In the last installment, I rambled on about road racing safety and audio setups for music loving runners. In this installment I will share with you my Hood To Coast 2013 solution. This solution has not been road tested because, well, I think it would annoy the crap out of the other people on the trails and the folks in the neighborhoods.
First, the sub-structure: I'd needed a new hydration belt because the belt I was using sucked. I guess I wasn't even really using it. The couple of races I'd busted out on had been hellish as I'd tried to keep the thing cinched around my waist, with the water inside of the bottle and not all over my ass and without getting a rash. Failed on all goals. I doubted any hydration belts were worth a damn and had no hope that the one I'd ordered on Amazon would do anything but suck. I was wrong.
Meet the Nathan Speed 2R Hydration Belt:
http://www.amazon.com/Nathan-Auto-Cant-Hydration--Medium--Nathan/dp/B00CEW81FS/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1373048063&sr=8-5&keywords=nathan+speed+2r
This belt is comfortable, easy to adjust and it stays put. I've taken it out on many jostling trail runs and it just stays in place. No cinching it around my ribcage, no adjusting it as it makes an orbit around my body every mile. Strap it on (a little low in the hips) with the stretchy but comfortable velcro strap and you're good to go. It has a funny metal disc in it that looks like it would hurt but you won't feel it. That's the magic. That makes it so everything can move in a way that keeps this thing from driving you nuts. At least that is how I like to imagine it.
Add the AYL Mini Speaker:
http://www.amazon.com/AYL-Portable-Speaker-Rechargeable-Battery/dp/B007OY5V68/ref=sr_1_10?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1373048526&sr=1-10&keywords=mini+mp3+speakers+AYL
I didn't but this strictly for Hood To Coast. In fact, I didn't buy it at all, I put it on my Elfster wish list and got it for Secret Macabee. (Yes, my life is culturally diverse.) My friend had recommended it to me for camping trips. Just charge it up in the car with the USB and it pumps out big sound (you'll be amazed of what it can do). I use it outside regularly while I wash the car, rake leaves, dance around my pagan altar, whatever. It's awesome.
Plus the MP3 player of your choice and you've got a soundsystem booming from below. I should note that the way I have it linked above, it costs more that the Road Noise Vest which my brother has purchased and is happy with. I, personally, did not pay as much as the price Amazon lists above for these items (well, the speaker was $20 but the belt was only $30). So there are good options out there. The true test will come on race day. Hopefully I'll be in the same van as my brother so we can compare and contrast.
Friday, July 5, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
Hood To Coast Sound System: Part 1
Hood To Coast started off small. In 1982, a bunch of dudes decided to split into 8 teams and relay race from the top of Mt. Hood to the water's edges in Pacific City, Oregon. It finishes in Seaside now but for decades the race has pretty much remained the same.
These swept across my team in 2011 and the verdict was disappointment across the board. The sound was tinny and too weak, the cords oddly over-long and tough to stow and the plastic clips weren't the most comfortable thing to have bouncing against skin for miles. I ditched mine before I even started the first leg and opted instead to wear my headphones around my neck turned up all the way (and to wear them on my ears when no one was looking or on a closed trail section). I do not know where my set of these are now and I do not care to know.
Road Noise: Sound Running Vest
http://www.roadnoise.com/vests/sound-running-vest-black-medium
My brother sent me this link as a suggestion for this year (we didn't make it in to the race in 2012). It looks like a fantastic system. It's especially good for Hood To Coast where you are obliged to wear a reflective vest and flashers for a good deal of the race. For $55 they had better have some damn fine sounding speakers.
This looks like a good solution but I just can't be bothered to spring for that much money for such a purpose built object. Especially when I have another running problem that needs a solution: the bouncing hydration belt issue.
Next time: I reveal my incredible genius so that you may bask in its radiance... or maybe I just show you how I bought a new hydration belt and stuffed a kick-ass speaker in it.
To be continued...
This year will be the 32nd annual running of this incredible endurance event. It will host 12,600 Hood To Coast runners and 18,000 total participants. This does not even count the thousands of volunteers and race officials that make it all run as smoothly as possible.
