chris (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} _fool) wrote,@ 2008-03-08 13:17:00 |
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more life and times
boxes decrease at a very slow pace. i was much more into unpacking at the last place, before i developed a busy social life. also, i may have hit my limit for intense unpacking sessions per year back there, and it's only been 4 months.
despite a lingering cold i followed through on plans to take a 100k bike ride with the oregon randonneurs this morning and the weather *totally* cooperated. you may recall my last ride report when i did a same-length course with them back in november, and i am happy to report that today's pace was much closer to race pace, and it was gorgeous to boot. i probably would have managed to keep up with the lead group if not for my politeness in going back to pick up a fellow's jacket when he didn't see it fall out and i was just dropping back from a long pull at the front of the paceline. i spent the next 2 miles catching the group (and of course, i was beat, or i wouldn't have been dropping back from pulling), so that wasn't a big win in the sustainable energy expenditure department. still, i caught them at the control and managed to get signed, stuff a donut in my face and grab a cookie before they started setting out, so i hopped on my bike and was immediately cut off by someone just arriving and had to pull up short to avoid a crash (low speed, but still not something i'm into). in the process of so doing i lit up a huge cramp in my calf that kept me from starting for a minute or so. i chased the peloton all alone and kept them in sight, maybe 1/3mi ahead, for almost 15 miles before i was worn out and had to let them go. i guess there's not a lot of better reasons to end up doing worse in a race than one might because one is too nice. and hey, it's not a race, anyway...the beauty of randonneuring is that it's a tour, and is more about self-sufficiency and finishing than finishing fast. and since it failed to rain on us, i will still vote this an unequivocal success. it's a rare morning when i can arrive home after a 40-minute train ride and a 70-mile bike ride before noon. and it's a rare afternoon that won't see me napping after that =)
oh, if you use nike sportswear of any stripe and want me to pick some up for you, half price, the deadline for orders is thursday. i'll be going to the employee store on friday or monday and taking advantage of cheap prices. i'm not really in need of much from them that i use already, but i figure i might get a pair of those "nike free" running shoes to see how they feel, and i need some soccer cleats for playing ultimate frisbee this spring/summer. am happy to pick up some air jordans or livestrong stuff for you if you're wanting some. please make sure i have your phone number if you place an order so i can call about substitutions in case they don't have exactly what you want.
per the curiosity expessed re: my last post about the new job, here's something more to chew on. i got the job via the apparently standard-in-these-parts practice of going through a recruiter (post resume on monster and sit back and await the deluge of calls and emails, maybe a third of which are actually relevant due to location or usually job type..gee, that's not on my resume for a reason. i don't know it or i don't want to work with it!) who was trying to fill a pretty cushy permanent position. (ah, my days of contracting are hopefully over never to return! the salary was high but not getting paid for sick/holidays and carrying my own expensive-but-nearly-useless insurance are things i won't miss). the job is with a small local marketing agency with offices downtown and a totally unimpressive web presence, but the important things are as follows:
1) working with a couple of neat guys. we are the IT team. we can do whatever we want without a change control board or 6 months of planning meetings. we also get to clean up our own messes, which may not sound like a thing you'd miss, but i sure did.
2) working with open source software again. i had not realized how much i missed this until i found myself smiling about being a *linux* sysadmin running software i can actually look inside, patch, and modify. also, drupal, wordpress, python, etc. i'll be learning a lot here. maybe i'll finally give up perl, 10 years in. i hear python is the shit. i like what i've seen so far.
3) did i mention it's downtown? at least an hour less of commuting per day? ok! i'll have to make time to ride my bike, since i won't have that built-in distance to cover. but in practice, i've been choosing sleep over riding in the morning and my evenings are a crush of stuff that often leaves me riding the train home too. and days are getting longer, so i'll have more light in the evenings/mornings to ride in for the next 6 months anyway. yay! don't worry, i'm still riding all over town, but i don't go out to a bar 10 miles away from my house every night. just every other night.
