February 2009 Archives

2 blocks from the apt, i decided to try to adjust my rear derailler, because i couldn't shift into the top 3 gears. i fumbled around with the barrels a bit, then went to test my handiwork, and promptly snapped the cable off right at the shifter. so that was the end of my ride.

the bike shop says it's a five minute fix. a trip to the bike shop will motivate me to clean my bike up and learn how to make the adjustment properly.

but i need some kind of exercise today, and i guess this really is the perfect opportunity to resume running. i'm sure my knees and shins will thank me.

this really screams YOUR DOIN IT RONG!!

but maybe i just dunno what i'm talking about.

the Captain asked me the other day, "how's life after the big ride?"

it was a funny question because even though it's more or less the same, it really is "after the big ride". that was a big, looming event for the last 2 months of my life, and now i don't really have any goal in the future to work toward. i'm not getting up early, i'm not riding early or far, and i'm not on a plan training for an event. it's definitely different.

last wednesday i rode with a visiting friend of the Captain. he was a much stronger rider than me and kindly waited for me to catch up. he had to, only i knew the way home :D

it was the first time either of us had really ridden with another rider. one thing i realized quickly was how much i relied on my granny gear. this guy's bike didn't have a granny gear, and i bet if i hadn't been training on my granny this last year, i'd be a stronger rider today. sure, the granny lets me get up KMR, and it lets me maintain a good cadence in the meantime, but it seems that maybe it's been reinforcing some poor habits. like going slowly.

my bike computer was nice while it lasted, but the button wore out to the point where it was unusable. i attempted to repair it myself but it had anti-opening features and i couldn't figure out how to open it up. so back it went to REI, where they graciously accepted the return and refunded my money.

so now i ride without a computer. i'm done with them for a while. how fast am i going? fast as i can at the moment. what's my heart rate? somewhere below maximum. what's the grade? could be steep. i don't care.

i haven't used my granny gear since last wednesday's ride. yeah, i haven't gone up a steep grade, either, but i've gone up some decent ones, and some decently long ones. i'm learning how to ride out of the saddle more effectively (read: without spiking my HR) and i'm ending up with sore-ish knees. hopefully in a couple of weeks/months i'll be ready to take some real climbs in a respectable gear.

when i was riding with the dude last week we went up old la honda road. he left me behind after the first half mile or so. a while after that, some other dude blasted up past me. that's where i want to be -- blasting up OLHR instead of turtling up it.

so maybe i've got some goals after all.

just no sciency plan to get there.

on saturday's very wimpy ride, right near edgewood a bee flew into my helmet. i shook my head violently to dislodge it and continued on my way for a couple yards, then thought, you know, that was a bee -- maybe i should pull over and make sure it's really out.

so i pulled over, and as i was fumbling with the straps, the fucker stung me. i haven't had more than 2 bee stings my entire life. my aunt is deathly allergic to bee stings, and i thought to myself, "whelp, now i'll find out how allergic i am to bees". i got the helmet off and shook the bee away. helmet went back on the head and i continued on my way. wow, it sure stung.

i got home without dying and showed the sting to hops. it wasn't so bad. i figured i'd finally found one thing i wasn't allergic to.

whelp, i was wrong about that.

by sunday evening i had a golf-ball shaped lump on my head. this morning, it's attained baseball size. once i have my daily antihistamine i'm sure it will go down, but for a couple of days i'm going to look somewhat like the elephant man. yay!

now that's my kinda music!

ireland's worst driver

RIP, mohawk.

before.

after.

really after. 100 miles, not so hard.

ye olde salt lick.

why are we taking this?

i can finally do a really nice italian handkerchief again. and i tell you what, that's important on the bike, it sure is.

note to self: riders don't go to the pre-event "pasta dinner". only the mothers of the volunteer kids serving the pasta go to the pre-event "pasta dinner". not worth the visit.

i went thinking i'd socialize. the best bet is to socialize pre-registration and bring your friends on the ride with you.

during my voyage related to the TDPS, i sampled three more rib joints.

1) my dad grilled some "riblets" he found at the store. they were good, but not smokey, and i was really, really hungry so my judgment may have been off. the sauce was pretty good.

2) i had some ribs from these jokers during a visit to the Date Festival. these idjits bathed the entire fairgrounds with thick clouds of smoke but somehow managed to get none of it on their ribs or their "pulled pork". both were smothered in respectable but uncomplicated sauce. both were outrageously overpriced, and the bread was stale with the pulled pork sandwich. the texture was of grilled ribs. i'd be less harsh on these ribs if they weren't so overpriced (well, i was at the fair, duh) and they weren't so smoke-less in spite of their producer's smoking out the entire fair.