A few years back, Nike took over the administration of the race. With new management came new rules which, in this case, meant no more headphones or sound producing devices of any kind worn above the shoulders. This is a commonly adopted race rule, especially for races that do not have closed courses. I'm not going to argue that this rule is stupid or unfair. I don't really think it is. I think it's the right thing to do when you manage an event that will see thousands of people running down the side of a dark highway in the middle of the night.
So what's a guy/gal to do? I'm not some Bowerman Running Club superman. I'm a regular guy in his 30s, glory days long faded. I'm happy to plug along at 9 minute miles for as long as it takes but while I'm at it, I like some music to keep me company and bounce me along. Any competitive advantage I might gain is erased by my aching back and car sickness.
2011 was my team's first exposure to the new rule and team members tried a variety of solutions. In the case of at least one other runner and myself, it meant directly flouting the rules.
2011 was my team's first exposure to the new rule and team members tried a variety of solutions. In the case of at least one other runner and myself, it meant directly flouting the rules.
So, what's available? What works? What would I recommend?
Safe Sound Sports: Safe Sound Personal Speakers (SSPS-1)
These swept across my team in 2011 and the verdict was disappointment across the board. The sound was tinny and too weak, the cords oddly over-long and tough to stow and the plastic clips weren't the most comfortable thing to have bouncing against skin for miles. I ditched mine before I even started the first leg and opted instead to wear my headphones around my neck turned up all the way (and to wear them on my ears when no one was looking or on a closed trail section). I do not know where my set of these are now and I do not care to know.
Road Noise: Sound Running Vest
http://www.roadnoise.com/vests/sound-running-vest-black-medium
My brother sent me this link as a suggestion for this year (we didn't make it in to the race in 2012). It looks like a fantastic system. It's especially good for Hood To Coast where you are obliged to wear a reflective vest and flashers for a good deal of the race. For $55 they had better have some damn fine sounding speakers.
This looks like a good solution but I just can't be bothered to spring for that much money for such a purpose built object. Especially when I have another running problem that needs a solution: the bouncing hydration belt issue.
Next time: I reveal my incredible genius so that you may bask in its radiance... or maybe I just show you how I bought a new hydration belt and stuffed a kick-ass speaker in it.
To be continued...
Friday, September 7, 2012
Hello Blog, My Old Friend
I haven't updated this blog for a long time. That's not to say there haven't been any updates; it's just that most of the updates haven't been things I've felt like sharing.
I'm in the process of being promoted at work. The paperwork has been filed and not it's all just going through the necessary bureaucratic procedures. I was offered a kind of default promotion three months ago on the basis that they were hiring new people into the level above me who had no experience doing the job. I turned it down because I wanted to know I'd earned it. I know, I know. It matters to me.
After taking a break from running after the last Hood To Coast, I began trying to change my style of running again to a more POSE style. I've been running in Nike Free Runs as the Vibram five fingers just felt like they had too little padding and protection for what I wanted. I just felt uncomfortable and fragile in them. I know it's a matter of perception but perception is important as a lot of running is mental preparedness and toughness. In short, the switch has been awesome. I've become much less competitive as I delve deeper into my thirties so starting slowly and carefully into the new style was much easier. I'd tried once before and had seriously injured myself by being over zealous.
I also switched to running almost all of my runs on dirt. Trail running every weekend in Tilden Park has been amazing. It's beautiful, full of hills (which I love), and the dirt has a greatly reduced impact on my body. When I'd been running on cement I'd found that I was plagued by calf cramps after just a couple of miles. These went away entirely when running on the trails. Sure, I've taken a couple of nasty spills that have sidelined me for a couple of weeks at a time but I honestly feel like that is part of the allure. If you lose concentration or if you lose control, you could eat it and eat it hard. If you are injured, you are on your own to get back to where you started. That makes it sound more hardcore than it is, especially in Tilden where you're never more than a mile or two from your car. Also, the worst injuries I've suffered to date have been a couple of severely stubbed big toes and some scraped up skin.
When running on the trails, the scenery, the obstacles and the occasional claustrophobic corridors of trails keep the mind occupied, taking away the monotony that would let my mine wander to the tightness of my breathing or the strain of my muscles. It's a challenge. It's a game. It's the first thing to get me interested in racing again for years. Sure, I've raced within the last couple of years but this makes me really want to race; makes me desire challenging myself against terrain, other racers, and my own will.
