Some random, mostly irrelevant things

Right now I'm eating a can of Del Monte French Style Fresh Cut green beans. I don't have enough vegetables in my diet most of the time. Steaming them is the best way to make them I think. I put them in a cereal bowl and eat them with a fork.

Someone pulled out in front of me on the way home from work today. I used my horn. I somehow managed to make an exceptionally cool sounding stuttering beep with it. This minivan already had some sizeable dents in the side so the dude who drives it has evidently already been in an accident with it. There was no accident today but if there had been one, I'm in good hands with Allstate. President Palmer would forgive me because Allstate has accident forgiveness.

I've switched now to eating Planters Peanuts. I don't think peanuts are a vegetable but I'm not positive. I'm not sure what they are except that they are good. I get the kind that come in a glass jar and don't have the shells on them anymore. I don't like to have to work through a shell first to get at my peanuts.

For some strange reason I've encountered the number 666 several times recently. At work I quoted a customer a part we sell and we had exactly 666 in stock. I happened to glance down at my odometer as I left work one day and I had 36,666 miles on my truck. There's been 1 or 2 other times something with that number came up besides these 2 instances but I can't remember exactly what they were. I think one of them was a file size on my computer or something or maybe something on my receipt from the grocery store. I'm not particularly freaked out by this or anything but it does seem unusual.

I own a black cat and he crosses my path every day. I'm not superstitious about that. He's mostly black anyway. My cat likes to be combed. I can't figure out what kind of music he likes. I have about 50 samples of bird sounds on my computer and that's usually something he finds very interesting.

I'm eating carrots now. They are the baby-cut kind. These are much more convenient than buying regular long carrots and stripping the outsides off of them before I can eat them. Carrots like these are probably 90% of my vegetable intake. I think I'm going to eat some cantaloupe next.

It's getting dark outside now much earlier than I'm happy with. Tonight I came home and crammed down a turkey sandwich as soon as I walked in the door just so I could get out early enough on my bike before it got dark. As it was I just barely got an hour of riding in. It was pretty dark near the end too. Now I'm eating all this food because my dinner was only that sandwich. I didn't want to eat very big before I went out riding. I managed to get 15.5 miles into 57 minutes.

I'm going to be getting a new computer at work soon. It's about time. My computer I have now is from 2000 I think. At least I upgraded myself with Windows XP some time ago which is more than anyone else at work has. Sadly most of the clients on our network are running on Window 98. I don't think I would go to work if I only had Windows 98 there. It works sufficiently for the needs of most of our users but not for me. One the bright side I don't have to run about the office executing updates on those computers anymore. I'm going to get a flat panel monitor and so I can rearrange my desk and where I put my phone. This might be almost as great as getting a raise.

My Rubic's cube I still leave unfinished but I am getting other things done. I still have more things to do though that I never seem to get to. I do have some more miles on my bike and I have finally hit a golf ball this year. My golf clubs sat still in my garage until late in August. Earlier in the spring I never would have imagined that happening the way it did. One thing I haven't yet gotten at yet is filling up my aquarium which I bought a long while ago now along with some of the filtration equipment and sea salt etc. I think where I left off was contemplating the rock and gravel colors and picking out some fish that would get along with each other. I took that photo below so long ago now it still shows my old dining room table and chairs in it and my 7 foot ficus I bought at Stein's isn't in the corner there yet.

I was wrong

It doesn't happen very often but this time I was wrong about my cyclocomputer. It turns out that it will display more than 999.9 miles before it goes back to zero. I have a strong suspicion the battery in it will die before I reach 9999.9 miles. It's more likely I'll be using a different computer altogether on a different bike. I might have to get this new bike before fall this year or otherwise wait until closer to next spring. I'm not sure I could handle it to buy a new bike in the winter but then not be able to ride it until all the way to spring. It would be like getting golf clubs for Christmas. I can see myself walking past my shiny new bike each day as it sits in my garage. All the while I'm freezing my butt off wishing for spring to come so I can actually ride it around. I've seen people out riding around in some real cold weather but I personally like it to be at least 60 degrees.

2006 miles

This is my cyclocomputer. The odometer is about to go back to zero so I took a photo of it before that happens.


I made a chart with my cumulative mileage for last year and this year. This year looks pretty pathetic compared with last year. I'm sure I'll never match last years total mileage. I'm not even going to try. The bottom of the chart is the number of days starting with 1 on June 1. It ends with 138 which was October 16th and the last day I rode my bike in 2005. Today is the 80th day since the first of June so obviously the chart ends there for 2006. Next year I'm definitely planning to beat 2005. I'm going to shoot for 850-900 miles. I think I'm going to get a new bike before that too so I'm not sure it will be a completely fair comparison. I'm going to get something a bit lighter.

Vortex

I mentioned in an earlier post that I've started keeping a backup of everything on my computer on another hard drive which I keep at work. That way if my house burns down or blows away in a tornado I haven't lost all of my photos and music and all that. It occurred to me that there is yet another reason I should be doing this. I saw a vortex suck in and entire house in a movie one time. I assume then it must be possible but I'm pretty sure this won't happen. I think my condo is built over old farmland and not an old Indian burial ground like in the movie.

Caterpillars....lots of them.

Bigger, more and better photos here.

This reminds me of a movie that was on TV when I was a kid. Except in the movie I'm remembering it was tarantulas and not caterpillars like this.

I just looked it up on the IMDB and I think it must be "Kingdom of the Spiders" I'm thinking of. I don't remember William Shatner being in it but he was. I wouldn't have known who he was when I was 5 but I'm sure that would have been before TJ Hooker.

I copied a DVD

I burned a DVD tonight that was a copy of one I own. I did it just to try it out. The rewritable discs I have aren't the Dual Layer kind. I didn't want to waste a regular non-rewritable DL disc if I did something wrong during the rip and burn processes so I had to search my shelf for a DVD that wasn't Dual Layer. Most of them are as it turns out. Copying a DVD is pretty simple. I can see myself doing it. I probably shouldn't but I'm pretty sure I will at some point. I copied this movie I bought for $3 or something at Best Buy one time. It barely rates a "B" horror movie but it was cheap enough and interesting looking enough for me to buy it. It's called "Pieces" and the tagline on the box says, "It's exactly what you think it is!" The cover has a picture of a chainsaw and a woman with stitches circling various points on her body…neck, arms, wrists, legs, and knees. She looks sort of "pieced" together. At only $3 doesn't that sound intriguing? Anyway it's only a single layer DVD so as an experiment I ripped it and then burned a copy of it. This copy works just like the original. Thankfully I only used a rewritable disc so I can use it again later on for something else more worthwhile.