3) mo's in pismo beach. i've been to mo's many, many times but i don't know if i've had their ribs. the restaurant is peppered with awards for their ribs, enough consecutive years to make one wonder if anyone else was competing in these competitions. the ribs are supposedly smoked, although if you read the descriptions more carefully it seems that they're only promising that hickory is involved in the preparation of the ribs, not necessarily for smoke. one of their sauces definitely has hickory liquid smoke. the ribs were not smokey. i got their sampler rack, with all 4 of their different sauces/rubs. some were good, some were less good, but ultimately it matters not: if i go back to mo's i'm not wasting my money on their ribs. they were competently warmed, had a decent texture, but were grilled (which is appropriate for their "memphis ribs", not so much for their others, which really seemed to just be their memphis ribs with a different sauce) and disappointing. mo traveled to over 180 barbecue joints throughout the south, and the best he could come up with were four sauces to put on memphis ribs? what?

we had to stop at mo's because the grapevine was closed.

anyhow, i can't hardly eat ribs anymore anywhere but at my place.

the tour went very nicely. i finished 101 miles in about 6:30. many things happened along the way.

first, i had a cold. the day before the TDPS i went for a 9 mile ride and finished it rather beat. i worried that i'd do poorly on the tour. the cold was a head-cold and i still have it, lots of coughing and spitting. bleh.

i have never ridden in a group before. sure, i've tailed a fair number of pacelines, and i've had pacelines tail me, but i've never been in the middle of one, and certainly not in the middle of a large peloton.

right off the bat i was thrilled to learn something entirely new: how to make a kickstand out of a curb. now i know how to stand my bike up on the curb! i used that several times that day and once today.

i started in the third or fourth starting group. there was a whole lot of one-footed shuffling and i was pretty nervous about falling or being fallen-upon. i later found out that hops was fallen-upon and had to take her bike to the Giant booth for repairs. after the ride, i took my bike to the specialized booth because the shifting had been banged to hell. they wouldn't help me, but giant would. they fixed the bike up in a couple of minutes, accomplishing what would have taken me an hour. i'm pretty impressed with giant, even though i'd never heard of them until that moment.

i got off to a decent enough start. i woke up at 4:50, 10 minutes before i'd been training myself to wake, and expelled all the stuff i had trained myself to expel before sitting on a bike for half a day. that out of the way, i'd thrown the bikes in my bro's truck and my dad drove me and hops to the start. it turned out that the start was for suckers, unless you really wanted to start in a big group. in fact, it turned out that maybe the whole ride was for suckers unless you were doing it with some friends. now that i've done it, i'm not sure what the point was. more on that later.

after rounding the first corner, we were joined by a bunch of cyclists who wanted to ride but weren't interested in starting off at the start line. if i were doing it over again, or not being dropped off by someone, i'd start like that. why deal with the large crowd hassle?

the ride out of town was difficult, in the sense that it was entirely new to me: riding in a gigantic group of evenly spaced riders that stretched off for miles ahead. it was difficult to pass but i did when i could, and got yelled at by a motorcycle cop for crossing out of the cone area. meh.

my folks and hops and i had driven the 100 mile route the day before. my dad had pointed out all the "climbs", saying things like "a bit of a grind here!" or "you'll really have to pump up this one!" i had pooh-pooh-ed those statements: not one of the hills on the entire 100 mile route holds a candle even to the warm-up hill at the beginning of my bay area rides.

but one thing that worried me a little was the wind. after riding out of palm springs proper, the route took a left turn right into the windmills, an area known as "windy point". there's a reason it has that name, and a reason they built the windmills there: it's very windy. this was where the group began to spread out and i could actually try to go my own speed -- except that i was heavily opposed by the wind. i ended up going about 10mph -- pretty sad considering that i'd spend most of the rest of the ride upwards of 20mph.

every time our group approached a hill i spun right up it, past dozens of people, many of them out of the saddle doing their climbing thing. i got passed plenty of times on the ride, but i dont think i ever got passed on a hill. yay me.

after 10 or so miles of struggling against the wind, we arrived at the first sag stop, which was a total mess. they'd set it up so poorly that everyone, everyone had to dismount to pass through. it was absurd. i had no intention or need to stop but i had to dismount and walk through dirt (i'm not a priss about getting dirty, but it does put wear on my cleats) to get past. lame.

