Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

No one saw that

We stayed indoors all weekend, because it was cold all weekend. That bitter, real winter sort of cold. It snowed Sunday evening, beginning a little later than expected and ended right on time. The cats were very much interested in the snow this time and I said, fine. Let me put on a jacket and some shoes.

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They were not impressed with it for very long.

Ours are strictly indoor cats. Occasionally, one of them will time a door right and run outside, only to hide under a nearby bush. The other doesn’t try to sneak out a lot, but when she does, she’s off like a shot. So they know, basically, the front porch and one corner of the back of the house. Poseidon went that way, his favorite way around the back, and didn’t even make it to his rose bushes. Phoebe went the opposite way, to the right. I don’t know if either of them have ever gone that way. And you could see that she wanted to go back inside. The door should be over here, somewhere. But I think, all of it being unfamiliar and ridiculously cold besides, she lost track of where the door was. So I stopped recording and took her in. Poe was happy to see the door open, too.

These professional cuddlers and cover stealers are no match for mother nature.

When the snow ended the expert indicated we should go out and shovel, because it was the wet kind of snow and it would otherwise be trouble tomorrow. So there we were, 8 p.m. last night, hoping the neighbor’s little boy wasn’t already asleep so we wouldn’t disturb him with the “shhhhh shhhhhk shhhh shhhhhhk” sounds of winter.

But the driveway got cleared. Once again, enough to shovel, not enough to try the snowblower, which is doing it’s job of keeping real snowfalls far, far away from our driveway.

Today, the Canada geese flew over. I caught the tale end of the flock.

After which, I noticed there was a patch of snow right there on the road at the foot of our drive. Wouldn’t want anyone to have a problem with that as they passed by. So I set out to take care of that. Parka, because it’s cold. Hat, because same. Sunglasses, because of the reflective snow. Boats, because I have them. And three-quarters of the way down the drive I slipped on the ice. The shovel went to the left and back. My glasses went to the right and back, after scratching my nose and eyebrow. My body went back, and so did my head, right on the cement. Ker-ploof. Because my head no longer makes kerthunk noises.

So I was sprawled on the driveway for about six seconds, and then I said aloud, “Get up.” I rolled to my right, on a knee, and sat like that for a few moments to make sure I was ready and prepared. To stand up. On the ice. The micron-thin layer of which I’d just fallen on. The part that my lovely bride shoveled last night.

My part of the driveway was perfectly fine, by the way. And so was I. Once I got up I had to carefully navigate retrieving the shovel and glasses, but eventually I had them both in hand. At the street, I saw the snow was a hard-packed layer thinner than your favorite frosting on your favorite treat. It wasn’t going anywhere. And neither was my headache.

I kid. I’m fine. I’ll feel this tomorrow. But I was fine enough to have a 32-mile bike ride this evening. I did a course which just lapped me around one big hill over and over. Ten laps. I grew to hate that hill. It started with a sprint, and then a slight ramp, before nice little incline, which flatted out, turned left, and then gave you the real thing. And before you got into the downhill you were going back up again. Finally, you floated into the decent, to the left, and then the right, and the right, and the right some more. And then that sprint again.

Ten times.

On my last lap, though, I set three PRs. One for the lap itself. One for the climb, by just one-tenth of a second. And then I trimmed down the sprint by three seconds to end the thing.

If you think doing anything in laps is tedious, try it on a video game, in your basement, in the dead of winter.

cycling / Friday / site — No comments
17
Jan 25

I finally left Meta behind

My god-sister-in-law (just go with it) has a friend who is in a two-man band and they played a restaurant nearby this evening. So we braved the chill night air and drove to see them play. Gen X covers. They do a nice job. They can fade into the background or grab the room’s attention. Whatever is required at the moment. Good music! Very average cheeseburger!

Before that, I did this. It felt good.

I also changed up the buttons on the front page and the top of this page. No reason to have links to things I don’t use anymore.

I don’t want to say it was cathartic, or even a big decision. I ignored Threads almost immediately because it was terrible from the start. I never got a lot of traction on Instagram, because I’m not especially popular, I guess. Facebook never appealed to me all that much. So these things were easy for me. They’ll be less easy for some, I realize that. And I know that some people will be fine with the direction Zuckerberg is going.

I could thunder away at that for a few thousand words. The content moderation, dismissing the very notion of fact checking, the filters, the misinformation, the changes to their standards which will have continued negative effect on users. People you know are going to be brought further into risk by Zuckerberg’s decisions to cozy up, or read the moment, or try to be relevant — whatever the true motivation is. And whatever that motivation is, users barely figure into it. That’s not a new thing at 1 Hacker Way. Cambridge Analytica should have been the wooden stake in the heart. What they did to news media, their legendary pivot to video nonsense, how they’ve data mined you and gleefully put their thumb on the scale of distribution, the surveillance, any one of these should have all had them tossed with the bathwater. But here we are. They think they’ve got you, because you allowed for all of that. And now, at this moment, we are at a place where none of what’s going to occur is worth whatever you think you get in return.

That’s a personal decision for everyone, but even before they make it, people have got to know about it. The chronically online are the first to see what’s happening. The rest will figure it out for themselves later. (Maybe. Depending on what media environment they’ve cultivated for themselves.) If it does bubble into their consciousness, people will make their own decisions based on toleration and habits and needs.

Thing is, we don’t really need any of these things for much. We certainly don’t have to tolerate the coarseness and continued enshittification. There are better alternatives when it comes to how one spends their time, keeps in touch, or what have you. Some of them are much better.

So I didn’t have great habits in Meta’s walled garden. I don’t need them. This was an easy choice. Moreover, it’s the right one.

Wish I’d done it much, much, sooner.

