Check out Bowling for Columbine if you haven't already. You'll think. You'll laugh. You'll cry.
I have a hold on Michael Moore's first season of The Awful Truth at my library. I hope to have that for next weekend.
As promised last month, here are photos of the second frog catch and release.
It was a very nice day to ride Rocky Point. The trail was in verygood shape except for the new ATV damage. :(
Also on the plus side, I got 5 lbs of apples for free since my grocery store will do that if they overcharge for something.
Everything is not political. I watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on DVD. It is good and has a better story than the first effort.
We had some good long games in today's warm and sweaty racquetball. I started a new pair of shoes. What an autumn this is!
I have a political weekend lined up thanks to my library: Al Franken's new book, Bill O'Reilly's new book and Michael Moore's bowling movie.
I had a nice, slow ride at Rocky Point today and saw a small deer (normalized colors).
Not mentioning any titles but I've seen more than one movie lately where the uncreative resolution is having a main character killed. Please don't recommend to me a film with this kind of cheat ending. Thank you.
Three days ago I got a cut on the dorsal side of my right ring finger. The drain cover in my kitchen sink is surprisingly sharp. It's a C-shaped cut right on the first knuckle so when I bend that finger it sometimes bleeds. You've heard it before but I never realized how often I use that knuckle.
I have a new toothbrush so you know it's officially autumn.
Racquetball was hot and sweaty and I was a little tired. Now I am very tired.
Which quarter design best represents Wisconsin? The choices disappoint. The cow with cheese and corn perhaps best represents the majority of Wisconsin residents who are overweight/obese. I predict the deer with fish and farm in the background will win.
I rode 17 not-difficult miles at Rocky Point. The weather was so nice--low 70s, low humidity, cloudly, some breeze--I would have ridden more but that might have left me tired for tomorrow's racquetball.
Before riding, I phoned a forest ranger to tip him off regarding the ATV riding on the bike trail. He was already aware of ATV traffic in the area (not specifically on the bike trail) and is working on it. He thinks he knows who does it and has been spending time sitting in his truck hoping to catch the culprit.
I watched Gandhi last night. As you may know, it is quite good.
The list of examples of successful nation building seems to be fairly short.
Rocky Point was somewhat muddy but fun. I rode the 20 mile circuit. Sadly, an ATV has roughed up one mile of the trail.
On the way back I got an undistinguished pizza.
Racquetball was hot and sweaty. Summer is almost over!
In England, election campaigns last maybe six weeks. In the USA, Wesley Clark announced his campaign four months before before the Iowa caucases. This is considered "late."
Not much impact from the hurricane/tropical storm....so far.
Here's a connection from Paul "Dr. Z" Zimmerman on the NY Giants' loss after a kickoff rolled out of bounds and let the Cowboys come back and win:
It's a weird game, a weird way of life. A ball slowly rolls down the left sideline, and then, for no reason it suddenly decides to veer left. And many lives can be affected as a result. It's a concept that can overcome you. A whole body of philosophical thought could be based on such random behavior, although I'm not deep enough to figure out what it would be.
The NFL is the best sport to watch.
I rode at Calverton for the first time. It has a lot of twisty passages, all alike, so can't really cut loose very often. There are a few nice hills though and the trail is in good shape. It also drains well so is rideable when other trails may not be.
Perhaps due to an old bump, the LCD on my camera just stopped LCDing.
Racquetball was warm and sweaty. Perhaps I was a little short on oxygen due to my missing red blood cells. It was fun, of course.
Related to that....a blood pressure reading may vary depending on which arm is used.
My desktop computer has been stable. Oh, yeah.
The hurricane hysteria is abating. We might get drenched so the local newspeople remain excited.
I watched Shine last night. That's a good film for adults of any age.
Today I went to the library, post office, grocery store and blood drive. I'm not sure if that's enough to call it an errand day.
The blood drive people took extra good care of me because I've felt lightheated during previous blood donations. They reclined me more than other people and put a cool cloth on my forehead. I also drank extra water before and extra juice after. I was not lightheaded at all.
I asked the nice technician Nancy to take a photo. She asked if I had a camera. Of course, I did. She took this photo.
The Straight Dope discusses how many calories are in a pint of blood.
Rocky Point was muddy. I stayed on the drier parts of the main loop and family trail for a good ride.
Tonight I called my grandfather, who will be 94 next week. He said he'll have a dance for his 100th birthday. He has a stationary bike but hasn't been on it lately due to an injury sustained while getting into his front end loader (like this one).
No riding today due to weather. Rain rain.