after that, indian and dillon road. i've never been on indian/dillon but next time i visit the folks and bring my bike, i'm sure they will figure into my ride. long, undulating, and largely downhill with the wind at my back, i maintained speeds upwards of 40mph for large sections, never dropped below 25mph (except during a pee break) and spent a lot of time in 35mph pacelines. the downside: the pavement is largely total crap. sun baked, cracked, knobby, rough. i started out the ride with a little slop in my shifters (probably introduced by the truck-ride to the ride start. next time, i ride to the start) but by the time i was off dillon and through thermal/coachella, i had only four or five usable gears to get me the remaining 50 miles. the other gears worked but would shift out unexpectedly. if i'd realized how simple the fix was, i'd have done it myself (next time!) or had the repair dudes at the sag stop do it (also next time).

the leg through "down valley" was kinda smelly, ugly, and uneventful. you know, "down valley". one thing happened though: i followed a group of riders out of a sag stop and down the street. after a while, i noticed something odd: nobody was passing me. i had been passed all day at all speeds, even when i was going 40mph people were passing me. i looked behind me a bunch of times: nobody. i checked out the people i was following, and they all had the yellow wristbands of the 100-mile route. eventually, we came to a cross-street clogged with cyclists. we'd been off-route and had joined up with the real route. sigh.

it turns out that this error cost me 1 mile from the ride, which brought my ride total to 101 miles instead of 102. as you may have noticed, 101 miles >= 100 miles, which means i still did a century.

at the sag stops, people were loafing about, getting off their bikes, chatting and laughing and enjoying the bands and the girl scouts or whatever. i tried to get into this mood but couldn't: i was really there for the ride. for me, the sag stops involved water refills, a pee-break (if i hadn't already gone on the road) and a quick getaway. i used my phone at the second-to-last stop to notify my folks that i'd be done soon. i also took off my arm and leg warmers there (at 10 miles to go :D). that felt like an extravagant wait.

i saw three or four ambulances, and one actual person being carted off to an ambulance. i saw lots of flat tires and felt really bad for not stopping, because in the bay area, i always ask if i can help. i saw lots of people enjoying the ride, lots of people struggling, and only one guy with an arrogant bastard jersey (though there were at least 5 in the ride). i passed a lot of fancy bikes, and got passed by a lot of modest bikes with grizzled riders. i averaged 21mph (moving -- lots of stoplights :() the last 10 miles of the ride, and 17mph (moving) the entire ride.

one of the roads during the last mile was cracked and gnarled, and banged the crap out of everyone's bike. it was a truly needless routing decision.

at the end of the ride there was little fanfare besides from my folks, who were (mostly) waiting for me. i laid on the pavement and enjoyed the sunshine, but i wasn't especially tired or bushed. i rode without my HRM so maybe i wasn't pushing hard enough. i dunno. it felt to me like just another ride.

i think next time i want to ride 100 miles, i won't pay 70 bucks for the privilege. it was nice having refill stops, but i can plan a route to include water fountains. it was a really great experience and i enjoyed myself thoroughly, including all the training and the getting up early and stuff. i didn't enjoy the head cold. it was just a ride, and i enjoy that enough without the framing of an "event".

i've been on a mission this week to find a good barbecue restaurant on the peninsula. i had three failures in a row and then googled for barbecue restaurants in my area. today we went to Mack's and it took the prize, hands down. But not without flaws. Details follow!

Sunday: Windy City Pizza and BBQ. They get lots of bonus points for being walking distance from my house, not that i've ever walked there. the Q is plenty smokey, the sauce is serviceable but not exciting. the meat is overdone and falls sloppily off the bone. the ribs are advertised as st. louis style, but since i have gone to the trouble of edumacating myself on barbecue, i happen to know that Windy City's ribs are not remotely st. louis style. Their greens are flavorful but other sides are nothing special. They get an 8/10, largely because of their proximity and their kickass deep dish pizza.

Monday: Rib Shack. Formerly Jimmy's Rib Shack but Jimmy sold it. I want to like this place. The new owners are super friendly, and very excited about running their restaurant. Unfortunately, their Q is just not that good. The sauces are good, not great. There are three different sauces, and that's good. Their meats, though, are where things fall down -- and if the meat's not great, what kinda BBQ place is it? The meat is clearly not smoked, grilled, or slow cooked. It's tough and listless, dried out and chewey. Now I like that texture sometimes, but it's really not appealing when I'm looking for something on par with what I can make myself. I give them a 5/10. Sides aren't great, meat tastes boiled and oven baked, sauce is okay. As much as I like the owners, I won't be going back -- I've given them too many chances. The meat is presented poorly -- random cuts of various parts haphazardly stacked on a plate. That's fine and that can be part of your panache, but when the plate is supposed to include pork ribs, and all we get are the triangle end of a rack of spareribs, not even cut up, it's pretty lame.