I said yesterday’s bike ride was perfectly uninspired. Today’s was even more ho-hum, if that’s possible. Just 20 miles. Nothing of interest to report. Some days you’re just keeping the legs turning, and that was today.

But I did go by the best fake storefront in the fake Zwift world.

I blame the weather. We’re due some snow this weekend and then a week of bitter, bitter cold. That’s no way to begin a new semester, which starts on Tuesday.

cycling / movies / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
16
Jan 25

One Short Day

Because everything is lining up, and because it was cold and all of the little people are back in school we went to the movies and caught a matinee. I’ll give you one guess what we saw.

We saw the play, in London in 2015. It was one of those things where we had an afternoon, and were probably ready for an evening that moved at a regular pace, and so we walked over to the ticket booth where you can get late tickets inexpensively. One of the options was Wicked, and so we enjoyed that on the West End. This was the curtain.

The movie, part one, is what movies should be: a lot of fun. Most of what you saw were practical effects. The tulips were plentiful. The costumes were fantastic. They were, perhaps, the element most to the original, with just enough modern post-dystopian steampunk flare to pop in high definition.

Apparently the singing was done live. Sometimes that seemed obvious, not in a bad way. And other times it seemed incredibly impractical. Ga-linda is terrible. Ariana Grande is great in the role, but the character is terrible. Cynthia Erivo is so wonderful it’s difficult, even knowing the play, to imagine how they turn her from protagonist to antagonist in the second movie.

Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, who originated the protagonist and deuteragonist on stage, have small parts. I said it’s a shame that no one is still left from the Wizard of Oz that they could drop in somewhere. But I said that in the car, without looking this up. According to People, there were three surviving cast members still with us late last year, 84 years later!

My one problem — aside from the standard musical issue that at least one song is weaker than the rest — is that someone brings into a classroom this new invention, they call it a “cage” and, in it, the animals will be kept, so they can be held in their natural condition. Which is to say, without a voice. (A lot of that element of the movie seems pointed and modern.) But here are people with bicycles, electricity, the most over-engineered train in the world and the coolest library ever, but they’ve only just invented cages?

I suppose the order of development means a lot in a fictional society, too.

Anyway, it’s a fine movie. Watch Wizard of Oz again before you see Wicked. You’ll find more of the Easter eggs that way.

It was snowing when we left the theater.

That’s just beginning of a week-and-a-half of actual winter. I bet they never have to deal with that in Emerald City. The wizard probably takes care of it.

I had a perfectly uninspiring 38-mile bike ride this evening. I averaged about 20 miles an hour, and near the end I thought, I should grab an image. Just then I was riding here.

And that fit. That’s how impressive the ride was. You might think my little Zwift avatar is riding through a cave there, but no. No, he is riding to his death. Death by asphyxiation, for he is riding through the heart of a volcano. And, surely, while holding a 24 mile per hour pace through the thing my avatar would be breathing hard, and pulling in more sulfur than anything.

Volcanoes vary, but the gases they produce are primarily water vapor, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide (SO2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), nitrogen, argon, helium, neon, methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

No way my guy lives through that, right?

He’s probably got a better shot at being safely whisked away to Oz.

Wednesday — Comments Off
15
Jan 25

Taking a beat

There’s nothing here because there’s nothing up here.

*I’m pointing to head.*

There’s nothing up there. I have poured it all into work today. While I finished my syllabus on Monday, I had to create the Canvas version of the class, which was what I did all day today. That’s a lot of link checking. A lot of copy-and-paste. All of the detailed things that both appeal to me and frustrate me. But it’s done. Except for a few small things that can wait. While classes start on Tuesday the Canvas version of things has to be up so students can preview the course five days early. Today was all about hitting that deadline, which is tomorrow.

I’ll finish those small things next week.

I’m taking tomorrow off. And probably most of Friday. It’s not that the work I’ve done this week — or in the last three or four weeks in preparing that class — have been particularly difficult, but some of it has been incredibly detailed. The stare-at-it-all-until-it-goes-blurry details. I’m ready for a break from the details.

And also formatting.

We’re going to the movies tomorrow.

adventures / memories / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
14
Jan 25

A most unremarkable day

More editing today. And then we went to a little birthday gathering for the owner of the local bike shop, a friend of ours was celebrating his birthday in his store with his friends and neighbors. It felt small town and happy and great. Do enough of those sorts of things and you’ll begin to feel like you fit in somewhere.

We talked to the bike shop owner, his wife and adult daughter. We saw a guy we run with and a graphic designer we know and a fellow who chatted us up about mountain bike riding.

Then we came home and I edited more stuff for my lovely bride. This one was a seven-page document. That puts the score for the week at 9 pages I’ve asked her to read for me, and 19 she’s asked me to read for her.

Hey, she made dinner. It evens out.

We learned some great news today. Something we worked on last year has led to something … impactful. I’m not sure if it’s something that’s public or not, yet, but it’s exciting.

Otherwise, worked through the day’s email, did a lot of reading, and spent a scant 38 minutes on the bike.

And that, somehow, has been the thrust of a low key day.

At Christmas a few years ago, my wife and I told our parents that we didn’t want presents, but to spend more time with them. And then the pandemic hit. So finally, a year ago, the stars lined up and we were able to take my mother on a trip. It was a lovely little week in Cozumel. We did some diving, we took it easy, ate some great food, did some more diving. It was a great trip. And a year ago, today, that trip was winding up. This was our last lunch there, before we set off for the airport. This was the view we enjoyed at lunch every day.

It was 84 degrees down there when we left that day. It was 32 degrees here today.

You shouldn’t judge one day over another, especially if one was a vacation and the other is most unremarkable, but, weather-wise, one was better than the other.