Other than watching cable news on TV, usually Fox or Glenn Beck, my Netflix subscription is the only reason for the TV to be on. Well, that and Modern Marvels, reruns of Future Weapons, or maybe Man vs Wild. I've been getting about 2 rentals a week on my one rental at a time plan. I get one Wednesday then watch it and mail it Thursday to get another back by Saturday, then mail that Monday to start the whole routine over on Wednesday. I usually get a throwaway on Wednesday. Something that I don't have great expectations for, or lately a series disk from a TV show. Anyhow picking up from my last update. Newest at the top again...
Ladron Que Roba a Ladron
Ocean's Thirteen
Dream On Season 1&2 (Discs 3, 4 & 5)
3:10 to Yuma
Dream On Season 1 &2 (Disc 2)
The Transporter 2
Dream On Season 1 &2 (Disc 1)
The White Stripes: Under Blackpool Lights
Guess Who
Casino Royale
Batman Begins
11:14
La Haine
The Breed
The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford
Batman Returns
Some of these movies I see on TV flipping channels around during commercials. They have them on FX or something and I get interested that way. I have a pet peeve about watching movies when they're all cut up on TV and with commercials wasting my time in-between so instead I just rent them. Two of these above have Bernie Mac in them. He just died not that long after I saw Guess Who. That was kind of a throw away that I got interested in, in the aforementioned manner.
A while back now after I finished reading The Road, I read Lone Survivor. I don't usually finish books in a couple days or a week. Usually I read a bit at time over a month or so and this book was no different. When I'm done with a book, I go to Amazon and read some of the reviews to see what other people think or what they got from a book. With this book you can tell who all the liberal reviewers are. Many of them couldn't bring themselves to finish the book. The book is about Marcus Luttrell, a Navy Seal. The better part of the last half of the book he details the events of a particular mission (Operation Redwing) where he along with 3 other Seals set out over some very unfavorable terrain to capture a Taliban leader. The title of the book should give you some indication how that mission turned out. The first part of the book is Marcus describing his background and a description of his experiences in training to become a Navy Seal. That sort of thing is probably in a lot of books written by a lot of Navy Seals, but I never read anything like it so that was interesting to me anyway. This is a book I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone.
Another project of mine this summer turned my condo living space into a big mess. I started with the intention of organizing a closet in my second bedroom that I just threw everything into when I moved in (4 years ago). This closet was a bit out of hand to begin with and only got worse, so I pulled everything out and started going thru stuff. Then I got the brilliant idea that, "well this stuff goes with that stuff in the hall closet, which goes with that other stuff in that dresser drawer in my bedroom" and the project just expanded like that. It was getting better but then I moved about 6 boxes out of my parents attic that had a lot of old stuff in them. My parents are moving from my childhood home so I'm getting some boxes back which I'm going through now. I've got some new storage bins from Target and slowly it's all going back together or out to the trash, the used bookstore, or elsewhere. In the meantime my place isn't totally safe for guests and all this stuff everywhere makes it difficult to move a vacuum cleaner around. I'm too ashamed to include photos of this. I should've done this in the winter time. I probably would have gotten it all done quicker. Instead...
I've been back on my bike as usual. I started late this year around the 4th of July. I had spent May and June at Snap Fitness mostly. I'm on about the same pace as last year now going about 250 miles/month. I'm never going to be able to catch up with 2007, I just passed up '05 over Labor day weekend despite my late start. My chart below has the years mixed up a bit but if they're in order they obscure one another too much. I put all my stats into an Excel file after each ride. Excel is supposed to be for spreadsheets but I abuse it in other ways when it suits me. Besides the basic stats (time, distance, ave speed, etc.) I usually put some description of my route into one cell and then whatever thoughts I have about the ride in another. I have cells with entire paragraphs in them. I have my stats calculate in this spreadsheet and create a chart form that so I don't know what other program I'd use for this purpose.
On Labor Day I went up to the Interurban trail again. I was up there a couple weeks ago but didn't have the daylight or the water/food to continue any further North than I had already gone. I had already gone further North than I was aware that the trail existed. It seems to end on Demaster Road in Oostburg. On that first trip up, I started in Grafton. My map indicated that the trail ended at "K" somewhere north of Belgium, WI. K wasn't really marked but I did notice the pavement take on a different look at one point. When I went up there this time I started further to the north in Port Washington and where the trail ended last time turns out to actually be the end of the trail. There are points where you have to take streets, and I figured last time this was just one of those points. This trip I headed further north following the "bike route" signs but I never saw the trail again. The last sign was at the north end of Oostburg. It directs you East on KK which I then followed North. I was rather hoping for a park or something for my halfway point rest stop, but I ended up taking a break at a graveyard instead that was just off Sauk Trail Road Near V. There was a stone bench like fixture that suited quite well. It had the name Bemis carved into stone just in front of it. No dates on it, but I figured by the size of the area that the Bemis family will be buried there someday and this stone footing and bench fixture would be at the rear of that area. It was all very magnificent looking. Next time I go up I think I'll follow these directions.
On my rest days I've been spending some time brushing up on my web design skills. I'm working on re-coding the website I put together for the company I work for. I did most of the work in the early part of this decade and only used a cascading style sheet for a few things. Now that web browsers (IE7, Firefox, Opera, etc) have better support for style sheets I'm re-coding my pages using CSS layout and styling rather than a tabular layout. In the process I'm saving on a ton of HTML code and reducing the download size of my pages by as much as 66%. I'm validating all my recoded pages to HTML 4.01 strict as well. It's hard to believe what a mess they were before. This is one of those projects that for the casual observer, there won't be much change to the site at all other than a font here and a heading size there. BUT behind the scenes the page code is a lot more efficient and the pages will render more accurately and consistently across platforms and devices. I'm doing some of this work at home partly because, like I said I'm "brushing up" on my skills using style sheets. It's a learning experience for me to some extent, and I don't like to do my learing at work where I have all sorts of interruptions. I have this belief, rational or not, that I should spend my time making progress on things while at work and that I should do my learning on my own time. Sometimes this learning process involves spinning my wheels trying to figure something out. Sometimes it means starting down one path, then deleting that and starting over on a different path.
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