The bright side of a Moon
My neighborhood is asploding. At least it sounds like it. And on top of the fireworks, there’s the late-night traffic coming home from the larger fireworks displays; there’s one in Milwaukie, and one down at Oaks Park, and my ‘hood is right in between.
And just as I observed the last time we had a lightning storm, Smacky no likey the asploding noises. Poor guy. I should have called him “Spooky” instead of Smacky, but that’s a bit too obvious for a black cat.
Wacky, wacky internets.
I love browsing the stats that are recorded for my site. It’s amazing what I can find out. I’ve done this before and noted the weird search terms that people use and then end up on my blog, for instance.
But this time, I’m looking at the referrers. In other words, pages that had a link to my blog.
The wackiest one is… someone clicked on a link on Cam Girls Live and it took them to my site. It’s #12 on the list… for a total of 3 hits.
Whaaaaaat…? How funny. Cam girls?
(It should go without saying that the “Cam Girls Live” link is not safe for work. But I’ll say it, anyway.)
Damn, I’d love to know who it was. If you’re reading this right now, use the Contact Me page and tell me just what you were doing… and who you were *ahem* “chatting” with… when you clicked over here. And what were you looking for here, of all things?
Updated my Picture of the Week (see, over there? In the right top corner of the page?) with one of a bunch of pictures I took yesterday walking off a gianormous Pepper Bacon Tillamook Cheeseburger I had for lunch from Burgerville. Mmmm… pepper bacon and Tillamook cheese… soooo gooooood.
At any rate, I took a bunch of pictures and couldn’t really decide on just one for my POTW so I thought I’d direct some attention to the whole gallery. Because it’s Independence Day and I’m feeling lazy I’m not going to include thumbnails here, just links.
The situation at work just gets worse and worse. Management is going ahead with an aggressive schedule to roll out a thin-client network, with basic, no-nonsense network appliances on the desktop and having all the applications running on servers. They’ve been told that they can drastically reduce the number of techs they’ll need to support all those appliances. Unfortunately, I am one of those techs, so that means I will probably get demoted or laid off in the next year.
Bummer. On the bright side, I pretty much hate that place anyway, so in many respects I’m not too unhappy. And I am fully vested in the pension plan, so I’ll have a little somethin’-somethin’ to look forward to in my golden years (provided management doesn’t raid the pension plan between now and then, or lawmakers raid it for them; that seems to be all the rage now).
But on the other hand, it’s a good thing to keep other skills polished, and to have an idea of what I would need as far as a bare minimum income to pay all my bills. Assuming no change in my current bills (except for credit cards, which should be completely paid off by September), and further assuming a full-time, 40-hour a week job, I could scrape by with a $12.00/hour job. That’s not too bad… I hope.
Maybe I should go looking to see what jobs are paying $12.00/hr., eh?
Bright side is, I could supplement that with cleaning up people’s PCs from vicious spyware and other basic computer maintenance or training. I do that on the side anyway, and I’d have more incentive to do that if I wasn’t working for the County. And that’s usually all tax-free money, and I charge a bit more than twelve bucks an hour for that.
I also went to the Oregon Labor webpage and calculated what my unemployment benefit would be, and it comes close to what I’d need. I’d still need some supplemental income, but not the whole thing. I also looked at what I could cut back if I needed to — I could lose my broadband internet, cut back on FlexCar useage, cut back on my cell phone… that saves me $225/month right there.
So I’m feeling better, if not completely safe. At least I’d be able to keep a roof over my head if worse comes to worst.
I wanted to put in a lot of miles (a lot for me being 5 or 6) today, but wasn’t too thrilled with one long slog after running 4 miles last night and doing them slowly, slowly, oh so slowly.
So I decided I’d do some hill repeats. Thinking back on it, I’m not sure why, exactly, that sounded better than just pounding out 5 miles in one go. The hill I was thinking of is pretty steep, at least a 3% grade, I guesstimate.
Decided before I left that I would run about a mile to warmup, not keeping track of the time but trying to just keep running, then stretch out and do 6 repeats of about a quarter-mile each, jogging or walking quickly down before going back up. Further decided to time my first run, then aim to just keep shaving 5-10 seconds off each interval until I was done.