Tuesday: Back-a-Yard. One of the best restaurants in the state, IMHO. Their jerk chicken is some of the best food I've ever had. Corn festivals are amazingly great. The people are good. But I had the ribs, not the jerk. I've been there dozens of times and never had the ribs. They were okay. Well trimmed and attractive, they were not smoked. They had strong grilled flavor, and bore grill marks. The texture was just right, despite a clear lack of slow cooking. The sauce was perfectly serviceable but not great. I enjoyed the ribs very much after the previous two places, and if I were in the mood for ribs but not barbecue, they'd be very good. Back-A-Yard gets an 11/10 as a restaurant, 8/10 for ribs, 7/10 for barbecued ribs. I will definitely be going back but I'll stick to the Jamaican food!

Wednesday: Mack's in San Carlos. I'd not heard of them until my internets search last night. I had high hopes, and though my hopes were not met, I was well satisfied. The ribs were clearly slow smoked. The texture was similar to how I've made ribs -- they tasted like the owners had planned for our arrival and timed the ribs to be done just as we walked in the door. No boiled texture, no chewy, gummy, crusty "cooked last week" feeling. They were cooked today, or they did a great job fooling me. Sadly, if there was smoke flavor, I missed it. There was a smoke ring to be sure, but it wasn't massive , and the flavor wasn't there. The texture said "slow cooked". The sauce was delicious! I prefer my ribs without sauce, and flavor them with rub and smoke, or rub and rub if I'm grilling. But I realize that most places in CA will be saucing their ribs, and so if they must be sauced, I'd hope for interesting sauce. This was interesting sauce, with creamyness, jalapeno flavor, and lots of great color and sweetness. The pulled pork (i ended up with a combo because of the confusing order of my compatriots) was good when doused with this sauce, but I suspect it would not stand up on its own, lacking a good smoke flavor. Still, its texture was good as well. The ribs had a very strong pork flavor, the porkiest of all the ribs, and included the tips, making for

Overall, the best place to get ribs is still my place. But if I'm in the mood for instant gratification, and can get over the lack of smoke, I'll head down to Mack's.

Because of the freshness of the Q at Mack's, I'm going to guess that some days it's smokey and some days it isn't. We'll see.

my conditioner is called "the detangler". i have a whole lot of it, and i use only a teeny amount.

now that i'm mohawkless, i wonder what it's doing up there? there's nothing to detangle!

"jared would like that one," i said, as i emerged from the crapper. i waited for the inevitable question...

"jared?" asked hops.

"it was a footlong!" i explained.

for exactly this reason That form is older than I am, and it still works perfectly.

probably it isn't older than me, but it's really, really old and it works every time.

of course, if i wanted to look bitchin, i'd forget about the mohawk and work toward this:

It's Frobuary 1, YOMHC 0x38.

It's the end of an era and the dawn of a new one (crap, my comma key is unresponsive. oh wait, it appears to be fixed): no more mohawk. there were several factors that went into this decision:

1) the mohawk is a binary choice: either i have one or i don't. my barber doesn't know how to trim. at least, i don't care to find out if she does.
2) it was getting unruly, as my hair does when it reaches length.
3) i could never find the gorram hair tie thingies, and upon finding one, i'd promptly lose it. i'll miss the samurai look, though.
4) i was browsing old photos of me for upload to teh facebook. i decided that i looked much better with either a young mohawk (once again easily within my grasp) or some variant of very short hair.
5) i'm going to go with a bald look real soon, this will ease me in to it.
6) and finally, importantly: i'm going to have a charlie chaplin mustache soon, and with the large combover mohawk, i really did have a reasonable chance of being mistaken for someone attempting to look like this douchebag.

anyhow, i haven't adjusted to the minimal shampoo requirements, i still used way too much. the required amount has been slowly creeping up for months as the middle part got longer.

ew.

i haven't been near a dog in months.

in china they know how to deal with shit like this.

i'm all for "special rendition" to china for whomever shipped out the salmonella butter.

current facial hair. will change on 2/14.

well said

College principal Garry Taylor said the school was shocked by the incident and he was unaware of any bullying issues between the pair involved.

"We were absolutely shocked. This is a very harmonious school. It's been an outstanding week, great start to the year and we've been shocked, devastated.''

fuck you, garry taylor.

"It was by a really quiet guy. He got bullied all the time, I think, and he just sort of came out with a knife,'' one year eight girl said.

