mishareads

sdn @ 2:04am: dental update.
i am sure you are all delighted to hear that number 17 is broken and i am in minor agony. i suspect that root canal 15 is nigh.

rednekkid @ 2:51am: i should probably name the kitten sometime...
Been calling her "Baby Girl" as her finders did, it works. Not sure how well that will when she's grown.

I thought Ashley was The Name before I got her, but it just doesn't work once I saw her. The only name that I haven't yet rejected is "Eli" (pronounced "Ellie") after the girl ("I'm not a girl, Oskar...") vampire in Let the Right One In (and that totally works for Maggie's current feelings, and her fierce predator instincts for those who've managed to sit through the whole films of her now documented violence) but I don't think I want to carry the vampire theme forward forever. Good memories, though.

She'll probably just end up being "Baby". Don't know why I have a naming block going on...

ptomblin_lj @ 2:38am: 5th Annual Armond Bassett Canoe/Kayak Race

“It could be worse – it could be raining”
– Marty Feldman, Young Frankenstein

One of my top goals this year was to finish a 10 mile kayak race, and today I did it. The Armond Bassett race takes place here in town at the Genesee Waterways Center, a place I’ve paddled a lot in the last year. Maybe I’m not being fair to the organizers, but in some ways the AB seems like a canoe race that reluctantly allows kayaks to participate. I can’t really explain why I feel that way, but I do. Maybe it’s because on the second day (tomorrow), they have canoe races that *don’t* allow kayaks to participate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally posted at Rants and Revelations

ptomblin_lj @ 2:45pm: Wednesday Night Time Trial

Last night’s time trial didn’t look like it was going to be a good night personal bests. There was a very strong breeze coming from the north, and there were 2-3 foot waves on the bay. With no hope of setting a new personal best, Tom Murn and I decided to race head to head.

In the excitement, I forgot to hit the start button on my GPS, so no graphs this time. Tom is lighter and in a fast sprint boat, so he came off the start line ahead of me, and lead under the bridge. After the bridge, I was starting to pull ahead of him, so I cut over in front of him and relaxed for a couple of strokes yelling for him to get on my wake. I can’t really turn around and see behind me comfortably, so when I thought I saw him coming up on my stern in my peripheral vision, I started hammering again. My speed going up into the wind and waves kept dropping and dropping, and was hovering around 5.4 by the time I started to turn. At the turn, I got my first look back and saw that Tom was now 20 or 30 yards behind me. Oh well, too late to worry about that. Turning around, I expected the wind to push my speed up, but it seems that I could really only go the speed the waves wanted me to go, so I was barely going 6.2 mph on the way back in. 6.2 is pretty much my normal no-wind speed, so it was almost as if I was getting no benefit at all. My split at the half was 9.50, which is 0.12 minutes slower than my previous fastest split, or 0.07 minutes slower than last week when I set a personal best overall.

Coming up the creek, the tail wind without the waves helped and so my speed was up. I was passing people, and felt good. I didn’t make the turn all that well in spite of having practiced it before hand, but I was soon accelerating out of it. I saw Tom again, and he looked like he was fading a bit. On the way down, it was all a matter of trying to find maximum advantage from the current while minimizing the disadvantage from the head wind.

My final time was 18.97, which is only 0.02 minutes slower than my personal best. Now I know *exactly* how Lance Armstrong feels being 0.22 seconds out of the yellow jersey.

More significantly, it means that my second half was actually faster than the first half. Either my fitness level is getting better, or the surfing downwind on the bay helped me rest a bit.

Originally posted at Rants and Revelations

iayork @ 5:19pm: Important information
William: The Greeks were really smart people in the old days ... they made robot ducks.
Me: ??
William: Yeah, robot ducks that went into the mountains to get water.
Me: ... are you maybe thinking of the Roman aqueducts?
William: Yeah, that's it.

pasketti @ 7:12pm: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Took two weeks off to tile the downstairs. I was thinking it'd take maybe a week to do all of it.