This I did, until the final go.
First run up was 3:09, second was 3:00 even, third was 2:57, fourth was 2:50, fifth was 2:39. Wow. Hard. I was breathing very hard on that fifth try. I was bargaining with myself: “If I can do this one in 2:40 or less, I won’t do my 6th one.” It was starting to sprinkle a bit, and I ran through a cloud of gnats and breathed a couple of them down, and basically wasn’t having a good time by then.
But, once at the top again, I realized that I had set a goal, and I was going to finish. I did the sixth and final interval in 3:04, and it was as hard as any of the others, but I did it. Then I turned around, headed down the hill at a light jog, and jogged the mile-plus home.
At home, I drank a couple of glasses of water, ate an energy bar, and collapsed on the couch. I had no energy left for anything. Smacky came over and started licking the sweat off of me, which was irritating and kinda gross but I couldn’t move for 15 minutes. I texted a friend about my accomplishment but otherwise zoned out until I could get enough oomph to get up and shower off.
Feels good, now, after the fact. I’ll try it again next week and see if I can improve.
This may just go without saying for some of you, but I’m gonna say it anyway.
Google Earth totally rocks.
I know that downloading has been disabled right now, because a couple of friends have told me that they get told to try again later when attempting to download it.
And, yes, I know, it’s only for Windows, and only on higher-end hardware. And you need a fast ‘net connection to make use of it, ’cause it streams the images off the internets.
But given all that, it still rocks. You can get a brief taste of it by going to Google Maps, searching for a location, like your address, and then turning on satellite images and then clicking and dragging around. Cool to see your neighborhood from above, like you’re flying around, right?
OK, now imagine being able to do that, and then angling down so that you’re looking towards the horizon as you glide along above your street. And then being able to search for, say, bars along the path. Searching for anything you could find in a Google Local search, really.
Or having a real-time tour of the driving directions from your house to, well, anywhere in the US or Canada. I think; I know they only recently added all the satellite images for outside the US and Canada to the Maps stuff so that might not be in Google Earth just yet. Give them time.
I’ve been using other software to map out my running routes, but this is now my favorite tool for it. I can pinpoint my half-mile marks based on actual landmarks, depending on how updated the satellite pictures are.
Google says they’re working on a Mac version. I’m not sure either of my home Macs are up to the challenge, though, being fairly underpowered machines. Might be time for an upgrade… For now I’m using my work PC.
And it’s free! For now. But Google has been all about the free-as-in-beer for end users, so it’s likely to stay that way for a while. In fact, the only feature they make you pay for that I can see is the ability to pull GPS data out of the program.
Go grab it if you can.
Normally my FCB pics are of Smacky when he’s sleeping. But not today! Today I’ve caught him when he’s just waking up!
…and here’s some more!
Scary.
Back when I lived in Texas I had my checking account with NationsBank. I’d link to it, but it’s no longer in existence; it was purchased by Bank of America.
Fast-forward a half-decade. I still have my checking account (plus a savings account and a credit card) through BofA, plus a loan through MBNA.
Well, looks like BofA is buying MBNA. Soon, all financial transactions will be through BofA. Or at least all of mine.
I stopped by the Anti-Wal-Mart protest today. Just chatted with Lauren and picked up a brochure.
They’ve only been working on this for the past two weeks. Trying to get a grass-roots movement going. There will be a meeting tomorrow night at the S.M.I.L.E. station (SE. 13th and Tacoma) at 7:00 PM, and I will be attending.
Damn, I should have taken pictures of their signs. They were getting a lot of honks from drivers passing by, too. I hope those were good honks.
I knew that I’ve been feeling a dark mood descend upon me and my home recently. Turns out there was a reason.
Wal-Mart is angling to put a store (excuse me, a “Superstore”) in my neighborhood.
I found out by spying one of these many flyers (pops in new window; downloads an Acrobat file) while walking home last night. Yes, turns out there is organized opposition to it already. Include me in.
I’ll be stopping by their picket line and pamphlet-handing-out at 4:00 PM this afternoon at the east end of the Sellwood Bridge to see how I can add my support.
