James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead

StayHydrated said:
I just did two recalls on mine (airbag and brake line corrosion) and they did the same thing to me. They even sent me an itemized text message with $2400.00 worth of "service" they "wanted to provide", including "diagnosing" replacement of the PS pump o-ring I did myself two days earlier because I didn't bother to clean the puddle of excess fluid off of the top of the engine block. Also $129.95 because my heat shields rattle...just turn the music up, dawg.

Every interaction I've ever been forced to have with a Subaru service department has made me sad, but then I remind myself that the whole industry sucks regardless of brand. Plus, no one makes an actual station wagon that a regular human being can afford anymore, so there's also that. I live in fear of the day my 3rd gen Outback dies...
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I will say that I have priced two different Honda dealerships for work in the past couple of years and the price difference was dramatically lower that mom and pop shops. I like supporting the little guys, but when it is the difference between $300 and $800 (that was an actual difference), it is a no brainier. Obviously you just need to ignore all the other stuff they say is wrong.

I think the monster dealerships with 15 techs backed themselves into just trying to stay busy.
 
I brought my Honda Fit in to have the airbags replaced a few weeks ago. I was expecting to get a list of shit that they wanted to fix for me, but there was nothing. I just walked in and picked up my car. They were also kind enough to clean the four years of dust off the top of my dashboard as part of the airbag replacement.

^ @ReggieHammond
 
The Ford dealer where I bought my 2017 keeps sending me emails to come in for an oil change service.
Their records show my car is less than a year old with 6000 miles and the oil change is required around
20,000 miles. They don't read or pay attention to their own product!
 
Podcasts:
S-Town. Serial spin-off. Learn more about rural Alabama and vintage clock restoration than you ever thought you wanted to know. It's listen-to-them-all-in-one-sitting-good.

@taylor185 just turned me on to The Cypher Brief, Intelligence Matters. Byline: "former acting Director of the CIA Michael Morell, speaks with top leaders of the U.S. intelligence community as they reflect on their life, career and the critical roles they play in shaping national security policies."
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/podcasts/intelligence-matters
For starters listen to Why Russia "Hacks" Elections: a Spy's-eye View
 
Kaleidopete said:
The Ford dealer where I bought my 2017 keeps sending me emails to come in for an oil change service.
Their records show my car is less than a year old with 6000 miles and the oil change is required around
20,000 miles. They don't read or pay attention to their own product!
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I get free oil changes for my fit and while I was in the express area waiting, a lady comes in an says I want ‘x’ service. They said well you only have x miles and you don’t need that for another 10,000 miles. She responds, but I got a card in the mail saying I need it! And I took off work!

So yeah, apparently those cards work on some dummies, including those ones saying they need to buy back your specific year and model.
 
I'm pretty sure you already listen to This American Life, right?

Long format, interesting stories. I think it's lost something but it may be that I've listened to do many.

Not at all what you're looking for, but consider Mike Rowe's podcast. They're about 5 minutes long and basically him telling the story of a famous person but doesn't say who it is to the end.

Great for car trips with other people, family friendly.

The one thing that bothered me about Black Panther is I felt I couldn't trust reviews as they would be so loaded because of the all black cast, negative or positive. Similar to the new Ghost Busters movie when it came out. I assumed in this day and age people wouldn't care about the race of people playing a part in a movie as long as it fit.

People should be more upset that John Wayne played Genghis Khan 50 years ago.

I'm also thinking we're seeing the Blockbusters that are mainly white centric. The comic book movies are all based on white characters, and they've been changing that up a bit. Star wars has been throwing in minorities, although in a way that may be a little in your face. With the money on the line they don't want to stray from the usual market.

I think this is where Amazon video, Netflix can start taking advantage of the non-white market. I think they already have with shows like Luke Cage on Netflix.
 
Delish said:
Podcasts:
S-Town. Serial spin-off. Learn more about rural Alabama and vintage clock restoration than you ever thought you wanted to know. It's listen-to-them-all-in-one-sitting-good.