Turned out to take the full two weeks just to do half, and I did the final grouting the day before I went back to work.

Pictures: http://www.cws.org/~joed/projects/dstile/

rednekkid @ 2:45pm: *cries, wants an android phone
http://www.twitkitteh.com/

youxu @ 1:42pm: A Record of My Own
( 21 hours! )

ptomblin_lj @ 9:33pm: That’s not good

On Thursday, I did some extensive work on the positioning of the rudder pedals on my kayak. I drilled some new holes in the boat, eliminated the extraneous rails, and moved the new pedal rails in order to reduce the way the rudder pedal wire guides have been gouging holes in my lower legs and to raise the pedals so that I can push better without pushing the rudder back and forth.

Today I went out to try to paddle the course of the Armond Basset Race, which takes place next weekend at the Genesee Waterways Center here in town. All I know for sure it that they say it’s “2 laps of 5 miles”, but Mike F says he thinks it’s 1.25 miles upstream in the river, 2.5 miles downstream, 2.5 miles upstream, 2.5 miles downstream, and then 1.25 miles upstream again. That makes sense, because it means that each boat passes the start/finish area 5 times, which would be good for any spectators – on the down side it means that we’re finishing upstream, and the stream is running pretty fast. So Mike and I tried to paddle it, but after 4 miles or so, my hips were really starting to hurt, so I gave up after 1 loop (5 miles). Maybe I went too fast trying to keep up with Mike (who is normally a much faster paddler than I am), but I think it’s mostly because of the new leg position. I’m really hoping that things are better by next Saturday.

I’m looking at my GPS track from today versus the Tupper Lake race, and my heart rate was much lower today. So I couldn’t have been working as hard. But man that current was strong – I was averaging 5.0 mph going up, and 7.4 mph going down.

Originally posted at Rants and Revelations

rednekkid @ 11:09am: finally: proof that i do have a kitten
Or, at least proof that I do have most of a kitten's head, if you're some kind of pedantic pedant.

rednekkid @ 11:49pm: DAYTONA & TONY!
Video: http://www.nascar.com/video/cup/2009/07/05/cup.day2.high.final.nascar/index.html

rednekkid @ 10:12pm: FIREWORKS FOR TONY!
Even TOCKITEW was yelling "YES! YES! YES!" over that finish.

DAYTONA is so fucking awesome.

sdn @ 11:34pm: check-in.
i am spending this glorious holiday weekend here. yay bristol! the moon is huge outside.

what have you been up to?

rednekkid @ 1:03am: "Robert! There's a fucking kitten in the house! MY HOUSE!"
Maggie just ran up the stairs to tell me this. She's been in denial about it until now.

chi_editrix @ 3:29pm: Fleet Foxes
I just CANNOT GET ENOUGH of Fleet Foxes!

chi_editrix @ 1:40pm: Gallery of Old Boyfriends
Holiday Special -- 1966

chi_editrix @ 1:38pm: Gallery of Old Boyfriends
1963:

ronebofh @ 7:33pm: "make me one with everything"

A clutch of young boys just ran up to my door and knocked with alarming intensity.  "Sir, we need items!"  "Excuse me?"  "We're on a scavenger hunt and we need items, do you have some??"  "Um, guys, 'items' means 'things'.  I got things in here, but you need to be more precise."  I got some blank stares, but they were rescued by the supervising adult, who gave me a list of items, so i went to the kitchen and got an apple for them.

ptomblin_lj @ 8:16pm: Not the way I wanted to start the night

Last night was another Wednesday Night Time Trial. This time, the weather was perfect – no wind, no waves on the Bay, not too hot, and it had recently rained so the creek was high. I went out for my warm up and when I came back I was saying to somebody how this was going to be a night for personal bests when suddenly my rudder pedal went “ping” and I realized the cable had come off again.

