Monday, July 31, 2000 Let's try this again. Here's a post from Sparky, my Sun SPARCstation. muttered around 9:27 PM

Sunday, July 30, 2000 Got my SPARCstation 10 connected to the internet! This was not easy, though now that it's done, it seems easy enough. Details in Life with Sparky muttered around 11:02 PM

Did a 38+ mile ride today -- a huge loop around the southern half of Denver. Maintained a 17.2mph average, overall, which is pretty damn good, considering that the last half of the ride is the same route as my current commute, on which I normally turn in a 16.5mph average. It was hot today, probably around 90 degrees, and I suffered a bit toward the end. At one point I stopped at a Taco Bell, filled my water bottle with ice and topped off the previously hot water/sports drink mixture with more water. I then drank very deeply twice, refilled it, drank deeply again, refilled, and was on my way. My attitude improved a lot after that. I met a guy named Tom on the ride today. We talked about getting together on future rides, road and mountain. He's an ex-racer (expert class). Probably will kick my sorry ass. I've been playing with Sparky a lot. Probably too much, but I have a need to get him on the network. muttered around 7:01 PM

Saturday, July 29, 2000 Didn't ride today. It was a lazy day, and a lazy night, for that matter. I did mow the lawn, at least. I also fixed the two flats on my road bike (I guess goat-head season is already upon us). Tomorrow, I plan a long road ride. Finally got around to making this blog the "main" page. I couldn't think of a neat way to do it, given that I like having the blog in its own directory, I like to have pix included in the blog, and I use archiving. I couldn't figure out how to make the links to the pictures work in all cases (index.html in my root, and archives in my archive directory), and I didn't feel much like experimenting, so I just turned my index.html page into a lame refresh-o-matic. People (as if I have that many visitors) will probably complain that it's a splash page, but it'll have to do anyway. muttered around 9:51 PM

I've started a new blog for Unix geeks. I demonstrate my incompetence in configuring my new SPARCstation in Life with Sparky muttered around 9:38 PM

Thursday, July 27, 2000 Wow, 5 days since last posting. I'm really getting lazy. The day after my last post, I went for a mountain bike ride up Mount Falcon. What an ass-kicker, but I did finish it! I rode up to the top (had to stop and rest a number of times), then did the Parmalee trail on the back side. On the way back down the main (Castle) trail, I wrecked twice. Once on one knee, once on the other. Plus, on one of the crashes, my pedal put a mean cat-scratch on the back of my left calf -- four furrows of mangled flesh. That's actually the worst one. It might even scar. This week, I commuted home twice on my Cherry Creek route (about 22 miles). I think I'll use this as my default route, since it's about 5 miles longer than my Platte route. Finally got all the pieces of my "new" Sun SPARCstation 10 from eBay. I had to buy the monitor separately from the system box, separately from the mouse and KB, but they're all in. I'm a bit disappointed in the condition of the system box, since one of the "feet" is broken off, and another is cracked. However, my new baby cranked up great, and is much faster than I expected. Here are the particulars: SPARC 10, with 2x50mhz processors, 64M of RAM, 1G hard drive 20" Sun/Sony monitor (sweet!) Sun type 5c KB and mouse I'm currently bidding on two more processors and some more RAM. By the time I'm done this will be what was considered a supercomputer just a few years ago, with about an $800 investment. The thing probably went for $15K in its day. muttered around 7:15 AM

Saturday, July 22, 2000 Neato: LavaPS muttered around 6:11 PM

Why Linux is intolerably lame (one guy's opinion): SPATULA :=- Nick Johnson's Homepage -=: SPATULA muttered around 5:58 PM

Interesting bit on User-Interface futures: Towards the Anti-Mac By the way, and totally unrelated, the in case you were wondering: the night-time Volkswagen Cabrio commercial features a song by the folk singer Nick Drake. The song is called Pink Moon, and is on the album by the same name. muttered around 5:56 PM