I don't know how frequently I will update or maintain this blog in the future. If I put a schedule or a timetable to it, I will be less motivated to stick with it. I guess that's just the way I am. I've never liked being told what to do, even by myself.
Updates:
I'm not engaged anymore. That's kind of a bummer but not nearly as bad as it sounds. I guess we never expected the pressures that being engaged would put on our relationship and we kind of decided to take a step back and really look at things before making the leap into marriage.I'm in the process of being promoted at work. The paperwork has been filed and not it's all just going through the necessary bureaucratic procedures. I was offered a kind of default promotion three months ago on the basis that they were hiring new people into the level above me who had no experience doing the job. I turned it down because I wanted to know I'd earned it. I know, I know. It matters to me.
After taking a break from running after the last Hood To Coast, I began trying to change my style of running again to a more POSE style. I've been running in Nike Free Runs as the Vibram five fingers just felt like they had too little padding and protection for what I wanted. I just felt uncomfortable and fragile in them. I know it's a matter of perception but perception is important as a lot of running is mental preparedness and toughness. In short, the switch has been awesome. I've become much less competitive as I delve deeper into my thirties so starting slowly and carefully into the new style was much easier. I'd tried once before and had seriously injured myself by being over zealous.
I also switched to running almost all of my runs on dirt. Trail running every weekend in Tilden Park has been amazing. It's beautiful, full of hills (which I love), and the dirt has a greatly reduced impact on my body. When I'd been running on cement I'd found that I was plagued by calf cramps after just a couple of miles. These went away entirely when running on the trails. Sure, I've taken a couple of nasty spills that have sidelined me for a couple of weeks at a time but I honestly feel like that is part of the allure. If you lose concentration or if you lose control, you could eat it and eat it hard. If you are injured, you are on your own to get back to where you started. That makes it sound more hardcore than it is, especially in Tilden where you're never more than a mile or two from your car. Also, the worst injuries I've suffered to date have been a couple of severely stubbed big toes and some scraped up skin.
When running on the trails, the scenery, the obstacles and the occasional claustrophobic corridors of trails keep the mind occupied, taking away the monotony that would let my mine wander to the tightness of my breathing or the strain of my muscles. It's a challenge. It's a game. It's the first thing to get me interested in racing again for years. Sure, I've raced within the last couple of years but this makes me really want to race; makes me desire challenging myself against terrain, other racers, and my own will.
I don't know how frequently I will update or maintain this blog in the future. If I put a schedule or a timetable to it, I will be less motivated to stick with it. I guess that's just the way I am. I've never liked being told what to do, even by myself.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
#SOPA #PIPA #ACTA #DMCA #MPAA #RIAA #WTF
Recently hundreds of websites went dark, limiting user access, and/or altered their main page appearance to try to bring awareness to their users of some pieces of legislation before the houses of the US congress. The response from their users was tremendous and pushed many legislators who had previously supported these bills to withdraw that support. I've been on a bit of a rant about it myself recently in my Twitter feed and in the flow of words coming out of my mouth to friends and colleagues. Surprisingly, although many internet users got the message that these laws might hurt the internet most don't understand how or why they should be upset beyond reddit told them to be. This stuff seems complicated, I'll grant that, but they really aren't all that tough to understand. I'll lay them out here as best as I can.
Let's talk a little history. Hollywood. Why is it in Hollywood? When motion pictures were invented they were an incredibly innovative technology; an innovative technology that could make people a lot of money; an innovative technology to which Edison owned the patents. People didn't want to pay Edison money to make movies so they moved their movie making endeavors to California where the patent laws of the time did not apply. They were stealing. They were patent pirates. They found a way to steal so they could profit from further innovating on an innovation.
Hollywood and the entertainment industries that have sprung up around it, including the music industry, are extremely profitable for the captains of these industries. The captains of these industries have sought, rightfully so, to defend their rights to continue making money from them. Unfortunately, they have a history of trying to crush or stifle other innovations in defense of their originally ill-gotten gain. The VCR, cassette tapes, DVD burners, CD burners, DVRs, and a plethora of digital formats throughout the development of the personal computer and the internet have each and every one been vehemently attacked by the entertainment industries before eventually being adopted, at least in part, by them. They are the distributors of entertainment and they want to maintain that control. They don't want you to be able to distribute their entertainment, rightfully so, but they also don't want you to be able to distribute your own creations without them getting a slice of the earnings.
