Sunday, August 27, 2000 I went for a 20-mile ride yesterday (actually, it's about 19 miles), on my standard loop. Very early in the ride, while I was moving fairly slow and still warming up, a guy passed me, and eventually gained about 200 yards on me. This bugged me, so I tried like crazy to catch him over the course of about 5 miles. He seemed to be riding just a bit faster than I normally do, and it turned out to be, well, impossible for me to catch him. I finally gave up at one point, and then, surprisingly, caught him at a long light. When I got to him, I said, "you bastard, I've been chasing you for miles". He laughed and commented that it helps to have someone to chase. It certainly does. Our paths diverged, and I waited for a slower cyclist, who I'd passed earlier, to catch up. We chatted for the next 5 miles or so, going more slowly than I normally would (but I needed the break). Anyway, I turned in my fastest average ever for that course: 17.7. Pretty good considering I have to go slowly through some portions of the ride. After the ride, we went to pick up Jake from the vet. He was very sheepish (Jake, not the vet), probably from the drugs and stress of experiencing an overnight stay at the vet for the first time. Anyway, he's got about a 3" scar on the front of his left hind leg, where his "knee" is. He's very tender (big surprise). He's not supposed to use stairs, but of course, he's now snuck downstairs twice. Both times, I had to carry him back up. This is a real pain, since he ways about 95 pounds. He should be back to normal in about six weeks. I rode again today, since I'll be travelling next week with no opportunities to ride. I was adventurous, and took C470 East to whereever it would take me. I went out about 10 miles and returned. I took it very easy, and averaged about 15mph (it was kind of windy). Today is a big Rapp party, since Bern and Bernie's birthdays are fairly close together. It's not a birthday party, per se, but it makes a good excuse to have a party. muttered around 10:35 AM

Friday, August 25, 2000 Our dog Jake has hurt his leg badly enough that he needs surgery. He tore his ACL (the Anterior Cruciate Ligament, in his "knee"). I stayed home today to schedule him for a visit to the dog surgeon. Apparently, the surgery went great. We'll pick Jake up tomorrow morning. He'll have to convalesce for about six weeks, which will probably be really hard for him (and us). I received my new Sony MDS-JD930 MIniDisc recorder today, and it's awesome! Let me tell you, I've tried MP3 and I'm not sure I know what all the fuss is about. MP3 sounds like crap. I know all you young whipper-snappers don't really care about good sound, but that's probably because you've never been treated to a really good sounding stereo. I'm a audio nut from way back, and I care a lot about sound. Anyway, I've been using my Sony portable MiniDisc recorder/player for a couple of years now, and it rocks. The only problem is that to record on it was a bit of a pain, and titling it (adding disc and song titles) was a real pain. The MDS-JD930, on the other hand, is a full-sized piece of audio equipment, and it has a keyboard input, so you can use a keyboard to title your discs. Cool! I finally got around to cleaning my bike today. I took about 1.5 hours to do the full job. I even removed the cluster from the freehub and cleaned each cog (well each of the separate ones). You could eat off that drivetrain -- it should now run smoothly and silently, the way it should be. muttered around 10:04 PM