A little long in the tooth, but still worth a read, if only for historical interest: Making Microsoft Safe for Capitalism by James Gleick muttered around 5:13 PM

Friday, July 21, 2000 OK, it's been a very long time since the last update, but I have (at least partial) excuses. I did the Courage Classic (CC) bicycle tour on the 15th, 16th and 17th. Since then, I've been on vacation and have just taken it easy. I did spend some time preparing my photo album for the CC, but haven't finished that yet. In leiu of that, here's a synopsis of the tour: Day Zero, July 14th I drove down to Leadville in order to get a good night's sleep before the ride. As luck would have it, it started raining as I made my driving preps. This bugged me, since I'd gotten my bike all spiffed up for the ride, and couldn't bear the thought of it being pummeled by rain at 70mph. MB came up with the idea of wrapping it in plastic bags, which we did. Of course, this converted the bike into a big sail on the back of my car. I could feel the car being slowed by the air pressure on the wrapped bike, so I got out after about 10 minutes of driving and poked a few holes into the bag to help air get through. This seemed to help a bit, but I could still tell that the bike's rear rack was being pushed back by the wind. I decided not to worry about it too much, and settled in for the 2 hour drive to leadville with my Beck: pre-Mutations compilation minidisc playing. The trip was basically uneventful. I arrived in Leadville around 10:00, and hit the hay at about 11:00. Day One, July 15th 58 miles, 14.1mph avg, 42.5 max 5:00am came quickly, and I had a hard time getting moving. The morning air was chilly, at about 50 degrees or so. I put on my bike clothes, repacked my bags, reattached my bike, and took off for Leadville High School, where the ride was to begin. Turns out the rack on my bike did get bent to the right fairly significantly during the previous nights travels. I gave it a good push to even it back out.      I arrived at the school around 6:30 or so, and went through the check-in procedure, which left me feeling like a livestock. We even had to watch a "safety video", which filled us with valuable information like "wear your helmet", and "be careful going down hills". I then dropped off my bag and went to the feeding trough for breakfast. Breakfast was typical bike fare: cold bagels, stiff cream cheese, oranges, etc. They did have some oatmeal, for which I was thankful, even though it was lumpy and lukewarm. I didn't eat too much for fear of being slowed by too much food in the belly.      I mounted my bike and got underway at about 7:30 or so. I met up pretty quickly with a rider named David that was going about my pace. This was his first organized ride in Colorado, as it was for me. Turns out he lives relatively close to me, and works within a block or so of me. We chatted until we hit the first rest stop, at Tennesee Pass (elev. 10,424). The climb to this pass was no big deal at all, since Leadville starts pretty high in the first place.      At this rest stop, David met up with some others from the group with which he was riding. One of the group, Matt, continued from the rest stop with David and me. From Tennessee Pass, we had a sweet downhill for about 10 miles. At the bottom of this downhill, we crossed a giant bridge over an impressive gorge, then started the first significant climb of the day. Near the beginning of the climb, once we'd crossed the bridge, we pulled over for photos. Turns out the climb was relatively short, but intense. It didn't feel short -- I didn't realize how short a climb this actually was, at this point in my experience.      After this climb, we had another descent -- into Vail. This descent would have been screamingly fast, except for the fact that cars were slowing us down. Yes, cars were slowing us down. It was pretty frustrating, but we still got a top speed of 42.5 mph, so it was fun anyway.      We arrived in Vail at about 10:50am, and had lunch at a park. Again, pretty standard bike tour fare was provided: bread, peanut butter and jelly, lunchmeats, chips, cookies, etc. It tasted like manna from heaven. While eating lunch, I met up with much of the remainder of David's group. We chatted for a while, enjoying the soft grass and mild sun of the park.      We all joked about how the hardest part of the ride lay ahead: a 16+ mile climb up Vail pass. And it was the hardest part of the ride: a good solid 2 hours of climbing, sometimes steep, sometimes not, but always climbing. Grind, grind, grind. For the first time of the ride I was very sorry I didn't have a third, granny-gear chainring, and was cursing those around me who did. My bike, a cyclocross racing bike, is geared fairly low compared to a road racing bike, but not so low as to make a serious climb easy, as with a touring or mountain bike. At one point we were on a bicycle path and crossed under I-70 to begin climbing on probably the steepest paved surface I've ever ridden. I was in first gear, and standing and could still barely turn the cranks. I averaged probably 4 miles per hour for 20 minutes or so on this section (take this with a grain of salt -- my perception of time, among other things was seriously impacted by this climb). I was low on water, sweating profusely, and not having a lot of fun. Finally, the Black Lakes aid station loomed in the distance, signalling the end of the climb. I drank until I couldn't hold any more, and teetered toward the downhill bike path into Copper Mountain Resort.      The downhill into Copper was beautiful, though I couldn't appreciate it much due to high speed and my exhausted state. We wound though a lot of green meadows on paved switchbacks, and enjoyed the relief from the sun the newly cloudy skies afforded.      As it turns out, those cloudy skies were a mixed blessing for those behind me on the ride. The clouds formed into a massive thunderstorm on Vail pass. As many as 600 riders were caught in the storm. As I waited, warm, and for the most part dry, for MB to show at the resort's check-in area, I saw many soaked and feezing riders arrive from the trip down the mountain. Witnessing this made me question my preparedness for the remainder of the ride. I had purposely left behind my raingear, thinking that as long as I stayed warm, a little water wouldn't bother me. Apparently, I was wrong.      