July 2002 Archives

I was trying to finish Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister for tonight's book group and I went to bad way past my bedtime the last couple of days. I am paying for it now by being tired and sleepy - I hope I can sneak in a nap at some point. And I didn't even like the book all that much - it'll be interesting to hear what the rest of the group thought.

Last night Meredith O and Elizabeth were helping Jennifer address invitations. Since my hand writing is illegible I didn't get to help. Instead, I was working on the map to the various wedding related venues. Jennifer gave me a CAD map of Austin and I was modifying it in Illustrator - that app is so cool, yet, for someone who doesn't use all that often, a bit too complex. Luckily Jennifer helped me out whenever I got stuck and couldn't find a command or tool. I'm mostly done with the overview map and now will have to work on a couple of detailed maps for downtown and St. Ed's.

I was also responsible for dinner and did some grilling (note to self, next time stick with chicken if I'm not sure what people like). I also experimented with a desert which turned out quite well. I sliced up a couple of fresh peaches, sauteed them with brown sugar and butter, added a little rum and served the whole thing over vanilla ice cream.

My alarm clock went off at 4:45 and I managed to get out of bed before 5 (and before Jennifer, who had been harping about getting up early the night before). I napped on the way to Lake Georgetown and we arrived way before sunrise, at the same time as Elizabeth and Felicia. We hooked up with Meredith, Michael and eventually Doug at the transition zone. We got marked (my team was 557) and went down to the lake where I picked up my timing chip. You wear it velcroed around your ankle and your time is automatically taken whenever you cross a timing mat (between the legs of the race, the transition zone and the final line).

The start of the race was delayed almost an hour while we waited for the cops to arrive at the intersections they were supposed to guard. The participants started in eight waves of about a hundred each. The girls were in wave four and I was in the last wave (along with other relay, "Clydesdale" and "Athena" competitors).

The swim itself was not too eventful. My wave quickly spread out, with me lagging in the back. The day was windy but the water was not too choppy. My swim mask fogged up fairly quickly, though, so I had a hard time seeing the buyoes - especially since some swimmers had bright orange swim caps that looked like the official buyoes. I kept a pretty brisk pace and tried alternating between crawl and breast every tventy strokes or so, which worked most of the time.

When I arrived back at the shore, the volunteers helped me out of the water and I valliantly ran up the incline - looking back on the water and seeing with satisfaction that I was not the last swimmer - through the transition zone and on to the bike where Doug and Michael were waiting. Doug yelled at me to give him the chip so I lifted up my leg and told him to take it, as we had planned. Only then did I notice that the chip was no longer on my ankle! It must have gotten loose during the swim. So Doug took off without the chip as I went to talk to some race volunteer about what to do. Apparently they fished some chip (or chips) out of the lake, so I hope they won't charge me for it. In any case, we do not have official times.

After Doug took off, I waited with Michael at the bike/run transition and watch the competitors arrive. Eventually Jennifer showed up, followed half a minute later by Meredith and then a couple of minutes later by Elizabeth. Doug arrived still some time after that and I watched him transition to Michael who took of running. At that point as I was leaving to hike to the finish line and just saw Felicia arriving on her bike.

I waited at the finish with Doug and took picture of Jennifer, Meredith, Michael, Elizabeth and Felicia crossing the finish line in that order. They all did a great job. Some of us then treated ourselves to a sports massage - very recomendable!

Team Flab did not achieve its stated goal, which was (according to Doug) to "beat the chicks" since both Meredith and Jennifer beat our time. I timed myself at about 27 and half minutes for the 800m swim (about 6 minutes slower than Jennifer, but quite good for me). Doug was slower than the girls, too, and only Michael had the faster time. Unfortunatelly his 4 seconds over Jennifer and our blazingly fast transitions were not enough to clinch it for us.

The highlight of my day came during the picknick after the race. They were handing out door prizes - mostly T-shirts and hats and such. I scored a coup by winning a pair of Tayo sunglasses which usually run at over $100! Jennifer got a Jamba Juice mug which wasn't quite as thrilling. I also scored a neat biking shirt which I found wrapped in my transition bag, courtesy of my lovely fiancée.

To sum it up: I'm glad I participated in the Dilloman and I'm also glad I only had to do one portion of it. I'm not sure if I'll ever do a full triathlon, but it probably won't happen in the foreseeable future. Until then, I'm an official monoathlete.

