Looks like jfleck has been out playing in
the yard again... Keep it up, gardens take time! We
planted some blue-berries when we re-did the back yard last
year, and they're looking really good this year. Maybe that
was two years ago, I forget. We're going to get a crop this
year, which should be really great in muffins and such. My
dad loves to pick blueberries, so it will be really nice for
him to be able to go someplace close and get them. I mostly
like to eat them. :-)
Brits, and such
Hmm, I hope that's not a derogatory term, although it is a
bit inacurate. I chat with <person>telsa a fair bit, when
we meet up on IRC (gosh I wish I had a nice psgml like mode
for this...), and she's been keeping really weird hours the
past couple of days. Up at like 6am, and going to bed at 1
or 2 in the morning! Apparently she's "catching some kip"
(did I get that right?) sometime in the afternoon. Still,
weird hours.
The other "Brit" thing was pronunciation. One of the lists
I'm on was chatting about "routers", as in the things that
direct internet traffic, and got onto something, somehow,
about how the "Aussies" and the "Brits" pronounce it. I've
never heard the Austrialian pronounciation, but I'm
certainly familiar with the Brittish one, as it sounds
exactly like how we'd pronounce it in New England,
especially an hour or two north of Boston.
Biking
I biked to work today. It was a great ride, I averaged 17.5
miles per hour. Amazingly fast. The ride home was 15.3,
which is pretty good. My goal is to make every ride a
better than 15 mile per hour average. If I can do that for
a week or twos, it will be time for a new, faster, goal. Or
maybe I should just tack and extra few miles onto the
ride... I need to develop a decent training program (not
software). A good set of workouts would be nice to have.
I've been noticing that I'm getting into much better shape
now that I've been riding again. The first couple of trips
to work were really rough, but now they're getting quite
manageable. I can also see that my abs are getting a lot
tighter than they were. My legs have some definition now,
but nowhere near the bulk I had when I graduated High
School. Hopefully that will be back before too long.
I don't mean that as vanity, although you could see it that
way. I just hate being out of shape, but had trouble
keeping myself there. I love biking, but I was really being
a fair-weather biker for a bit. Now that I'm back, I'm
thinking ahead, and trying to figure out good ways to get
clean work-clothes to work, so that I can bike to work, rain
or shine, and not have to lug a big bag on my back. My
current thought is to rig a rack onto my bike. This is
slightly complicated by the fact that I have a road-racing
frame, and there aren't any mounting holes for the screws
that would normally hold it up. I'll have to find a rig to
mount it on the little triangular (should that have an ly?)
shaped holes in the wheel drops. Oh yeah, one more way that
I can tell I'm getting to be in better shape is that I can
actually keep up for the first 2/3 of practice out on the
track. I still get tired at the end, especially when they
have me leading sprints, but it's a grand time, so who
cares?!?
Wow, I just remembered something about the science stuff I
was asking John (Fleck) earlier today! First, background...
I make ice cream in the summer. Blackberry, strawberry,
blueberry, mint, chocolate chip, whatever I can find that
looks good. In order to do that, I have to make ice. Lots
of it. At least 4 trays every day, often 6. Sometimes,
when I take the ice out of the freezer, it will look like
it's frozen in mid-splash. I'll get a picture to illustrate
next time I remember. Anyway, I just checked the ice, and
it freezes over the top first, and then on the sides and the
bottom, trapping the liquid in the middle. As the liquid
freezes, it expands. It's possible that at a certain point,
this fractures the ice on top (since it can't go sideways or
down). If the water was approaching the freezing point, as
it escpaped the crack in the ice, it would be chilled even
further, perhaps -actually- causing it to freeze mid splash.
Any physics majors out there who can tell me why that
doesn't work? I should ask muet...
One last question before I stop writing for the night...
Anybody else know what kind of elevation gains they have on
a typical ride? I've got about 350 feet down, followed by
100 feet up on the ride to work. All at just about sea
level. On the way home, 100 down, followed by about 550 up,
250 down, and another 50 up. The ride home might even be
hillier than that... (perhaps another trip down and up 50.