I then spent 30 minutes in utter panic trying to get the rudder pedal jury rigged to hopefully last the race, and do it in time to run the race. I did it, but only just, mostly thanks to Mike F who helped, partly in figuring out how things should go together, but mostly in telling me to calm down and don’t rush. After that, I managed a quick warmup, and got in the now very long line to start. Paul D made me go ahead of him again. With one minute between us, that means I got to see him at each buoy turn, but he got to see all four times I had to flip up my rudder because it felt like there were weeds on it. I think at least two of those times there were, because my speed immediately after was 0.2 mph faster than before.

Unlike when I’d warmed up, there were a few small wakes on the Bay during the event. Not enough to really make any difference to anything, but enough to notice. I pushed myself really hard, but I felt like I wasn’t going anywhere. My split time was 9.43, which is slower than both last week and the first week, both times when I’ve set personal bests.

Going up the creek was good – this time I remembered to hold to the banks of the river to stay out of the current, although Ginger B didn’t realize I was on-course and played chicken with me. Because of my problems with my right rudder pedal, I went around the far buoy the “normal” counter clockwise method instead of the Jim Mallory approved clockwise method. That probably cost me a few seconds, but not a lot. Turning down stream was great – my speed immediately increased from around 6.0 to around 6.4 mph.

My total time was 18.95, another personal best. Even better, this was the closest ratio between first half and last half times except for 17 June when my time was horrible both at the split and the final.

I know Paul D thinks I’m obsessed with comparing myself to him, but since he’s so close to me in time, it’s only natural that I’d use him as a benchmark to compare my own progress. And today he was once again a tiny bit slower than me at the split (0.04 minutes slower), but much faster than me at the finish (0.10 minutes faster). I don’t know what I’m going to have to do to beat him, but I’m pretty sure he’s doing it too.

After the race, and some of the after race socializing, beer drinking and hot dog eating, I was asked to get one of the buoys. I did, and as I was heading back, Steve B came along on a bit of a warm down paddle. I tried to stay with him, and I couldn’t. Then I tried to ride his wake, and that didn’t work either. But when I got in I was worried about how my rudder pedals were sticky, and so I was working them back and forth and the wire went “ping” again. Today (Thursday), I’ve spend some hours trying to fix that issue, but I guess only time will tell if that works or if I’ll need to order a new set of pedals.

Originally posted at Rants and Revelations

rednekkid @ 2:22pm: i guess my life is complete now
http://tweetcraft.codeplex.com/

ptomblin_lj @ 12:37pm: My situation in a nutshell

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/107267/pay-cut-cities.html

“Higher-wage people are likely being laid off to a greater degree than lower-wage people, or moderately high-wage workers are being replaced by temps or contractors who are paid less,” says Wial.

The picture is even worse in upstate New York, where average wages fell 2.3% in Rochester and 2.2% in Syracuse.

Shit, I’m never going to get a job that pays what I’m worth, am I?

Originally posted at Rants and Revelations

rednekkid @ 4:32pm: is there anything more fun than...
...buying new cat toys for your new kitten?

I. Think. Not.

She'll be here tomorrow!

notgruntled @ 3:23pm: No love for bureaucrats
The anti-universal health care ads are out in force, with the usual bag of tricks. Grainy pictures, spooky music, big scary words like "BUREAUCRATS" splashed across the screen. The nightmare scenario: "health care decisions made by bureaucrats instead of you and your doctor."

Which leaves me to wonder: Have these people never had any contact with an insurance company?

iayork @ 1:46pm: Happy Canada Day


I feel tingly all over.

ptomblin_lj @ 3:29pm: Rochester Open Water Challenge 2009 on Epic Kayaks web site

The race write-up is on Epic’s web site and newsletter:
Rochester Open Water Challenge 2009 – News & Events – News | Epic Kayaks.

Ohhhh, fame and fortune. Well, limited fame and no fortune, but still…

A battle between Paul Dorscheid and Paul Tomblin both of the BayCreek Racing Team continued the full length of the course.

Dorscheid and Tomblin battled to the finish with Dorscheid edging Tomblin by a nose.

Originally posted at Rants and Revelations