"one year eight girl" apparently knew about the bullying. why not you, mister principal?

i saw another deer taking a crap yesterday.

now, i told my crapping deer story to my buddy who lives on a farm, and he said that deer don't hunch down and pinch them off like dogs do, they just drop them mid-stride like a horse does. now that makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

but then what were these deer doing?

crapping deer.

huh, that's not what i saw.

AHA!

how often do you see that? i've seen it twice in 3 weeks.

i like it!

i think Utahns should also be required to register when they buy beer at a store, and be subject to fingerprinting and 7 day waiting periods when purchasing wine.

I think that it is our duty as Californians to organize a campaign to interfere with the internal affairs of the state of Utah and majorly fuck their shit up.

It's an embarrassing rule that insults guests and makes the state look intolerant.

The state doesn't look intolerant. The state is intolerant. You should see what it's doing to the youth of the state. Heh.

is it today that i finally get around to playing with google app engine?

maybe -- i've got the day off, and once the tri-tip hits the smoker grates, i have little to do for the next 3 hours.

actually, as of right now, i have little to do for the next 3 hours.

heh.

all bets are off when eyewitnesses are involved.

that's cool and all but your hyperbolic gushing about how gruelling it is to run 7 marathons in a row kinda overlooks the fact that not only has it been done but it's been done in a manner that far better deserves the title "ultimate endurance race".

anyhow, go USA.

(still, the irishman's feat is pretty impressive, considering that one of those 7 marathons was antarctica. and, the poor bastard had to go to australia, too.)

where are we?

didn't i say the internet was awesome?

The statement puts the Department of Justice and the DEA on notice of a change in federal policy, and indicates that continued raids may not be tolerated.

Sure, not really being done out of respect for the tenth, but if it's done, it's a big victory nonetheless for our most ignored amendment.

funny that it took a democrat to scale back federal powers (even as he increases federal mommyness in other areas. yep, but at least his programs so far don't tend to trammel on the constitution. i wonder if that's because he's read it?).

the elements for a bad ride were all there: gray skies, wet roads, late start. but somehow, i was on. not particularly fast, mind you, but i enjoyed the ride, thoroughly.

even though i've given myself a serious case of sore ass. i'm hoping that will go away after TDPS when i start cutting back on my mileage.

you call this weather? i'm supposed to go out in this?

that shot of sweet maria's "espresso monkey" had roasted marshmallows in the finish.

roasted mother blanking marshmallows!

that was awesome.

but i'm just not going out there if it's cold, raining, and pitch black.

i am not riding with a flashlight, thank you very much.

the internets tell me jokes, in-jokes that i get.

the internets tell me how to do things, things that i want to do.

the internets provide goods and services for me, things that i need.

i'd be guilty of boringness if i were to say that The Internets Changed Everything FOREVAR. so i won't say it. but it's true. and i lucked out to hit the ground running and get my roots in relatively early, so that when people talk about the Evil Bit or BGP or setting up MT to make a blog, i have some vague idea of what they're talking about, if not honest to graud expertise.

you see, teh internets are my home.

the internets are a place where i can find countless people who will laugh with me when i drive by teh market (i know where it is, too!). the internets Get Me because I Get Teh Internets.

i was never a /b/tard but i get it. i get it because i ran a harrasser bot on efnet, back in the day, stirring up shit and taking over lamer channels. i was a /b/tard before there were /b/tards. i closed the pool before the pool was on teh map.

i love ronald jenkees and can't stop talking about him because he's the internet. he's got talent, but that talent is a talent that likely would have gone unnoticed without the internets. he took advantage of youtube, in a time when dorks are cool (because dorks understand teh inernets) and turned himself into a celebrity. and he did it with slightly cheesy but very genuine, raw music that reminds anyone who was there of the demo scene.

the internets, in the last two weeks, though they've been sparse at times, have reconnected me with my best friend (and worst enemy) from high school. the internets have shown me how people i used to know turned out differently from how i expected.

i was wondering the other day what i'd be up to without the internets. my hobbies and interests now are largely non-internets related, on the surface. for example, smoking meats, roasting coffee, cycling, lifting weights. all these existed long before teh internets, and none of them require the internets for their enjoyment.

and yet, were it not for the internets, i'd be doing none of these things.

i have a grill and a smoker 100% because i came across this site and got excited about having barbecued ribs.

i roast coffee because thom's enthusiasm and salesmanship rousted me into action. the internets are the source for information on home roasting, home espresso making, and brewing a decent cup of joe. no book at the libary even comes close.

without the internets, i would not have found the great deal on a bike that i found. why not? because i found the shop where i got it on the recommendation of a friend. where'd i find that friend? you got it: the internets (craigslist, to be precise :D). even neglecting this, most of the gear i research on the internets, and before i was into cycling, i was into the idear of being in shape, the means to which i found largely on the internets.