@taylor185 just turned me on to The Cypher Brief, Intelligence Matters. Byline: "former acting Director of the CIA Michael Morell, speaks with top leaders of the U.S. intelligence community as they reflect on their life, career and the critical roles they play in shaping national security policies."
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/podcasts/intelligence-matters
For starters listen to Why Russia "Hacks" Elections: a Spy's-eye View
Click to expand...

here's another good one focused on foreign policy & international affairs: https://crooked.com/podcast-series/pod-save-the-world/

great guests with deep subject matter knowledge.
 
I picked up the subaru this morning. In the end it cost us nothing but the gas to get there & back. It cost them 2 cups of coffee and 2 mini croissants.

On the way home I listened to Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History, Season 2, Episode 1. First of all, thanks @BCurry and @JimN for this recommendation. I enjoyed it so immediately that I took a slightly longer way home to make sure I could listen to it all on the ride. Second of all, and I am sorry if you like this game, but fuck golf. I thought i was listening to Season 1, Episode 1, but I was wrong. The podcast list is here.

Then tonight we went out for dinner and on the way to/from I listened to some Hardcore History that I didn't realize I missed. Dan Carlin is not my favorite voice because he typifies every single quote in exactly the same nefarious voice, which gets a little old, very fast. Anyway, I couldn't get into King of Kings so I skipped forward to #59, Destroyer of Worlds. I'll get through it, but I find it is easy for me to zone out with Carlin.

Will also check out the @Delish suggestions as well as @taylor185 - thanks to both of you. Are you both coming Sunday?

~~~ The Break, A Break ~~~

Why do I Zwift on a day like today? There are a few reasons for this, but it really comes down to 2 parts:

1. I am on a roll. I rode 14.5 hours last week and I am driven to keep plugging away at this until we hit spring break. Meaning, I need to ride more than 1 hour today.
2. I need to be attentive at work right now, which means I cannot disappear at 2:30 for the day.

I get on the Death Trap (which I balanced better before the ride), with the hopes of knocking out 2 hours. In the end, I managed 2:15 and I was passed by @graveyardman67 out there. So I was not the only one Zwifting despite the nice day. I had to work on a specific implementation until 4:00 because we are literally down to the wire on this one. The Go/NoGo meeting is at 2:00 Friday and if they do not choose "GO" I am going to, as I told my boss today, melt the fuck down. So I need to do everything I can to get this signed, sealed, and delivered.
During the ride today I talked 1 coworker through a bug I needed fixed, then sent it off to the client who passed it before the end of the ride. I also worked out an possible change in my Seattle trip plans. Oh yeah, I am...was...going to Seattle on March 12th. Or maybe I am. Or on the 19th. Anyway, we kinda-sorta worked that out on the ride too. If I disappear for the day, none of that would have happened and right now I need it to. If this Friday 2:00 is a GO, then we are in a code freeze with this client and sunshine & rainbows will flow out of my ears because that will free up 6 hours a day to work on all the other stuff I have been blowing off to get these guys to production.

Anyway. I really do enjoy Zwift, obviously. But it is opening up so much opportunity for me right now. Next week looks possible for some actual outside rides. I would like to hit up CR or RV one of these days. Maybe next week it'll work out? Will it ever stop raining?