Wednesday, August 23, 2000 So, I did ride home yesterday, and on this ride something happened that really got me pissed off. I'm minding my own business, riding down Colorado Blvd between Hampden and Quincy. It's a nice downhill -- I get up to around 25mph or so on it. All of a sudden there's honking behind me and to my left. I risk a look behind me to see a Blazer there, and the driver is honking and gesturing with his hand. He's pointing toward the side of the road, where there's a bike trail. He seems nearly insane with desire to point out that there's a bike trail there, and I have the audacity to ignore it. OK, here's where I stand on this stuff: Bike trails are great if they're safe. This particular one is not. There is a section of it that I've ridden where it drops into a little valley where they've decided to place stutter bumps (actually they're furrows) perpendicular to travel direction. It's hell on the wheels and rider. There are also many driveways, some of which are obstructed, that let out onto the road. They therefore cross the bike path. Do you think people pulling out really look for 20mph cyclists as they leave their houses? No -- they're looking for traffic out on the street. Do you think they could see me if they did look? Likely not, due to obstructions and my speed. I'd much rather be on the road in this situation. People can see me, and I can see them. I don't obstruct traffic -- people can pass me with ease. I wish I could have had a "discussion" with the jerk who decided that it was his business to tell me where to ride. I was within the law, and was guarding my safety. I'll be the judge of what's safe for me, thank you. A safe bike trail doesn't intersect driveways every 150 feet. A safe bike trail doesn't include unnecessary bumps and holes placed there by mindless builders. A safe trail doesn't contain rocks and glass, mud and pavement breaks. Show me a safe trail and I'll ride it (there are a number of them in Denver, BTW). Show me an unsafe trail and I'll avoid it. muttered around 11:15 AM

Tuesday, August 22, 2000 I rode my still very dirty bike around my 19-mile C470/Platte Trail loop on Sunday. It was a nice, relaxing ride. I turned in an average of 16.9, which isn't bad considering how much I have to slow down through downtown Littleton. Nonetheless, when I read that Lance turned in an avarage of 33.5 mph in a Tour De France time trial, I realize how much I suck. I mean, come on, twice the average speed, over twice the distance I rode? Amazing. Didn't ride yesterday -- thought I'd avoid riding the dirty bike and clean it when I got home instead. Yeah, right. It's still dirty. I'm riding it home that way today anyway. Do I seem anal-retentive about my bike's cleanliness? Well, there's a reason for that. It's covered in grit from riding in the rain, and then again after a rain. That grit has a way of wearing stuff out more quickly. That's why! Got to a nice milestone on the framework stuff I'm doing at work. WorkLists are now sortable in the browser, and the framework supports the sorting all the way back to the server implementation. Users of the framework don't have to think much at all to get all this free functionality. muttered around 3:36 PM

Monday, August 21, 2000 Lots of interesting (to geeks) stuff here: Eric Raymond's Home Page muttered around 12:57 PM

Saturday, August 19, 2000 Watched A Simple Plan tonight on DVD. We saw it in the theatre, but it was worth seeing again. What a great, great, great movie! muttered around 12:59 AM

Friday, August 18, 2000 For developers and development managers only: Joel on Software. Talk about content! muttered around 11:57 PM

My bike is an absolute mess today, after having ridden home in the rain on Wednesday. Yesterday was too rainy to clean and lube. I hate riding a dirty bike. muttered around 11:04 AM

Also Interesting: CollabNet, Inc. muttered around 8:37 AM

Interesting: Asynchrony - Where Great Ideas Meet Their Potential. muttered around 8:36 AM

Monday, August 14, 2000 Rode home today on my new favorite route. About halfway home, I met up with a guy from New York who is new to the area. This increased my average speed quite a bit, since he races. He's one of those guys that is built like an insect - he floats up hills. muttered around 9:04 PM