I had lunch with Doug and Michael and we then went over to Austin Tri-Cylist to pickup our packets for the Dilloman (which is apparently full). There were quite a few trim people picking up their race packets. Everyone scored a bag with a T-shirt, transition towel, some samples and product ads. Since I'm swimming, I also got a swim cap. It's boring white - I was hoping something that stood out more so that the rescue swimmers can see me better.

Speaking of swimming, we went to Hippie Hollow after work yesterday for a final swim, and to get Felicia a chance to swim in open water. The lake was quite choppy which I do not enjoy at all.

Well, it's time to head home, carb-load and go to bed early.

I went by Altex over lunch and exchanged my wrong cable for the correct printer cable. Tonight, I connected my old printer to the router. I tried to connect to it from Jfer's laptop using XP's tools and after failing, I RTFMed the router manual and used the printer server setup utility that came with the router. This installed/configured the printer server without a hitch and correctly detected my printer.

The test page printed beautifully, so Jfer can now use my Apple printer from her XP laptop - connected or wirelessly. I love it when technology works!

Also, I can now print to my printer from my Mac without using AppleTalk since my Mac can print to LPR printers. How sweet...

In order to make Jennifer more mobile, I ordered the Netgear router/firewall/print server/wireless access point FM114P from Amazon.com to replace my trusty old RT314 router. I also got her the MA401 802.11b PC card for her laptop.

That thing is a beaut (to quote the Crocodile Hunter). It's half the size of the old router while costing about the same (although that was over a year ago) and has much more functionality. Setup was a breeze and installing the wireless card on Jfer's laptop running XP was very easy, too. I enabled 128 bit encryption on the WAP but the corresponding configuration for the laptop was not quite as intuitive. Still, I got her up and running in less than 10 minutes. And soon Jfer was surfing from the living room - très cool!

The router also serves as a print server and I'm planning to hook up my 10 year old Apple LaserWriter Select 360 to it - that should allow Jfer to directly print from her laptop. I didn't get to do it last night since I bought the wrong frigging cable! I misinterpreted the router specs and assumed it had a different port for which, after searching all over the place, I found the (wrong) cable at Altex (which is THE store for obscure cables). So I'll need to return it and get the right cable today. Sigh. The lesson learned is that if you can't find a cable at Fry's, you're probably looking for the wrong cable.

I have discovered that when someone is registered at Bed Bath And Beyond, you can buy them stuff that was not on their registry, at check out say that it's for the couple and then it will appear on the registry. Apparently we're getting some towels that way and John and Shannan a tea kettle.

I am very, very tempted to order/register this or maybe that for John and Shannan and then return it to BBB without un-registering it. Of course, they could retaliate...

I did my first open water swim this year at Hippie Hollow yesterday after work. The water was not too choppy, but it definitely is a difference from the pool. I managed to get a couple of mouth fulls of water when my face got hit while trying to breath - but no big problem.

Both Jennifer and Meredith swim faster than me, but Jfer stuck to my side most of the time while Meredith surged ahead - colliding head on with another swimmer at one point. I don't know the total distance we swam - Jennifer and Meredith think it was over 800m. I'll need to pace myself better on Saturday to not run out of breath as quickly. Beside that, it shouldn't be too bad.

I haven't been to Hippie Hollow in quite some time and I had never seen the lake this high - the water is still a little murky after all the flooding. The high lake volume completely changes the shore line. Since we got there close to 7pm, there weren't many people out there - I think there were actually more open water swimmers than nudists.

After several weekends' effort, my blog genealogy web site is up and running. It's called BlogTree.com - please feel free to register your blogs and to spread the word. Also, let me know if you run into any problems or if it's too confusing. Right now it only has a couple of blogs, including nonplussed.

After our last-but-one meeting with Fr. Cletus yesterday, Jennifer and I went swimming. Actually, it was me who got us to go, since Jennifer was obviously hoping for me to be the excuse to skip the swim and go directly home to make dinner.

Anyway, I did 20 laps (that's 1000m), including drills, and felt pretty good. After my drills I was swimming pretty much continously, alternating 50m crawl with 50m breast stroke. At this point, I really can't keep up crawl for much more than that - my heart rate is around 170 after the crawl and goes down to the 150s after breast. During the race, I plan to do 40 strokes of one followed by 40 of the other. This is a good combination for me, since the breast stroke allows me to nicely recover my breath after the crawl.