~~~ Another Break ~~~

@jShort - yeah, today was good on the Rockit. The Death Trap gets an A today. I have not clamped anything down yet, and I like it. Once I have the confidence that I can stand and nothing will sip, it will undoubtedly be better. I may do a writeup on this Friday. The beta test is over, I'm going to ship this one off to it's rightful owner shortly. I think I would highly recommend doing this if you need to be on the trainer. I'll start on mine later this week or this weekend. @mattybfat is hooking me up with a proper platform.

~~~

I don't think I like posting it in the morning.

Sorry no pics lately.
 
Liked for the "getting shit done while on Zwift", but disliked for anything related to real-life Sideshow Bob doppelganger Malcolm Gladwell.

Gladwell is the worst kind of academic fraud on the planet - the slight-of-hand bullshit artist who sells whatever pops into his head as legitimate scientific conclusion without doing the necessary due-diligence to prove his conjectures. And he gets away with it because he packages it with contemporary references that make his readers feel like their pop-culture items ring with deeper meaning. He's a charlatan. I've read a few of his books and they all make me angry. "Blink" is terribly unscientific, "What the Dog Saw" is more of the same, but "The Tipping Point" is quite possibly the best example of what angers me about him - so much of what he says in that book completely lacks investigative rigor but he nonetheless draws conclusions as if he has hard data. But that data is nowhere to be seen. Moreover, in the few instances when he does provide data, it's "problematic" to say the least - filled with bias or equally likely to support theories in direct opposition to his own. Part of this may not be his fault since social sciences data tends to be very messy and filled with the kind of bias that invalidates any capital-C "conclusions", but he should know better than to state his inferential leaps as legitimate conclusions when he's dealing with such shit data. I mean, keeping vague inference out of scientific conclusion is his one and only job as a researcher! I wouldn't have a problem with the guy if he simply admitted that everything he writes is his own interpretation of events based on an observational N of 1. Hell, there are plenty of people out there who do just that. They're called "pundits" and they function primarily as filler for Sunday morning tv. But Gladwell sells himself as a "thinker" who has genuine and valuable insights to offer on any topic he focuses his gaze upon (and for some reason I can't fathom he's accepted as such), and once you cross that line you really need to be much better at offering rigorous statistics. Otherwise, he's basically just the uncle at Xmas dinner who has an opinion on everything after putting just a minimum of thought into the high level basics.
 
RV simulator.
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Every time I join one of those 2 W/kg rides, I'm thinking oh ok, that's like a recovery ride for me. I've felt like shit the past 2 weeks due to some flu-like thing that never fully evolved thankfully. So I'm figuring yeah a nice easy ride. I immediately get dropped as I'm fumbling trying to get my screen mirroring to work since I cant see a normal sized iPhone screen anymore. Bail on mirroring and catch up, only to realize I caught the tail group. OK, bridge, then I see @Norm chatting something (which I can't read). I think hey maybe he's in this group. So I buckle in and turn it up and blow right through the front of the group, ooops. No Norm, but the ride never gets anywhere remotely close to the "stated" level. In the end, I averaged over 250W for an hour and had 40 minutes around 290W. That's crit level for me, and I loved it. Norm did remind me to stand every 15 minutes, unfortunately, it was after the ride and my ass is killing me.
 
And February ends. So let's review where this month brought us. And by "us" I mean "me".

Exercise

February saw my love affair with a bike & a computer program, so I managed to top January and get in 42.93 hours total. Over 2 months I have put in 84.6 hours of riding so far this year which is the biggest first 2 months of the year since I went to Taiwan for the winter. I think I was at almost 100 hours after 2 months that year. All things considered, I'm feeling pretty good about where I am right now. I don't know if I am ready to announce that I am going to aim for that record of 507 hours in 2018 yet. But I would say that a few more months of this and I could see that being a realistic aim.

I know I need to get outside more. You don't need to tell me that.

As for being inside, I must say that Watopia is way better for my brain than London. London does almost nothing for me. Even the hill climbs in London are in a ditch. How could they make it so dreary?

Plan for March is to ride the crap out of the bike until we go away for Spring Break. I think I may take those days off and just recover from the huge 3 months of riding. Then come back and start putting together more of a plan than "Just ride a lot." Or I may just keep riding a lot.