my weight lifting enterprises were largely fueled by, you guessed it, teh internets. without misc.fitness.weights (quick, where would you find that? what? you're new school and have no idea? if you said "google groups", FAIL) i would not have been motivated, stayed motivated, or known whether deadlifting in a second floor apt. was a good idea. the internets taught me to and how to deadlift. if you know the first thing about me, you know that means i owe teh internets, big time.

i could go on all night listening to jenkees and blabbing about how teh internets improved my life. but instead i'll stop soon, and ponder by myself how i would have gotten by had i been born a century earlier, with the same intellect, same curiosity, same capacity -- and only my local homebodies to share it with.

the internets allowed me to indulge my disinterest in travel and still know the world. that wasn't even remotely possible in 1909. i would not have been even remotely possible in 1909.

think of how many people in 1909 could have been so much larger, had the internets been around then.

think of what a waste it will be if it's destroyed by the eternal september of people who don't get the /b/tards.

then i remembered:

cheney who?

Death rates returned to previous levels in the second year. The UCSF team says this was probably because police changed the way they used the stun guns after the first year.

i broke my vac pot :(

only been using it a week and a half and i broke it. i broke it i broke it i broke it :(

and then i pulled two sink shots of espresso monkey while dialing in my grinder. argh!

i was washing the top half of the vac pot and tugged on the sink nozzle to switch it from spray to stream. the tug pulled the nozzle right off the god damned faucet and since i was tugging with the hand holding the vacpot top, i smashed the glass straight into the sink, shattering the tube.

sigh.

then i proceeded to waste two shots of espresso because the grind was too fine.

but the third shot was pretty darn tasty.

the article has a nice little sidebar:

Thank you, Michael Phelps. Your latest "youthful transgression" provided the opportunity to teach my kids that role models are best chosen from those you know well, not those you know through a TV screen, writes Pat Forde.

really? like who?

your pastor?

your bishop?

officer friendly?

your teacher?

the truth is, the people you "know well" in person are probably bigger assholes -- and probably far more dangerous to your kids - -than michael phelps. you think michael phelps never smoked pot before this picture was taken?

maybe he could have won ten gold medals if he hadn't been a stoner, huh?

or maybe you've been lied to about pot, and you're perpetuating a kleptocratic police state.

but seriously, no way to find anything in phelps that would make him a role model? how about the responsible use of drugs and alcohol? after all, he hasn't harmed anyone, and he did win a medal or two, so it seems he hasn't harmed himself -- isn't that responsible?

and isn't responsibility something you'd want in a role model?

maybe you'd prefer someone who is widely respected and always follows the rules?

Olympic superstar Michael Phelps could face criminal charges as part of the fallout from a photo that surfaced showing the swimmer smoking from a marijuana pipe at a University of South Carolina house party.

End the bullshit.

Charge America's greatest-ever Olympic athlete and try to put him in jail.

See what happens.

"The bottom line is, if he broke the law, and he did it in Richland County, he's going to be charged," Cowan said. "And there's no difference between Michael Phelps and several other people that we arrest for the same type of a charge everyday."

BWHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH.

Yeah, I bet you arrest and charge tons of octuple-gold-medal winners, everyday.

Winners don't do drugs. Uh huh.

Lott played the part well. He wore stylish suits and had long hair then. He drove a Porsche seized from a drug dealer and even worked undercover with federal agents in Florida.

One of these men worked hard his entire life to be the best in the world. The other uses taxpayer guns to steal property for his own enjoyment.

Which one's the criminal? Which one's the role model?

i disappointed my lunchmates yesterday by not ordering a beer at lunch. i was the only one (besides He Who Wouldn't Ever Buy Beer) and that irritated and confused them.

today, i did buy beer with lunch. the difference? yesterday's beer would have been a sierra nevada. today's was a leffe.

i don't drink socially. i will drink in social situations, but i will not drink simply because others are drinking. this isn't a theory or a supposition, it has proven to be 100% true. if what's being served is boring or not to my taste, i'll have a water.

i end up feeling uncomfortable and awkward, but i spend 100% of my life feeling uncomfortable and awkward in one way or another. i mark the moment i realized i was not only okay with that, but proud of it as a part of my personalty as the moment i became an adult.

so far, my morning has been marked by me being covered in one sort of grease or another.

kinda.