When MB showed, we went immediately to our room, and I took one of the longest showers of my life. We then went to Molly B's and had a great meal to top off the day. Day Two, July 16th 53 miles, 15.4mph avg, 39.8 max Sunday dawned damp and foggy. I hadn't paid for the "meal plan", so breakfast was up to me and MB. We got great breakfast bagels at a place right next to our room, and I finally hit the road at around 8:00. I stopped at the start line and bought a clear plastic raincoat, thinking of the shivering souls I'd seen finishing yesterday's ride.      I'd heard that today would be the easy day of the ride, and it lived up to that reputation. We had a lengthy desent from Copper. The descent was awesome, much of it twisting through lodgepole pine forest. At one point, a few very tall saplings had arched all the way over the trial about 12 feet off the ground. I badly wanted to stop and take some pictures, but didn't want to ruin my momentum.      The descent was followed by a relatively easy 5 mile climb past Frisco into Breckenridge, where I made my first stop of the day, at mile 15. From Breck we descended back towards Frisco, and then had a break at the beginning of the Swan Mountain Road (SMR) climb. The break was needed, because SMR was a very intense climb, gaining about 700 feet in a mile - a 13% grade. The climb was eased a bit by the awesome views of Lake Dillon to the left. I crossed the road a couple of times to get pictures. What goes up must come down, and from the top of the climb, we had a very steep high-speed downhill followed by a short climb into Keystone, which was the lunch stop. I lingered here for an hour or so, and noted that the sun had barely broken all day. I still had my windvest and armwarmers on.      From Keystone, the ride continued on a relatively flat trip around Lake Dillon. This was a very scenic part of the ride, but I didn't stop to take many pictures because I was glad to have some consistent flat ground to cover. Much of the trail was bounded by wildflowers, and the lake was always visible through the pine trees. I recommend to anyone who visits the Lake Dillon area - rent a bike and ride it around the lake - you won't be sorry. It was on this part of the ride that I happened upon David at the side of the road with Michael, another rider from his group. We continued from there, together. The latter part of the ride was the ascent back to Copper on the same trail we took down in the morning. I was not looking forward to the climb, but having company made it go very quickly. So quickly, in fact, that when David said "hey, we're done", I thought he was pulling my leg. But we were done, and I wheeled into Copper ready to kick back and have some beers. It started raining at around 4:00, and continued into the night. I hadn't used my newly purchased raingear. Day Three, July 17th 45 miles, 43.1mph max Monday started very chilly, probably below 50, but clear and beautiful. We faced a big climb to Fremont pass, 11 miles up and topping out at 11,400 ft or so, as the first struggle of the day. And a struggle it was. This was a very tiring climb, since it was the first activity of the day. I took quite a few photos, both because this was some of the best scenery of the trip and because it gave me an excuse to stop every so often. There was a rest stop near the top of Fremont Pass where I thankfully pulled over and gobbled up cookies and a bunch of sports drink. I snapped a few photos, including one of a molybdenum mine across the road from the stop. It was a pretty weird juxtaposition, all this power equipment and stripped mountainsides so close to pristine beauty. After this pause, we were treated to the best downhill of the trip. I got up to 43.1mph on the mostly smooth road with its wide bends. It was basically flat or downhill for many miles of the remaining ride into Leadville with most of the climbing once we neared the city limits.      In Leadville I had to make a decision - avail myself of the shortcut route, or continue on with the Turquoise Lake portion of the ride. Earlier in the day, I had almost decided to just do the shortcut route since I was riding alone. However, once I got to the decision point I found that I felt fine, and hated the idea of not finishing the whole ride. So, even though the skies were threatening (see the photo below), I continued on with the Turqoise Lake loop. Well, it may have been a mistake. It certainly was the longest 16 miles I've ever ridden. The loop contained 1600 total feet of climbing, which by itself would be challenging (though by now I'd learned to like, if not love, climbing). As I climbed the first pitch, it started sprinkling. By the time I reached to the top it was drizzling, and I finally donned my plastic raincoat. In a couple more miles it was all-out raining in sheets, so I was damn glad to have the raingear. Supposedly, Turquoise Lake is stunning, but in this weather I was in no mood to investigate the scenic overlooks that I passed every so often. I did grab a couple of quick photos from the road, though.      The problem with rain is that it slows you down a bit, and makes descending scary, especially when the descents are steep and winding. I rode conservatively, and even more so after I passed an unlucky rider splayed out on the blacktop looking very unconscious. He was being attended to by support people, and an ambulance soon followed. I never found out what had happened to him.      At that point I had about eight miles to go, and I was losing interest. However, the rain eased off, and I was fine physically - it was just the mental thing. I cranked up the long uphill to the finish, and managed a meager sprint to cross the line and collect my "medal". The finish area was a mess of mud and bikes and muddy bike people. I hadn't seen anyone I knew all day, and was happy to see Matt (from day one). We shook hands and congratulated each other on a job well done. I made my way to the "barbeque" tent and got a cold burger and cold hot dog. They were great. I can't wait until next year! muttered around 11:56 AM