Blogging

For the most part I am happy with my frequence of writing even if I know I'm not hammering out the best stuff every day. I guess that goes with the sort of adage that to hit the peaks you gotta have some valleys. If it's nothing but peaks then really you exist on a flat plane. This month I did 19 blogs as opposed to 24 last month. I'm happy with either number. I've been able to be consistent with the writing even if I shook it up this week with the "publish time". This week has been an experiment in posting in the morning (I am writing at 9pm right now) to see if it gets more run.

I don't know if evening is better or morning is. If you have an opinion, shout it out.

Non Work/Routine Doings

This is a vague category, though the original intention was to just define it as getting myself out of the house and doing something abnormal. So last month, going to the YMCA and doing a spin class did not count, but doing a double did. With the advent of Zwifting I really can't say that riding big volume indoors is an achievement I can consider "out of normal" anymore. Likewise, a ride outside would be considered non-routine in March. But in the summer, would an hour ride count or do I need to be 2+? Vague questions, just something to think about the get me out of the monotony of life.

In all, I did 18 "non-work" things as opposed to 23 in January. Some things of note that we did:
  • Saw Bob Sagat at the MPAC
  • Went Skiing at Gore
  • Blue & Gold Boy Scout dinner
  • Tao: Drum Heart show at MPAC
  • Gobsmacked at MPAC
  • Took a day off work and actually did nothing
  • Saw Black Panther
March will bring us Short Track (x3), probably a trip to Seattle, a trip to Florida, as well as 2 plays and 1 dinner party. We really should podcast again too. I did want to go skiing more but I see biking is happening already so I am not sure we will get out again. I don't know how I feel about that.

Books/Reading

I am stuck in the Harry Potter universe right now. IDK the names of the books. I have read 6 books total this year, 5 of them Harry Potter.

Harry Potter 4 - The Hippo of Grenadine
Harry Potter 5 - Smuckers PB&J Wand Lyfe

Not sure what I am going to read after this. Still thinking about Foundation or maybe that one series @jShort recommended elsewhere. Probably pick up a one-off first, then see what I feel like after that.

I also read the NYT every day, but not cover to cover. I know you know this. But the point is that in 2018, I want to read more. As a general rule I skip the day-to-day news because frankly, it's never good.

Weight

From 2/1 to 2/28 I lost 5 pounds. I do not weigh myself every day but the general trend is down, albeit slower than I would like. I can see a difference and my clothes are starting to slooooooowly fit more loosely. Average for January was 2+ pounds higher than February. So any metric you use, you get the right direction. @seanrunnette says that Billy E says not to worry about weight so much as just keep riding. I'm doing that, it'll work out from there I hope. I am still waiting to get within striking distance of 200. I have this hope to get to 190 by Kingdom Trails, which I am looking forward to already.

In March, really I just want to see a 0 as the second number on the scale. I don't really like talking specifics, but at this point in life, this stuff really does not bother me anymore. I am what I am. And I ain't skinny.

Drinking

325 days of no drinking, as of February 28th.

In March, I plan to not drink for 31 days. At this point, why start again? I have pretty much lost my desire to drink these days. What's the point of breaking that streak?

Welcome to Smarch.
 
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I vote for mornings. Something to do while procrastinating.

I have so many book recommendations. I'm basically listening to books on my commute every day. The funny thing is you actually got me into the whole audiobook thing years ago. I think we were on a ride at deer Park with Matty around Christmas time and you mentioned some books maybe ilya got you into.... Man... Way way back.
 
Norm said:
We really should podcast again too
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This. Please.
I have suffered more than a couple MTA hostage situations in the past week, and really could have used a few of your live double albums.

Congrats on the downward trend (spiral?)

Morning v night: which is better for you?
 
Norm said:
@seanrunnette says that Billy E says not to worry about weight so much as just keep riding.
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This. When I first started biking 4-5 or whatever years ago now, I was around 225-230lbs. I never actually tried to diet since I started, but just the addition of any form of excercise and keeping me away from the fridge for a few hours, made me drop to the 185ish last summer. And as you know, that's without any specific training or work outs, but just fun rides and races. I'm up to 192 now though because of work and shit weather weekends lately...
 