OK sure, MOST families, but wasn't this country founded on protecting the rights of the minority? What about those of us with families that both want and need hundreds of terrorists seeking to kill us in our community? Are we to be marginalized once again?

har!

actually, i could say they were really disappointments with my recipe book, "smoke and spice". the book appears to give wildly wrong time estimates, at least at the cooking temperatures it promotes (the latter detail being a given, i suppose).

on friday i smoked a salmon filet. it came out delicious (although it had a mushy texture, i think this was because it was cheap farmed salmon) but the sauce and rub overpowered the smoke. this wasn't the fault of the recipe -- or was it? it did not specify how much wood to use, so i had to guess. not a big deal, that's what experience is about. i logged it and next time it gets more wood and less rub.

last night i made "thunder thighs", chicken thigh+leg pieces coated with a paste of onions, peanut butter, and aniseed. uncooked, the paste was kinda icky. cooked, it was too oniony but still pretty good. but again it came out undersmoked. this was my own fault, i think, for using chips instead of chunks. also, i used what turned out to be just enough charcoal for 2 hours cooking time -- should have been plenty because the recipe called for 1.5-1.75 hours cooking time. but at 2 hours, the internal temp was 150, instead of the USDA 180 reccomendation for chicken thighs.

now, the recipe called for thighs but i used thigh+drumsticks. that will make a difference, i suppose, but it should not be so big a difference.

anyhow, now i know: plan for an extra hour. pork butts always seem to take several extra hours -- and ribs take fewer! cooking's fun ;)

i zombie-made my cereal, forgetting totally that i was going to have eggs today.

wow

i found that song i was looking for, the one stuck in my head FOR THE LAST MONTH!

it's "swagger", by flogging molly, which apparently isn't on the album by the same name.

this person posted this on their facebook dingus:

Directions...
Leave one memory that you and I had together.
It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember.
Don't send a message, leave a comment on here.

Heh. All I know is I remember your name.

i went back for the other 3 in the 4-pack, saying to hops and the cashier, "i've never met a barleywine i didn't like".

whelp, now i have.

if you're reading this, and you're you-know-who, i've got barleywines for you.

i know i went to high school with you, i heard your name announced on the PA more than once. you were in the pep squad or something, right?

you friended me -- do you really know who i am?

because i have absolutely no clue who you are, beyond knowing that i've heard your name. your picture doesn't ring any bells at all.

heh.

same guy!

a real comedian.

heh again!

heh

some video game reviews. short ones.

i got a ps3 some time last year, and a nice big 42" tv to go with it. i bought the ps3 because i read in a gaming mag at the fish waffle place that Fallout 3 was coming out. Fallout 2 is the #3 greatest game of all time, so I was fairly excited by this news. After some reasoning, I decided that the ps3 was the better of the two eligible consoles for me (i will not do PC gaming again. fuck the upgrade dance. okay, maybe if they make another starcraft. but it better be really starcrafty, not all lame and goofy like warcraft 3 was).

Here are the games i got, reviewed in basically the order I played them:

Rachet And Clank: The One For The PS3: Yep, this is a Rachet and Clank game. I've played all the PS2 R+C games and I dig em. However, this one was just way too short. The graphics were stunning and the gameplay was the same (in a good way). The weapons were either familiar or funny, or both. The problem was with side quests. The last R+C had two arenas and several races. This one had one arena and no races (or maybe, one optional race that I never figured out how to play). It was over too soon.

Drake's Fortune: Awful graphics. Lazy ass programmers didn't sync their refresh buffers to the refresh rate of the TV, and you can easily see the result: tearing of the picture. Gameplay was fun and I got into it and felt it was appropriately long, engaging enough. But not a favorite, and I wouldn't recommend anyone to buy it.

Resistance: Wow! This one showed me what a shooter on the console could be. Really good graphics, great controls and gameplay. Doofy story, but who cares? A serious adrenaline waster. Replay the game to access different weapons. Recommended.

Resistance 2 : (Listed out of order, to contrast with Resistance.) Disappointing. The graphics were the best I've seen on the ps3 (until maybe dead space). The controls were all changed, for no good reason. The weapon system was also different, in a way that I appreciated: you didn't get to carry 20 different weapons, only two. I liked the thinking this added to the game. The weapons themselves were also entertaining. The problem with this game was length and replayability. Whereas Resistance seemed like an amazingly long game in this day and age, r2 was shockingly short. And replayability was 0: no new weapons the second time through. You could play it on a tougher difficulty level, but... why?

