of media consumption in an effort to explore more ideas in long form narrative in less time than only reading novels.
I had hoped for more discourse on the nature of ants and ant colonies than a character study in this piece, but the ultimate result was still fulfilling.
Title: Emperor: The Gates of Rome
Author: Conn Iggulden
Rating: 4/5
Review: Iggulden keeps pulling me in. Like Joe Abercrombie, he does a good job of mixing the personal stories and battles. The historical context is nice, though he certainly takes some liberties. Same rating as previous book in the series, but I preferred this one.
Title: Wave
Author: Sonali Deraniyagala
Rating: 2.5/5
Review: My heart goes out to the author, and the story is an incredible one, but I simply couldn’t get past the unevenness in the relating of the story. It starts out in a very gripping narrative, but then diverges into a series of rants and revelations that seem to just fall out of the authors head. Perhaps that is the genius of this work, and I lack the ability to empathize with the author because I have no shared set of experiences.
Title: The Second Ship
Author: Richard Phillips
Rating: 3/5
Review: What started out as a promising topic for a science fiction story turned into a YA story with tired high school antics. Phillips makes up for it in the last 50 pages, but this story took me way too long to finish. I would have rather he focused on the adults and not utilize the bizarre plot devices tied to the teenagers. I am all for alien technology, but he tries to make some of it too real, and in doing so falls into the uncanny valley.
Title: Guns
Author: Stephen King
Rating: 3/5
Review: A thoroughly well-reasoned piece by Stephen King on the nature of gun violence, its perpetrators, and how to think about solutions. While I believe in the 2nd amendment, I also believe that a doctrine of reasonableness need be applied to the regulations surrounding gun sales.
King hints at, but doesn’t close the loop on, a potential link between the lack of strong male role models in the lives of the shooters. There’s a reason why so many third world warlords use pre-order and teenage boys for their militias. The potent mix of hormones and feelings of dissociation from society result in a cauldron of difficult to control violence.
I commend King for this piece and hope many others read it. What it lacks in dogma and righteousness it makes up for in well-reasoned thought and open mindedness.
Title: The Sociopath Next Door
Author: Martha Stout
Rating: 3.5/5
Review: I really don’t know how this book ended up in my queue, but it was a fascinating read to say the least. I have never taken a psychology class, so it’s hard for me to evaluate the level of rigor involved here. However, the use of amalgamated case studies was a gentle introduction into the mind of a sociopath.
Where this title falls down, for me, is that there is little in the way of conclusion as to what to do next. It almost felt like the author has given up on the notion of solving this problem, and rather has simply resolved that we as a world need to live with it, despite the data that suggests the rates of sociopathy vary across cultures.
Title: Last Argument of Kings
Author: Joe Abercrombie
Rating: 4/5
Review: A decent finish for the series, though the very end of the book was a serious WTF moment. Not as bad as Stephen King, in that it left with a whimper, nor Lindelof of Lost in that it wasn’t rage inducing.
I am not sure who Abercrombie intended to be the main protagonist of this series. While I suspect that many readers will say that Logan is the focus, it seems that Glokta, with the ever present (and often times distracting and annoying) inner voice is the main player in this story.
This book would not have stood well on its own, relying on too many threads to come together to yield the final result. However, Abercrombie proves a worthy author in the fantasy/western-esque genre. I would be surprised if this world isn’t brought to the large screen at some point
I finished in just under 6h. Seconds to spare really. Great course, though painful. Nice mix of fast singletrack, speedy forested rollers, gnarly technical downhill, and painful climbing that just. wouldn’t. end. I am now much more sensitive to any race organizer describing a section of fire road as “fast” – it was miles and miles uphill. Very well run race, with great on course support, minus the nit due to lack of drop bag support.
Long Version
I’m not sure what I was expecting going into the 50 mile Capitol Forest mountain bike race. The longest distance I had ridden on a mountain bike prior to this race was 30 miles, and that was in May, at a race in the same series. I finished that race in about 4:15 and thought I was going to die. I wasn’t prepared mentally or physically for that race enough to be a strong finisher, much less finish at all. My one race in between was a race in Roslyn that was 12 miles of suffering I won’t be repeating. I wasn’t brimming with confidence coming out of that race.
A few friends had expressed interest in my first ride impressions of the 2013 Specialized Epic Expert, so I decided to blog it. For reference, I live in Seattle area, Washington. Mine arrived yesterday at Gerks Cycle in Redmond and I have done two rides. If you don’t know the guys at Gerks, get to know them. Great service, and great guys.