i shall project your 1lb/wk loss over the whole year. Welcome back to high school.
 
If this first day of March were a book, it would go like this...

Norm's March 1st: Table of Contents
  1. Awaken! The Lowest Weight of the Year (1*)
  2. The Duke Deux - 2 Hours of RFP Gaps with Christian Laettner (2*)
  3. The Minnesota No Go (3*)
  4. Home Depot Retail Therapy (4*)
  5. Seattle: Back On. Maybe (5*)
  6. Zwift Recovery (6*)
  7. Chicago: Surprise! You're Going! (7*)
  8. Austin: Surprise! There Too! (8*)
  9. The Rocker Plate Farewell (9*)
  10. 2B, or not 2B? (10*)
(1*) Note: Woke up to the lowest weight of the year, -2 from yesterday. Good start to Smarch. @fidodie - I was not a small kid in high school. My fittest racing days were easily 20-30 lower than my high school days. I played DLine in football.

(2*) Christian Laettner was not in attendance in the call today. I asked @Dominos before the call what words of wisdom I should give to the D00kies. She informed me that the UNC game is this weekend. I didn't bring it up though. I will say that if I had to go back to Duke this week and could go to the UNC game, I'd love to go see that. Instead, we talked about gaps in the requirements as spelled out in the RFP (Request for Proposal). It was mad exciting, and by exciting I mean not at all, whatsoever, exciting.

(3*) I was informed today that the Minnesota Go/NoGo decision is going to be a NoGo. I have been working on this project on & off for a year now, and for the last 2 months I have been Full Court Pressing this to get it to the Goal Line so they could hit a Home Run. Ok, sports clichés aside, I literally busted my ass to bring this to prod and in the end, they are going to turn bullshit and say they "don't feel comfortable" with the software to go live now. They called out 3 things in particular that they were not happy with, and none of them were things I worked on. I jumped in last night to try and resolve 1 of them and it turns out today that they magically have new requirements - literally fucking 21 hours before the Go/NoGo decision. To say I am both deflated and pissed is an understatement. I will not shed 1 tear if North Korea beta tests their nuclear launch capabilities on that Garbage Barge of a state.

(4*) In an effort to provide myself with some retail therapy, I went to Home Depot and bought a mitre saw. I will spend the weekend sawing off the heads of voodoo dolls that are wearing Minnesota North Stars jerseys.

(5*) On the way to get the kids our PM told me that the Seattle trip is probably back on for the 12th, but don't buy tickets yet because in the end, it may not actually be back on. She just wanted me to know so I couldn't do anything. Anyway, I may or may not be going back to Seattle on the 12th, or 19th, or neither. I don't know.

(6*) Got home and hopped on the Zwift London Recovery Train while the kids did homework. I levelled up to 12 today, but kept my power down at around 120w for the ride, because I'm feeling the effects of all the riding lately. It was a nice day out, I know.

(7*) While I was on the Zwiffer my boss called and told me we have a business deal closing next week and I should plan to be in Chicago for next Friday. Again probably. So maybe make plans. He's going to Minnesota tonight for a demo tomorrow. Believe it or not, not the same client. I am ambivalent about more clients in this state.

(8*) Oh and he also mentioned that I'll probably be spending some time in Austin in the near future also. PS. I am still on the trainer at this point.

(9*) After the ride I took the bike off the trainer and the trainer off the Rocker/Rockit/Rocktane Plate. The beta test is over and this one will be delivered to its rightful owner tomorrow. I will leave that rightful owner unnamed but I will also say that I am meeting @seanrunnette at his house tomorrow to do a podcast. So you can connect the dots. Or not. Just leave them free form as if they are stars in the sky and you can write your own mythology around them.

(10*) Ok the week comes to an end and I do not have a clear direction on when to post. As you see above, I write "tomorrow" because as I sit here now it's Friday night. I like that @jShort has a clear answer so I can work with that. How about I post it when I go to bed, generally at midnight, every night? This way, it'll split the difference. On the audiobooks thing that's a pretty good recollection. Ilya had given me his Audible login and I listened to the Girl w/ Dragon Tattoo series that winter on the bike. I think I directed you to the Dan Simmons stuff, Hyperion books. I remember absolutely loving those first 2 books of his. Ok anyway, I got sidetracked. @jmanic asks what do I prefer, and I prefer at night because I want to write, then let it go. I know that in the grand scheme of things this is not remotely important but then isn't this attention to detail in life what makes life interesting? I will commence the new pre-midnight approach tonight.
 
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