My aim is to do the 800 meters in 30 minutes, about 50% longer than what Jennifer's going to take.

MacWorld Expo is going on in New York and as usual, Apple has announced some sweet products. They release new iPod models, with up to 20GB space and new features (including Windows support). The also release a lovely 17" widescreen iMac. This just may be my next computer. The screen on the other iMacs have always been too small for me - but the 17" with its 1440x900 pixels should keep me happy, although it's not as big as my monitor. Still, my Blue&White 350 is really showing its age - I don't even attempt to run MacOS X on it.

We would like to get a digital movie camera before our wedding and would edit movies using iMovie so there kinda is a legitimate need for an upgrade (I'm not just saying that, either, no I'm not!)

Speaking of which, how does one pick a digital video camera, anyway? What do we look for?

A little over a month ago, Jennifer's cousin Courtney was in town and we talked about books and that she has to read George Orwell's 1984 as part of her summer reading (they didn't give us homework over the summer when I was in school). I mentioned that I really enjoyed the book when I read it (in 1984, no less) and encouraged her to look for parallels between what is happening in the news and the world depicted in the story.

What I was thinking of back then, was the curtailment of civil liberties the justice department was pushing for. Including the detention of "suspects" without access to due process, etc. I also was thinking of how in the 1984 world, the government was justifying its actions based on some nebulous war.

Well, the parallels keep coming. I wrote earlier about Jose Padilla is being treated for his "thought crime" (or "crimethink", in 1984's Newspeak). And now, the Justice department is proposing the TIPS program, basically encouraging citizens to spy and report on their neighbors. How very Orwellian indeed.

When I was growing up in Czechoslovakia, I remember how the fear of someone overhearing a conversation and reporting it permeated the entire culture. People were afraid to speak up in ways reflecting poorly on the government. When I heard a political joke at home (they were very popular) I was often reminded not to repeat it outside. Everyone was always checking themselves - watch out for the neighbor downstairs, you know he's in the party; family's probably OK, but can you really trust that friend or the other? This whole culture really stifled civic involvement and reforms. The mistrust of government and (secret) police remained long after the reforms in the early 90s and for most members of the older generation will probably never go away. The West in general and the US in particular were viewed as a promised land in large part due to the fact that you could express yourself freely and nobody was watching and reporting your activities. I hope this will not change, for it really saddens me to see what is starting to happen here.

I've spent a nicely relaxing weekend - with Jennifer being gone to Wichita Falls for her triathlon. I spent most of it working on my blog genealogy project - I'll add a link as soon as it becomes solid.

I think Homer was missing Jennifer and I took him to the park on Saturday, to wear him out. As I was hiking along the river through a box canyon, I kept eyeing the clouds - pregnant with rain - and thinking about the recent flood victims. Luckily the water did not break (pun intended) until I got almost home.

The creek was flowing at a nice level and the water was clear again. I saw lots of little fish and hundreds of tadpoles. I don't remember the last time I actually saw a tadpole - it might have been in middle school in Switzerland. We'd catch them in ponds and then keep them in a terrarium until they metamorphosed - by growing legs and lungs and dropping their tail and gills - into little frogs. This reminded me of the German term for tadpole, Kaulquappe, which I always thought the weirdest word ever.

A couple of weeks ago we saw a big turtle in the murky creek water in the park. We thought it was a big snapper, but we had not seen it since, even though we've been on a lookout for it. I wondered what it did during the flooding, when the creek was several feet deeper and the current much stronger. Maybe it got swept downstream?

Well this morning I passed the same spot and this time the water was crystal clear. The turtle was just under the surface, with its big head under the bank. To me it looked at least two feet long and almost as wide and you could see its thick ridged tail undulating as it was rooting under the shore. There is something primeval and, in my eyes, evil about snapping turtles. They move slowly on land eyeing you with their cold tiny eyes on each side of that terrible beak, and you know that if they'd chomp down on you, you'd have a really hard time to get them to let go. Luckily Homer was oblivious of the monster and probably will stay away (barking loudly) if he ever notices it on land. However, since he enjoys wading and swimming in the very same creek I am a little concerned.