My current bike (on sale soon if anyone is interested) is a 2009 Specialized Stumpjumper FSR Pro Carbon. Yesterday was a shakedown ride at Paradise Valley (http://app.strava.com/rides/19325694) and today I rode from Duthie Hill and Grand Ridge to test the climbing. I will get my data for the ride this morning uploaded later tonight.
The Bad
For the way that *I* climb (Ironman, 6 time half Ironman, heavy road cycle background), the 2×10 setup leaves me working too hard on the steepest parts of upper grand ridge. I wish I had 1 or 2 less teeth on the small front.
Specialized abandoned SRAM for their brakes on this years bikes. They went with Magura. Maybe I need to brake the pads in more, but the brakes do not feel as grabby as the Avid Elixr. In fact, the rear brake is downright suspect. It’s a 160mm rotor, but I don’t feel like it’s stopping the bike at all.
The bars are too wide. That’s fixable, but it made for a strange first couple of rides.
Downhill. The geometry of this bike is very different, and I was not at all comfortable going downhill. It’s going to take time and work. I didn’t feel like the bike couldn’t handle it, but it didn’t inspire comfort. When I test rode a friend’s Blur XC, going downhill felt normal and the bike invited me to go harder and I was OK with that. The Epic is inviting me, but I haven’t accepted the invitation yet.
The Good
Speed. Look at the link I provided for the shakedown ride yesterday at paradise. I set a few PRs. I am not a fan of Paradise at all, owing in no small part to my low rent technical riding abilities. I wasn’t even trying yesterday. Nose breathing the whole time. Totally a shake down time. The bike just went fast.
Weight. When removing the front wheel to put the bike in my car, I can lift the bike by the seat post with one hand and put it in my car. Out of the box weight with pedals was 24’10 at the shop. At some point I will go tubeless, and swap the seat post, bars and stem for carbon.
Rolling speed. The bike wants to roll. This is no doubt related to weight, geometry and 29". Letting go of the front brake on downhills caused a noticeable and unexpected forward surge. Much more so than on my Stumpjumper.
Geometry. It is going to take a ton of getting used to - it’s very different than my Stumpjumper. However, it’s clear to me that this is a bike made for road cyclists who want to ride mountain bikes. I felt very at home on this bike.
Suspension. Brain tech in the front and back is nice to have. The rear seems way more compliant and performant than my Stumpjumper. No weird knocking when the first hit happens. I still have some dialing in to do, but once I got to a point of comfort, I stopped thinking about it on the trails.
Climbing. Yeah, so I popped my cork going up Grand Ridge today because the bike felt like I could just go faster. On the upper steeps, I ran out of teeth, but anything less than 12%ish, and I was riding with a lot less labor up hill. Coupled with the suspension, there was no suspension bob that I noticed. None.
Chain slap. I almost forgot this one. The Shimano Shadow rear derailer eliminated all chain slap. I kept thinking that something was sounding "wrong" with the bike on the downhill. It took me almost the entire ride to sort out that it was the lack of chain slap that I was missing.
The way I have framed this in my mind is as such: it feels like I have been a good club racer. Regular podium guy, regarded as reasonably fast, but on club level budget and club level equipment. Then, yesterday, I got a call from an F1 team and they said "hey, we hear you are pretty fast. Why not come over to your home track and take a test spin in our F1? No pressure." So I show up, get in the car, and it’s clear that without working very hard, I am going way way faster than I ever have. The bad part is that the equipment is causing me to overshoot corners (too much entry speed), miss my turn in markers, work the engine too hard on the uphills, and overall feel like a baby driving a car. A clumsy baby at that. It makes me feel stupid and sloppy, but I am 15% faster than I have ever been at my home track. I know that this is almost entirely because of the new equipment, and I have a lot of work to do before I am driving with more skill than the equipment can handle.
This bike demands and commands a nickname. I have settled on "ED 209." Bing it if you don’t get the movie reference. It’s unlikely that I will find a better one. That name perfectly matches how I feel about this bike. It’s big. It’s menacing. And it kills things with complete and utter disregard.
I was reading an article about how Google is going to change their algorithms to penalize sites which are overly optimized for SEO. It’s no surprise to arrive at an end state where rules of a system are gamed when pecuniary gains are available. The entire SEO industry has grown up around trying to figure out how to optimize sites for Google’s black box. To ensure an improved customer experience, this action was inevitable.