4) oh, of course i'll actually get to sit near my team. so yay for that. i'm normally not bothered by being a loner, but at nike it was kinda killing me slowly to have no interaction with my crew. that and i was constantly left out of decisions that i had some useful input on, or worse, affected me, because they happened at someone's desk a hundred yards away from me.
what i'm "settling" for is the industry--i'm pretty anti-marketing. and some of the stuff they do is downright silly (infomercials). but the company seems pretty cool, and i'm assured that the people are great to work with. neat offices on the park, a block from the powell's bookstores. i'll get to go to breakfast on the bridges and bikey lunch easily since those are both "within range" of downtown, and i can make it to critical mass without leaving work early. and the compensation package, while lower in salary than nike was, is higher in net value once you take into account the killer insurance, 401k matching, and stuff. not even thinking about it yet but they do annual bonuses too, which i've never actually experienced. so i've got that going for me.
i almost bought a singlespeed/fixie on friday. i found one that looked decent, for cheaps, and i was one click away from getting a motobecane messenger in orange, until i read a little about their (lack of) quality control since being acquired by an oriental manufacturing conglomerate. so i gave it a miss and put the money in the bike account--i still want a cyclocross bike and putting money into that makes a lot more sense since it'll become my about-town and long-distance bike, and i'll keep the trek for actual zoom-zoom rides where i don't need to carry any cargo beyond a spare tube. so instead i wrote to peter white about finally getting a generator hub wheel made. i'll be using that wheel on my cyclocross bike, see? i want people to flash their brights at me on my bicycle because i'm ultrabright at night, and i'm tired of recharging batteries every couple of days for my decent-but-not-great headlight.algol_galaxia has this setup and so do many of the randonneurs, and it'll be a necessity to have really good lighting if i get in shape to do any of the longer races (300k+) which i am hoping to try some of this summer.
next weekend i run my first road race since the marathon last year. the one that left me crippled enough to get knee surgery. i'm taking it easy and it's only 8k (with a beer and bacon rest stop!), but we'll see if i enjoy it enough to start getting in shape for tri season. i haven't done a triathlon since 2006 and i think i miss them. not sure, though =) there's a pool i can use a block from my house (and there's nothing here like barton springs...more like town lake but less clean) so i could definitely train like a madman if i feel the urge. we shall see.
ok. i've about warmed up from the ride this morning (mmm, journalling in bed) and will take a power nap before doing some power unpacking. go team! have a beautiful weekend, friends!
boxes decrease at a very slow pace. i was much more into unpacking at the last place, before i developed a busy social life. also, i may have hit my limit for intense unpacking sessions per year back there, and it's only been 4 months.
despite a lingering cold i followed through on plans to take a 100k bike ride with the oregon randonneurs this morning and the weather *totally* cooperated. you may recall my last ride report when i did a same-length course with them back in november, and i am happy to report that today's pace was much closer to race pace, and it was gorgeous to boot. i probably would have managed to keep up with the lead group if not for my politeness in going back to pick up a fellow's jacket when he didn't see it fall out and i was just dropping back from a long pull at the front of the paceline. i spent the next 2 miles catching the group (and of course, i was beat, or i wouldn't have been dropping back from pulling), so that wasn't a big win in the sustainable energy expenditure department. still, i caught them at the control and managed to get signed, stuff a donut in my face and grab a cookie before they started setting out, so i hopped on my bike and was immediately cut off by someone just arriving and had to pull up short to avoid a crash (low speed, but still not something i'm into). in the process of so doing i lit up a huge cramp in my calf that kept me from starting for a minute or so. i chased the peloton all alone and kept them in sight, maybe 1/3mi ahead, for almost 15 miles before i was worn out and had to let them go. i guess there's not a lot of better reasons to end up doing worse in a race than one might because one is too nice. and hey, it's not a race, anyway...the beauty of randonneuring is that it's a tour, and is more about self-sufficiency and finishing than finishing fast. and since it failed to rain on us, i will still vote this an unequivocal success. it's a rare morning when i can arrive home after a 40-minute train ride and a 70-mile bike ride before noon. and it's a rare afternoon that won't see me napping after that =)
oh, if you use nike sportswear of any stripe and want me to pick some up for you, half price, the deadline for orders is thursday. i'll be going to the employee store on friday or monday and taking advantage of cheap prices. i'm not really in need of much from them that i use already, but i figure i might get a pair of those "nike free" running shoes to see how they feel, and i need some soccer cleats for playing ultimate frisbee this spring/summer. am happy to pick up some air jordans or livestrong stuff for you if you're wanting some. please make sure i have your phone number if you place an order so i can call about substitutions in case they don't have exactly what you want.