I discovered this morning that my trusty old digital camera is going downhill. The down position of the 4-way rocker switch, which used for zooming-out and for menu navigation, works no more. This means I can zoom in but not out - to get it back to the zoomed out position I have to turn off the camere and turn it on again. It also means I can't change any of the camera's settings. I don't want to be pointing fingers, but someone dropped the camera on the floor twice this weekend.

I guess I'll call Canon and see if they can repair it. If they can't, it'll be camera shopping time again.

I have a hard time comprehending the story about the tribal council meting out tribal "justice" by having an innocent girl gang raped because her 11 year old brother walked unchaperoned with a girl from another tribe. Supposedly the rapists are now being pursued by Pakistani police.

Now I understand that the same actions may be perceived very differently in other parts of the world (be it an 11 year old kid walking with another unsupervised) and that other cultures have different forms of punishment. I can empathize with that, even if I often disagree. But this incident is so wrong at so many levels that it's unconceivable to me how anyone, let alone the "several hundred village residents" who witnessed the "trial" and none of whom took any action to prevent the rape, could not be outraged by it.

Yet, our own society is not that far removed from such "tribal law". Be it a mob lynching in the Old West or the many lynching in the segregated South during the 19th and 20th century.

Still, as wrong as these things were (and there is no excuse for them), at least they were usually punishing the alleged perpetrator and not an innocent family member (although, that probably happened, as well).

I hope for and expect a strong official condemnation from our government. No matter that this happened in an "allied" country.

I have had my current cell phone for probably two years and there is this one thing that has always bugged me. Even though I check and delete my voicemail messages, the stupid little envelope that's supposed to indicate new messages would never go away.
So yesterday as we're driving around, Jennifer (who gets and initiates way more calls than I do) was playing with my phone and discovered that I had a bunch of unread numeric pages on the phone, too! The first one was from September 11 (that date still sounds ominous) but it was just a local call.
So after clearing all the pages, the envelope is gone! Yay! Maybe I will now notice new voicemails, since the phone does not flash like it's supposed to :-(

We didn't make it to the city's 4th of July celebration at Zilker, but we did have a nice dinner with John and Shannan and her family. I need to remember to try to grill some shrimp - it was simply delicious.

We did buy some fireworks during the day, though. 150 sparklers for our wedding and a few bottle rockets for my very own enjoyment.

So after we got back from dinner and took Homer for his obligatory walk, I fired off 6 little rockets in the park. I finally got to fulfill my childhood dream of buying fireworks and shooting them off, albeit illicitly. I usually only think about getting fireworks when it's too late (i.e. after dark on the 4th or New Years Eve) and normally would not even think about shooting them off here in Austin on the 4th (it usually being a tinder box in July). However, considering that everything is still soaked from the rains, I figured the chances of a fire were about zero. And even if something did catch, the firemen would enjoy getting a break from rescuing flood victims.

Meanwhile, as I was indulging my pyromania, Homer was watching with boredom and Jennifer with apprehension that we'd get caught and they'd deport me before we had the chance to say "I do".

Speaking of the 4th, Meredith has an interesting variation on the "I'm Proud to Be American" song. I say she's an agitator!

I've been thinking about the web logging phenomenon and how the practice spreads. I started two years ago after following Cecily's blog for a month or so. A year or so later, I got Jennifer hooked when I set up a site for her. Later that year, Meredith joined us when we gave her a web site for her birthday. Since then, those sites spawned more blogs themselves, including their mom's journal that Meredith set up and a couple of Meredith's friends blogs.

I think most of the blogs on the web are related in a similar way. You start reading someone's journal and it inspires you to begin your own. I sort of view Cecily's journal as my ancestor blog and Jfer's and Meredith's blogs as my journal's "children" blogs. Meredith's friends' blogs would be my blog's "grand children", etc. In my mind there is an entire family tree of blogs. For example, Jennifer's blog can be viewed as being an aunt to her mom's blog.

This gives me an idea for a project (like I don't have enough unfinished ideas). It would be cool to have a site where you can register your blog (with its birth date) and the blog(s) that inspired it (i.e. its parent blog(s)). If lots of people did that, you could then search for family ties between unrelated blogs. A kind of six degrees of separation thing.

Does this sound interesting? Should I spend some time and set up a site like that? Would you register your blog if it were available?