You see, Google is a completely algorithmically driven enterprise. They measure and measure and measure. In doing so, they have sought to index the world’s information and make it available to anyone. Many would argue that they have been incredibly successful. After reading PG’s post, I began to think that perhaps Google’s incessant measurement of click-thru rates and speeds has not only changed the web for the worse, but created a situation where they could no longer measure what was good for their customers; that the measurement of the one variable reduced their ability to know the value of the other.
As for the title of this post, I have taken one part Heisenberg and added in Schrödinger’s cat when evaluating the situation with Google. Their black box algorithms contain the cat (happy web surfers) and the radioactive isotope (monetization of search). They have never allowed anyone to peer inside their box, so their happy customers are both simultaneously alive and dead. Sadly, in order to inspect the state of their customers, they will need to measure them. In measuring them, they will need to open the box. In opening the box, they will alter their understanding of the happiness of their customers, while simultaneously reducing their understanding of their measurements tied to their ranking algorithms. It’s a vicious cycle.
I was doing some birthday shipping for my wife a few weeks back. I actually had to hold off on posting this write up because I didn’t want to tip her off to what sorts of things she might expect for her birthday.
This post isn’t about her birthday, however, but rather Amazon and their collaborative filtering mechanism which makes recommendations to you while you are shopping. Given that the search term with which I started was “gymnastics mats,” I can understand 4 of the 6 of these recommendations. I can even go out on a limb and convince myself that, yes, people who are likely to be buying gym mats need to keep deer away. Think of the liabilities to the gym studios when that first deer hurts themself. The rules just aren’t set up for four legged participants. Sadly, Bambi and her friends are really into gymnastics, and they keep hanging around.
It was the book recommendation that really piqued my attention. The book itself is a parable style yarn about leadership and psychology. Think “Chicken Soup for the Bad Manager.” The scary thing is that I have read this book. My manager suggested it as one of those great books I needed to read.
So I am left wondering what type of people are buying gymnastics mats from Amazon. Are they type A business execs who are fashioning home gyms for their gymnastics bound children? Are they incredibly driven, though perhaps misguided, leaders who are building gymnasiums? Or is this simply a case of Amazon having a bit of fun with me, knowing that I read that book, and that I have deer eating the grass in my yard?
So I’m sick. Sick and travel are never fun. Recycled air on the plane is usually the culprit. Sick sucks. In particular, it sucks when you are out of your element. Travelling in the US usually affords you the ability to walk into any familiar looking pharmacy and choose the appropriate cold medicine from the dizzying array of choices.
International travel comes with its challenges, but most of my travel for the last few years has been to familiar western culture countries. When you get sick, you can at least understand some of what you are seeing in the store. Identifying the cold medicine in Barcelona, even with Catalan, was doable. My Spanish is passable enough that I can get by in most western European countries. Well, Finland was challenging, but they speak very good English.
China is an all together different problem. First, the character set is foreign to me. Second, Beijing is huge. HUGE. I am having trouble orienting myself because no matter what direction I look, there are buildings. Lots of buildings. This is the first city I have ever been in where I didn’t immediately know where I could walk from my hotel to get basic snacks/soda. I’m staying in a relatively nice hotel too, but there is no shop in the hotel. Oh, and English is not a first class language here, so good luck when you have to deal with the local shop owner. Hit or miss.
Does anyone know what this screen cap is from? If not, you can watch this video clip here. This one movie scene sums up my experience with the iPad. Awkwardness.
I want to love the iPad. I do. I love the idea of the simplicity of it. I smile when I think about the potential for the iPad and my young kids. Educational software takes on a whole new meaning when you can combine the compactness of the device with the touch screen. The video playback, and the battery life, are wonderful. Web browsing is snappy. There’s just that one x-factor which is holding this back for me.
My main problem with the iPad is that I cannot get comfortable with it. I found it very odd how many times Steve talked about getting comfortable with the iPad in a chair during his keynote when he introduced the device. It now makes me think he doth protested too much. We got a few of these on campus – two are sitting in an office across the hall from me. I haven’t figured out how I am going to sit in a chair with this thing. If I am laying on a couch with my beloved Kindle, I can hold it up above my face with little effort. The iPad is just a touch too heavy for that. The curved back makes for weirdness when you want to lay it on a table and type. There aren’t four corners touching the table, so it spins around.
Since I don’t own one, I await my friends to tell me their long term experiences with the device. My gut is telling me that more and more reports are going to be coming out about how people aren’t sure how to hold/handle the iPad and be comfortable at the same time.
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