Local newspersons are already getting excited about the chance that Hurricane Isabel or remnants thereof may be here in one week.
Racquetball was just fine in the cool weather. Rain my impinge on weekend biking.
I need some music. Hey! Who doesn't?
Brad Fetchet was one of the 2,792 killed in the Word Trade Center attacks two years ago. A few years before that he was one of my students at Bucknell University. He was a nice guy, quick with a smile, a positive influence on the people around him.
His mother was on TV a couple days ago to talk about the group she co-founded, Voices of September 11....such a great lady to do that good work in the face of such pain.
There are so many things to think about. The one I'll mention is how much our lives are directed by things we don't forsee.
This is also mentioned in a book I'm reading about careers....that people often can't plan out their career path ahead of time but when they look back they can see a logical thread, the way that one job or experience prepared them for the next.
Some things you just can't prepare for.
It was another great day for riding. I rode the same 24 miles at Rocky Point that I rode a couple weeks back.
Tonight being trash night....Wouldn't it be cool it trash took itself out? But what if you had defective trash, i.e., it didn't take itself out? Then you'd have to throw it away.
When I rearranged the IDE setup for my CDROM and CDRW, the Internet Connection Sharing was messed up.
The fix turned out to be replacing six TCP/IP files that may have been corrupted. It took over 10 hours of fun to track down and resolve this....wooh!
Racquetball was also fun. I played eight games so then I got a pizza. This one was weird--crispy crust, sauce/tomatoes somewhat on top of the cheese. It was good but I'm not getting another.
In the words of Chief Wiggum, "Mmm...earned my treat."
The culprit in the mystery of slow booting turns out to be my Promise IDE PCI card. While futzing with this the network access disappeared. I love Windows! That's why I own Microsoft.
Good night, Warren.
Last night I watched Riding the Rails, a documentary about teenagers who rode freight trains during the Great Depression. It features interviews with people about their experiences and lives since then. I highly recommend it. I plan on getting the companion book today from my library.
The most popular dryer setting at the laundry today was high. A couple of us used medium. No one was using low.
I went to Rocky Point and rode some of the regular trail and some of the easy trail. Perhaps yesterday's racquetball made me logy for the first part but I picked up the pace as the ride progressed.
Put natural peanut butter on your shopping list and get smooth.
The first few times I booted with my new components things just zipped along in Win98SE. Now it is much slower. Hmmmm.....
My mom was told today that the only (common?) animal bite more infectious than a cat bite is a horse bite. Sadly, she learned this because she had been bitten on her thumb by a feral cat.
I picked up a GeForce 2 MX 400 video card. It's 64 MB, AGP 4x....plenty fast for me for now.
Once I remembered to make all the power connections the computer started right up. It is very fast even though it's not completely set up yet.
One cool thing is that both Linux and Win98SE booted without needing to be reinstalled. I may upgrade to WinXP at some point so am happy not to have to set up Win98 again. I still have some drivers to install or update in each operating system.
I tried my shiny new power supply with my old system. It still crashed.
I installed the shiny new motherboard and processor and then found out that my shiny new motherboard has an AGP 4x/8x slot. My old video card is AGP 2x. I was going to upgrade sooner or later so now it's sooner!
My new components arrived as scheduled. I was busy with cool and sweaty racquetball so haven't tried them out. Tomorrow's rain will be suitable for this project.
Next movie: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. My library is so good.
I made a pizza to celebrate Labor Day! It took about 2.5 hours and turned out much like the previous one.
There is not enough pi in Pi....or maybe I know too much math to enjoy it.
In honor of the rain I watched Dead Man Walking. Now that's an all-around winner of a movie.
This won't give away the plot....in the movie a prisoner says he hates the US government and wants to blow up buildings but not people. The movie was released in December, 1995, about eight months after the Oklahoma City bombing. Timothy McVeigh was executed in June, 2001. Terry Nichols was spared the death penalty because the jury did not determine that he intended to kill.
A federal prisoner used to mail requests to my radio show. He had plead guilty to bombing an NAACP building. News articles report no one being injured during this crime.
Speaking of my radio show, I listened to a tape of one show today. It has a Kid Dynamite song followed by an Atom and His Package song. Now Atom is cooking up plans with ex-Kid Dynamite guitarist Dan Yemen.
Everything is connected.
I rode the Main Loop at Rocky Point today and then I rode it again along with the West Loop. It was my first time to go around twice in the same day....total of 30 miles. The weather was so fine.
I have Pi to watch now unless the tiredness kicks in.