Metal Gear Solid 4: Once I had the ps3, i had to get mgs4. It delivered exactly what you want from MGS: incredibly long and boring cutscenes. Out of the whole series, I only played mgs2. This one outdoes #2 by a long shot: the cutscenes are twice as long, four times as boring, 8 times as irrelevant, and filled with long stretches of silence as the characters stare at each other. Ha ha! The gameplay is all MGS, only better, with all kinds of weapon choices, customizations, and tactics. The MGS humor is all there (e.g. a hilarious call from Otacon to change discs, har har har), replayability is high (you can play through again keeping all your old weapons, skipping the cutscenes). graphics are quite good, enemy AI is stupid and predictable, just what you want in a MGS game. enemy character design is entertaining. I never got used to the controls, but I never got used to the controls in MGS2 either. i think that actually adds to the gameplay: when I'm attacked, I flail about and take damage. Probably quite realistic.

Best of all: even though this was only the second MGS game I've played (out of many created), the writing, plot, and performances made me feel (seriously) like I'd played all of them. The skillful storytelling had me thinking, "oh yeah, i remember that" about plot elements from games i'd never played. The marketing makes it clear that this is Snake's last game, and I felt the weight of sadness press down on me the closer I came to the end of this game. I'll miss Snake.

Fallout 3: This is what I bought the whole system for. It was worth it. This is not fallout 2. It is not as good as fallout 2. It is not as fun as fallout 2, it is not as addictive as fallout 2, it is not as funny as fallout 2, it is not as entertaining as fallout 2. the NPCs are stupid, annoying, repetitive, poorly written, buggy, and cliched. But f3 has one thing f2 could not have: expansiveness. When I stepped out of the Vault and looked around: holy crap! There was a wasteland. The main character of f3 is not an NPC, and has no lines: it's the wasteland. And it's realized brilliantly and beautifully. Towns, sewers, caves, and tunnels: they all look the same. But step out into the wasteland and look around, the world of fallout is vividly realized. the wasteland is alive.

(incidentally, yesterday, at one point, I saw the big radar telescope in PA and my brain recognized it as one of the satcom arrays in the NW of the fallout map. ha!)

I don't think i could recommend f3 to anyone who isn't a fan of f2 or a fan of the genre. the combat system is good, imho, but replayability is small, and i leveled up way too fast -- reaching max only 2/3 through the game. i stopped exploring the wasteland to finish the game. why? because i didn't care to see another lame realization of Bartertown with stupidly scripted miniquests and whiney 1-note "characters".

Bioshock: They said it was the greatest game of 2008, and I agree it mighta been. Layers upon layers of plot trickery, great voice acting, spooky atmosphere, wonderful graphics and wonderful things for the graphics to show us. At the same time, there came a point where i really just got tired of the same old same old -- yes, i know how to kill these dumb splicers, do i really have to kill 10 more to advance the plot a little? kinda tiresome. i died a lot near the end(s). this is the first game i've played on the ps3 (and maybe also on the ps2) that had any ideas. though in some places the idea was presented with pretty sophomoric effort, the idea itself is intriguing -- and gives birth to an entire world.

replayability was good enough. the game is very linear, there's only one choice to be made. i played through quickly the second time, since i'd gotten good at the weapons, making the other choice. it didn't make much of a difference in the outcome of the game. the gameplay is slightly different as a result, but overall, not much difference. still, worth replaying. highly recommended.

Dead Space: still playing through this one. it's got a lame, string-you-along plot that contains just about every space monster cliche you've ever seen, borrowing heavily from aliens, event horizon, and even bioshock (most everyone is dead and gone, you find audiotapes to present the plot). okay, so the plot is lame. so is the "acting" and the voiceovers. but the gameplay is fantastic: it's new. it's a 3rd person shooter, and at first i hated the controls, but i got used to them. Those headshots you've been developing all these years as a FPS gamer? Useless. You find that out real quickly. And if you don't figure it out yourself, you find an audio tape that spells it out for you.

A lot of your other FPS skills are useless, too. Maybe hardcore FPSers will have no trouble transitioning, or have seen other games like this, but I haven't. Here's the bit from the reviews that got me to buy the game: 0-G combat. Yep, 0-G combat. It didn't turn out to be what I thought it would be, but it is still majorly cool.

The graphics are on par with the best I've seen on the ps3, and the enemy and set design is great. Lots of gore and bodies being torn apart, to the point where I don't like to watch it, and realized i wasn't as desensitized to that as i thought i was. over the top, imho. enemies are scary, panic is often induced by their attacks. highly recommended.

"I am not even sure, on the basis of what I hear here, there was a justification for arrest at all," [Provincial court Judge] Reilly said. "If you do not have an established right to cuff him in the first place, he's got every right in the world to resist."

vs.

Police in the US can now present evidence obtained based on incorrect warrant information.

oops, the computer told me to search you.