Friday, July 14, 2000 Yesterday's ride was tough, but not for the reason I thought it would be. When I started on the ride, I realized that there was another viscious headwind. I was bummed. But I eventually teamed up with a racy-looking guy who took the lead. At first, it was comfortable, and nice to be out of the wind. But then, the guy lived up to his racy appearance. He accelerated to about 22mph, and even drafting, given this headwind, keeping up became very tough. My intentions were to make this an easy ride, since I'm doing the Courage Classic starting Saturday, but turned out to be one of my more challenging rides of the season. I was glad to peel off when my route diverged from his. Anyway, I did appreciate the pull, dude. muttered around 8:22 AM

Thursday, July 13, 2000 Great site: explodingdog. Love the artwork! Sam makes the most of simple yet compelling compositions and forms. He interprets phrases sent to him by visitors and renders them in a childlike, iconic style. It's very interesting to start with his first drawings and move forward in time through the collection. Though all the drawings are simple and childlike, the later drawings take on a consistency in approach and style that ties them together thematically, even though the phrases they're based upon differ markedly. One gets the sense that he is peeking in on a little world with its own familiar, and at the same time alien (literally), inhabitants. There are "regular" people and occasionally giants, robots, aliens, and monkeys/monsters (read the site to find out why). The expressiveness he achieves, especially in the simplistic, almost stick-figure people's expressions is amazing. His use of color and composition is impressive, and his use of line is poetic. This is comics at its best. This is easily one of the best sites I've ever seen. muttered around 10:36 PM