per the curiosity expessed re: my last post about the new job, here's something more to chew on. i got the job via the apparently standard-in-these-parts practice of going through a recruiter (post resume on monster and sit back and await the deluge of calls and emails, maybe a third of which are actually relevant due to location or usually job type..gee, that's not on my resume for a reason. i don't know it or i don't want to work with it!) who was trying to fill a pretty cushy permanent position. (ah, my days of contracting are hopefully over never to return! the salary was high but not getting paid for sick/holidays and carrying my own expensive-but-nearly-useless insurance are things i won't miss). the job is with a small local marketing agency with offices downtown and a totally unimpressive web presence, but the important things are as follows:
1) working with a couple of neat guys. we are the IT team. we can do whatever we want without a change control board or 6 months of planning meetings. we also get to clean up our own messes, which may not sound like a thing you'd miss, but i sure did.
2) working with open source software again. i had not realized how much i missed this until i found myself smiling about being a *linux* sysadmin running software i can actually look inside, patch, and modify. also, drupal, wordpress, python, etc. i'll be learning a lot here. maybe i'll finally give up perl, 10 years in. i hear python is the shit. i like what i've seen so far.
3) did i mention it's downtown? at least an hour less of commuting per day? ok! i'll have to make time to ride my bike, since i won't have that built-in distance to cover. but in practice, i've been choosing sleep over riding in the morning and my evenings are a crush of stuff that often leaves me riding the train home too. and days are getting longer, so i'll have more light in the evenings/mornings to ride in for the next 6 months anyway. yay! don't worry, i'm still riding all over town, but i don't go out to a bar 10 miles away from my house every night. just every other night.
4) oh, of course i'll actually get to sit near my team. so yay for that. i'm normally not bothered by being a loner, but at nike it was kinda killing me slowly to have no interaction with my crew. that and i was constantly left out of decisions that i had some useful input on, or worse, affected me, because they happened at someone's desk a hundred yards away from me.
what i'm "settling" for is the industry--i'm pretty anti-marketing. and some of the stuff they do is downright silly (infomercials). but the company seems pretty cool, and i'm assured that the people are great to work with. neat offices on the park, a block from the powell's bookstores. i'll get to go to breakfast on the bridges and bikey lunch easily since those are both "within range" of downtown, and i can make it to critical mass without leaving work early. and the compensation package, while lower in salary than nike was, is higher in net value once you take into account the killer insurance, 401k matching, and stuff. not even thinking about it yet but they do annual bonuses too, which i've never actually experienced. so i've got that going for me.
i almost bought a singlespeed/fixie on friday. i found one that looked decent, for cheaps, and i was one click away from getting a motobecane messenger in orange, until i read a little about their (lack of) quality control since being acquired by an oriental manufacturing conglomerate. so i gave it a miss and put the money in the bike account--i still want a cyclocross bike and putting money into that makes a lot more sense since it'll become my about-town and long-distance bike, and i'll keep the trek for actual zoom-zoom rides where i don't need to carry any cargo beyond a spare tube. so instead i wrote to peter white about finally getting a generator hub wheel made. i'll be using that wheel on my cyclocross bike, see? i want people to flash their brights at me on my bicycle because i'm ultrabright at night, and i'm tired of recharging batteries every couple of days for my decent-but-not-great headlight.
algol_galaxia has this setup and so do many of the randonneurs, and it'll be a necessity to have really good lighting if i get in shape to do any of the longer races (300k+) which i am hoping to try some of this summer.next weekend i run my first road race since the marathon last year. the one that left me crippled enough to get knee surgery. i'm taking it easy and it's only 8k (with a beer and bacon rest stop!), but we'll see if i enjoy it enough to start getting in shape for tri season. i haven't done a triathlon since 2006 and i think i miss them. not sure, though =) there's a pool i can use a block from my house (and there's nothing here like barton springs...more like town lake but less clean) so i could definitely train like a madman if i feel the urge. we shall see.
ok. i've about warmed up from the ride this morning (mmm, journalling in bed) and will take a power nap before doing some power unpacking. go team! have a beautiful weekend, friends!