Sunday, August 13, 2000 MB, Jake (the dog) and I got up early today to do a short hike at Mount Falcon Park, where I've mountain biked a couple of times. It was a great morning -- sunny, with a nice breeze. We took the usual Castle Trail route up the front (eastern) slope, which is the route I take on my mountain bike. On this route, you mainly face away from the great views to the east, so I didn't take many photos from that direction. Even on foot this trail is tiring because the climbing just never stops. Anyway, there's a short flat section on top of a tree-lined ridge, which is where we departed from the Castle Trail to follow the hiking-only Turkey Trot Trail. Turkey Trot winds down the "back" (northwestern) flank of the Mount Falcon approach. From the Turkey Trot Trail, we got great views as we wound back around to the front and faced east again. One of the first views we were treated to was Red Rocks Amphitheatre, which seemed small from this distance. These rock formations are common in the area, and they range in size from human-scale to the size of buildings. I got a shot of some small, close-by (within 20 feet) formations that echo the much larger Red Rocks Amphitheatre in the background. Note how similar they are, except for color and size. As we wound around to the eastern slope, the "hogback" came into view. This is a sharp range of hills that rise suddenly out of the plain and signal the beginning of the foothills Here's another shot with sun rays (OK, this is usually a bad thing, but I like the way it looks in this shot: About halfway down, we happened upon a beautiful solitary tree. I couldn't resist taking a shot of it. You can see Green Mountain (another great mountain bike ride) lit up in the background. If you use your imagination you can see a little dark blob at the right, which is downtown Denver. When we reached the bottom we made our way over to what we thought was a pond to let Jake swim. The water was very clear, and Jake clearly enjoyed the swim. He'd found a tennis ball, of all things, on the trail, so we let him fetch it from the water a few times, then headed back to the car. On the way back we passed a sign that said "Morrison Water Supply - No Trespassing". Doh!! Oh well. We basically chilled out the rest of the day. We took a nap, I went to buy a boatload of mulch, then mowed the lawn -- you know all the domestic stuff. We later settled down to a supper of Subway sandwiches and the movie End of Days. muttered around 10:25 PM

Friday, August 11, 2000 Now, Backup Brain, is a nice blog. muttered around 10:36 PM

Thursday, August 10, 2000 Rode home yesterday. HOT HOT HOT. I also broke a spoke. Bummer, but the wheel didn't go out of true too badly. I'll replace it tonight. Quake 3 Arena has started locking up my new Dell desktop machine. This is a bummer, because the only way to recover from it is to reboot. This, in turn, causes Sparky to lose his connection to the "gateway", since the Dell is my Proxy Server, so I have to reboot him, too. Computers suck :-). muttered around 7:58 AM

Sunday, August 06, 2000 Went for a great ride on Saturday with my neighbor, LJ, at Deer Creek Canyon (DCC). The climb was much easier than I remember it, so I must be getting better. Mind you, the technical parts of the climb were just as hard, but the non-technical parts seemed much easier to manage, cardiovascular-wise. I did manage to bite it once on a hairy section of the trail, but I was descending, and was so far behind the seat, and was going so slow, that I didn't really get hurt -- just embarassed. DCC offers a double-lariat trail for mountain bikers, with one "entry/exit" trail that's about 2 miles long, and two loops at the top. Last time I was there, I did the Plymouth Mountain Trail to make a loop. This time, LJ and I did the Red Mesa Trail, which loops the other way. This was a great trail with a semi-exposed singletrack (great views!) for a couple of miles, then a short romp through a meadow, and a fast descent back down to the trail entrance. Very nice! Sparky is back online after some downtime when I switched his guts to another case bottom. Details in Life with Sparky. muttered around 2:21 PM

Thursday, August 03, 2000 Yesterday, I finally finished up the code changes to the WDS framework that provide support for filtering and searching (which now are conceptually the same thing). Now, an end-to-end process is defined, and the classes that accomplish this are part of the framework so that plug-in developers don't have to think about how to implement searching and filtering very hard. To do this, I changed 25 classes and introduced 6 new ones. Now I have to try to explain how the changes work and how they impact the users of the framework. Yuck. The announcement finally went out that the Java client version of our apps is going away. All users are to be converted to the Web version of our apps on Sunday. I rode home yesterday on the Platte River trail. Had a bit of a tailwind, so I had a pretty good average speed (for me) on what I call the "time trial" section: 19.9. I've done better, and was surprised that I wasn't faster. muttered around 7:14 AM

Tuesday, August 01, 2000 more: worship in my tiny robo-garden muttered around 2:35 PM

Example poetry from my ThinkGeek Fridge Code set: will we swim in the gorgeous bandwidth enormous elaborate network backbone And another: we leave only code apparatus to compile some can be stable   not muttered around 2:33 PM