Example poetry from my ThinkGeek Fridge Code set: debug the canonical overflow smooth protocol, luscious echo a forked hack conjures away muttered around 10:05 AM

Wednesday, July 12, 2000 Oh man, terrible ride home today. There were storms to the south (the direction in which I ride), so there were intense headwinds, and a little rain, all the way home. The winds were probably in the 20 knot or so range. I ended up averaging about 16.3 on the "time trial" section of the ride, but only about 14.9 overall. Sigh. muttered around 8:42 PM

Rode home yesterday, and maintained a 19mph pace on the dedicated bike trail (Platte) portion of the ride, even into a headwind. I managed to forget my helmet for the first time, and man was it nice to ride without one. I'd forgotten how much more comfortable it is to ride sans-helmet. That stuff about helmets increasing airflow over your head and keeping you cooler is bull! I was cooler while riding without my helmet, and was much more refreshed when the ride was over, and my neck and right shoulder-blade weren't as stiff as usual since I didn't have an extra pound of plastic on my head. I also didn't have rivers of sweat running down my face and onto my shades. However, I won't make a habit of going helmet-less, even though it's more comfortable. It only takes one goofy accident to give you a head injury, and I don't want that. I understand that the statistics say you're more likely to bash your head in walking down the sidewalk than riding your bike, but it seems to be a relatively easy thing to just wear a helmet while cycling - just in case. I'll never support a helmet law, however. I think that requiring people to wear helmets just cuts down on the number of people who'll cycle. muttered around 8:01 AM

Monday, July 10, 2000 Woohoo! Finally got the layout of the blog to look decent in Navigator (well, 4.73 at least - haven't tested it in other versions). muttered around 7:21 AM

Yesterday, did an early morning mountain bike ride - the Roxborough loop. This is the ride that Christoph and I started a couple of weeks ago. This time, I was with Paul and a friend of his, and we did the actual loop rather than turning around and heading back down the way we came up. The back side of this ride is awesome. There's a half-mile or so section of smooth, downhill singletrack that's amazing. I was very proud of myself because I made it up the main climb (to the Roxborough trail) with only one dab. The first time I did this trail with Christoph, I came off my bike a number of times. The climb even seemed easier. I stayed a gear or so higher throughout the climb. I don't know if this is "cause" or "effect", though. Anyway, great ride, but no pictures. I took my camera, but the ride was intense and didn't offer many good photo-stop opportunities. Later in the day we had a get together with my in-laws. My sister-in-law's husband's mother died a couple of weeks ago, and he wanted to get together with everyone upon his return, and celebrate life. We had a good time. My left elbow/forearm has been bugging me since the Fourth of July weekend. I don't know what I did to it, but it feels like tendonitis (kind of like tennis elbow). It had almost healed at one point, but then I worked out, and I think that aggravated it pretty badly (especially when I tried to do a dumbell curl), because it has hung around since then. Luckily, I can ride with little trouble, but I wonder if that's just prolonging it. muttered around 7:09 AM

