This morning at about 10, my friend Sara, her dog Nellie and I met at the Bridal Veil Falls parking lot to go mountain biking. We followed the Bonneville Shoreline Trail for about a mile an a half. It was pretty steep and rocky but a good initiation back into single track. Now that I have both my road bike and my mtn. bike, I put the fat tires back on. It was a weird feeling and it took me most of the ride to get used to the tires and riding off road again. I’m still not there and haven’t got my rythm back yet. A few more rides should do it. I think it’s been two years since I did any serious off road on my mountain bike.
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So, I have been using Verizon for years as my cell phone provider and have thought it funny that they claim such good coverage yet it seems that I have terrible coverage. In fact, in my lab at Novell, the indicator says “roaming” which I have always thought was weird and I get hardly any signal and have to step out of the lab or go to my office to make cell phone calls. Last night, the service was so bad that every single call was dropped in a matter of seconds or would not connect at all. After calling technical support, I found that I had not updated my Preferred Roaming List (PRL) in over a year. Hey, how was I supposed to know that I should do that? I didn’t see any notice about it anywhere. However, I did find this FAQ on the subject:
(especially note item #4)
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Hey, anyone know of cutlist software for Linux? What is cutlist software you ask? It’s software that helps optimize your use of linear board feet when cutting stock for woodworking projects. It does best-fit rectangular nesting with some optimizations for cut paths. Cutlist software allows you to take all the rectangular panels in a project, optimize them on say, one or more 4′ x 8′ sheets of plywood so that you get the most use out of your wood stock with the least amount of waste. Useful in my case for designing and building speaker cabinets and of course, some other projects in the future. If you know of anything, please let me know. I’ve found two packages for windows (CutMaster2D and CutList Plus) and will try to get them to run on Wine but I’d rather have a native Linux app.
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Went on a really cool ride at lunch. Rode from the Novell parking lot along Kuni Rd. to the old Thunder Mountain Raceway then west, over the freeway to the National Guard Armory before heading back along the same route. I turned on the heart rate monitor about half way through and it had a bogus max heart rate of 222 so the HR info is a bit off today. I’m adding 300 to the calories burned to make up for the time the HR monitor was off. Nice ride.
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I usually don’t ride on Sundays unless I’m stressed out. I’m stressed out. Vivian and back. Trail not too busy today but there were several families out after church. Overcast and a bit cold with some wind. Looked like it might rain.
Now I’m off to SLC to have dinner with my family.
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Today I took the tarmac out for the first ride. I didn’t push very hard because I wanted to get used to the way the bike feels and shifts and handles. This is my first road bike. It’s amazing. With the small effort that I did put into the ride, I was able to stay at my old levels on the mtb bike on which I did push hard. Totally fun. The weather was amazing - blue sky and in the 70s. I road to Vivan Park then to through North Orem to Pleasant Grove and back. Nice ride. Not too hard. I did forget to use my heart rate monitor so no vital stats this ride…
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Just got home from Bingham Cycles with the bike. I have to say that the Carbon/White color scheme is SOOOOO much prettier than the Team Gerolsteiner colors. It’s just plain cool. It has a beautiful carbon pattern showing through with the joints at the top of the seatpost and the cranks fading from black to the carbon fiber pattern.
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Just called Bingham Cyclery. The bike is in their Sunset, UT store and will arrive in their Provo location tomorrow. It’s like waiting for Christmas morning except there’s no snow and it’s April…uh…anyway, you get the idea.
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So, you have a WordPress site that you want to easily have syndicated or add extra features to the feed. Maybe you want to add “flairs” to you feed or make your feed easy to read when someone clicks on it with a browser which normally doesn’t understand how to display a feed’s XML without an associated style sheet. Maybe you want feed readers that only understand atom to be able to consume your RSS feed. Maybe you want to have more detailed statistics on how your feed is being used and by whom.
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Today is the first stage of the Tour de Georgia, one of the largest cycling races in the USA. Team Discovery is there without Lance Armstrong this year. It’s a new year and a new beginning for the team as it comes out from the shadow of one of the greatest cyclists to ever live. Timely (as live as possible) updates of the tour’s stages is given on VeloNews’ website at the following URL if you’re interested in following it:
http://www.velonews.com/Admin/ticker/georgiaonmymap5.html
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Went to the Perl Izumi outlet in Park City, UT yesterday and they had some of last year’s shoes on sale. I had tried some Specialized shoes on at Bingham Cycles the other day and really like them. My mountain bike shoes are specialized and I’ve had them for several years. They’re comfortable and have worked well for me.
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Well, I finally did it. I started searching for a new bike last year (I talked about it in these posts: 1, 2, 3 and 4). I decided on the 06 Specialized Tarmac Expert. I bought it yesterday after work, it should arrive sometime next week - before the weekend I hope!
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Had an appointment that I had to be to at 7pm tonight so I ran home as quickly as I could then I only made it to Bridal Veil Falls before I needed to head back. Hopped in the shower and was off. I barely made it.
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Started the season off right with my first ride. I am surprised that I was able to keep up to my old levels or at least nearly so over the winter. I went to Vivian Park today and back. A shorter ride but a very good one. The Trail was mostly cleared except for a couple places where rock and debris still covered some of the pavement however, there were rideable paths all the way. There are cement blocks that still block the path just above Bridal Veil Falls but they really serve no purpose as the bridge just beyond them is still open and so there is no real impediment to using the trail.
I got a new training/fitness aide this year - a Polar F11 heart rate monitor. It’s sweet. I’m now able to record my calories burned as well as max and average heart rate during my rides! Whoo hooo! I know you’re all excited about more stats…
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Abe Allen, a friend of mine asked me to host a web site for him. He developed and owns a unique process for creating complex shapes using composite materials such as Carbon Fiber, Kevlar®, Dyneema®, fiberglass, etc. He has several proof of concept shapes and objects that they have produced and are currently ramping up for manufacturing and licencing the technology. It’s pretty cool stuff. They’ll have more pictures of products and shapes as they continue to improve the process and have more samples of manufactured parts. If you’re interested in watching what is sure to be a really cool beginning, check them out here:
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There are three reasons I like cycling. I was talking with Melissa tonight and this was one of the many things we talked about. Of course, this is one of the less important things - it was a really good talk. The three reasons are in order of importance and relevance:
- Because I enjoy riding
- To keep physically fit
- To think
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