Saturday, July 08, 2000 Well, no posts in a few days. I guess I don't have much to say. I did ride my bike home both Thursday and Friday. I basically took the day off today, mowed the lawn, etc. I did spend a lot of time doing basic maintenance on my bikes. I washed both of them, cleaned the drivetrains, and replaced the brake shoes on my mountain bike in preparation for tomorrow's ride (Waterton Canyon/Roxbourough Loop) with my boss, Paul. I also installed the riser handlebars I bought for MB's bike. I hope they make her feel more comfortable on the bike (they should prevent her having to reach so far to the bars). We went to see The Perfect Storm tonight. It did a good job of keeping me on the edge of my seat, and the special effects were, well, effective. Since I'm on the subject, we watched The Minus Man a couple of nights ago, on video, and I really liked it. It starred Owen Wilson, who's on of my "dark horse" favorites. He was great in Bottle Rocket, too. It's damn hot tonite, and (wouldn't you know it) our attic fan has decided to poop out. It was making a slight clanging sound. I climbed up into the attic, and discovered that one of the blades had develped a pretty bad crack. I tried to brace the cracked portion of the blade against the rest of the blade, but when we restarted the fan, it came loose again, and was worse than before. We'll spend the night in the basement tonite. I get to look forward to climbing around in the attic tomorrow in the heat of the day, in order to replace some portion of the fan assembly. Yuck. muttered around 10:10 PM

Wednesday, July 05, 2000 Got up this morning with the intention of riding my bike home from work. Got everything packed and prepared, and put on (regular) shorts, rather than pants, since I have some jeans at work. I went out to my bike only to discover that the front tire was totally flat. Puzzling, since I just rode it two days ago. I tried to put some air into it, but any air I put in immediately came back out. Puzzling, since you'd think I'd notice such a severe puncture when riding the other day. So, I decide to miss my bus and just catch the next one in order to fix the flat. I pull out the tube and discover a nasty slice in the tube in a place that obviously lined up with a spoke hole. "This shouldn't happen", I thought -- "that's why we use rim tape". Well, as it happens, the crappy rim band (like a big rubber band) that the bike shop sold me had developed a hole right over one of the spoke holes on the rim, and this is what caused the slice. So, I patched the tube, and then used half a patch to actually patch the rim band. I put everything back together, and pumped it up. Got the trunk bag back on the bike, put my helmet on, and started up the street. I got 20 feet before I heard a big fwoooosh! My tire was flat again. I gave up and drove to work. To top it all off, when I got to work I realized that I'd forgotten to bring along my belt, having packed it in my bike bag. My jeans are too loose to wear without a belt, so I'm wearing shorts at work (at least, until lunch, when I'll go belt shopping), which is way outside our dress policy. All this crap because some bozo is such a loser in life that he has to steal my front wheel. muttered around 9:09 AM

Tuesday, July 04, 2000 Wanna know how to maintain an old Sun SPARCstation? See docs.sun.com: SPARCstation Service Manuals AnswerBook Collection muttered around 4:20 PM

A nice set of SPARC-oriented articles in the SPARC Product Directory (web edition) muttered around 12:41 PM

Monday, July 03, 2000 OK, no posts in a couple of days. Been a little busy. What's going on? Well, Chip and Terri (my brother and his wife) came over yesterday with their kids. We cooked out and generally had a good time. Today, I got up early and hit the road on my bike, doing my favorite 20-mile loop. It went pretty well, though I didn't feel as strong as I like to. A little later, we checked out the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, and went back and forth a million times on whether to buy a piece by a guy we've seen there before. We finally decided against it, but only because we had so many other expenses in the queue. I spent a lot of time today on Ebay looking at older Sun Microsystems hardware. I've decided that I'm probably going to buy some of this stuff to replace my normal desktop. Actually, I already bought one unit, a very old IPC system box, for $25. It'll be slow and all, but I'll just see if I can get it running and on my network. Actually, now I'm hunting bigger game - a real desktop system, maybe a multi-processor (but still much, much slower than my latest Wintel box), and a giant Sun (Sony) monitor. This will be my main desktop system since I mainly just browse the web, and I don't need Microsoft for that. Hell, I can even get the StarOffice office suite for free from Sun. Who needs Microsoft? Actually, I do, since some of my favorite software only runs there (so far). I finally got around to adding a photo album for my TOSRV (Tour of the Scioto River Valley) trip. The main thing holding me up was that I needed to rewrite/generalize the Javascript used to create my artwork page. Well, that and sheer laziness. Anyway, it's done, for now. muttered around 11:38 PM