In this sense, the internet is a massive threat to them. The internet allows the content creator to cut out the distributing and managing middle man. It also allows people to take their products and distribute them for free but that's only part of their problem. What happens to their business model when musical acts like Radiohead or Girl Talk and performers like Louis CK take their products directly to market? What happens to their business model when these same acts say 'pay whatever you want or nothing' or 'take a look or a listen and if you like it, then pay me'? What happens when new, undiscovered acts or performers take their creative content to Soundcloud or to YouTube and give it away in exchange for exposure? Their business model falls to pieces and they have to restructure it. They hate that. They do not want to do that. They've set up a giant pyramid of people who all get money from the content others have created. These are executives and administrators. They are not artists or performers. They are not content creators. If the pyramid falls, they are boned.
Isn't this way over-simplified? YES. WAY. But I'm not going for tl;dr here. There are tons of people who may or may not be working behind the scenes to create content: producers, writers, sound/recording engineers, etc. When Radiohead or Louis CK work, those people work too.
Lobbying and lobbyists aren't inherently bad things. In fact they were originally and still can be a pretty good thing. You want your business needs to be seen and considered by your elected legislators. That's great. But lobbying in many cases has grown into something else, something more than a consideration of needs; a quid pro quo agreement. I scratch your back with massive campaign donations and support and you write laws that benefit me, even if it's to the detriment of your other constituents. Enter the MPAA and the RIAA.
The MPAA and RIAA are not the entertainment industry. They do not pay content creators and are not hired by content creators. They are lobbyists hired by the captains of the entertainment industry to protect the interests and profits of themselves and their shareholders. Whether this has any affect on the profits enjoyed by the actual content creators is arguable. I'm not going to argue it. I just want to point out the straw man argument that is often used in the media to defend the actions of these groups. These people are far separate from the actual content creators.
The MPAA and the RIAA versus the internet. Right now, right this very second, there are laws in place that allow the US Justice Department to take domestic internet sites offline permanently for violation of copyright laws. Yes. It's true. This is not a new thing. Also, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), entertainment companies have the right to directly remove copyright violating files from domestic websites (a right they severely abuse but, again, I'm not going into that).
So what's the deal with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)? Why do the MPAA and RIAA want these laws so badly and why would they hurt the internet? The laws currently in place only apply to domestic websites; websites with a .org, .net or .com domain name in the Domain Names System (DNS). The DNS allows websites to use a URL (uniform resource locator) or 'website name' instead of their IP address (a string of numbers). When the Justice Department takes down a website, they remove it from the DNS. It's still there, you just have to use the IP address to get to it. You can't take a website down unless you go physically cut the cord. But for most web users the website is effectively gone if it is no longer listed in the DNS.
These laws expand the takedown power of the US Justice Department to websites with any URL suffix. Think bit.ly or redd.it. It greatly expands their takedown powers. Yes, the companies whose copyrights have been violated still have to get a court order to have entire websites taken down. But wait, there's more. What these laws also do, and what is a great threat to the internet as we know it today, is to require Internet Service Providers and all websites to police their own customer and users. That means that if you decide to share a copyrighted work on YouTube, your ISP and YouTube have both committed a crime.
If I make a video of myself dancing to a Lady Gaga song and I place it on YouTube, YouTube has to recognize that I've done so, decide if I've committed a copyright violation against Universal Media Group and take down my video. If they do not, YouTube has committed a copyright violation and could be taken offline. You see, it's too much of a pain in the ass for UMG or the RIAA to sue me individually for copyright infringement. It's much easier to threaten the company I've used to commit that infringement (if that example would count as infringement at all which a court would have to decide and it costs money to take me to court so...).
What if I record a song on SoundCloud and call it "Poker Face"? It's a completely new creative work that does not have any semblance at all to Lady Gaga's song of the same title. Soundcloud can't take the time to listen to every song users upload and they can't take the risk of being shutdown so they delete my song and maybe my account. My ISP sees the upload of PokerFace.mp3 and cancels my internet account and I can't even go online anymore. I've just been completely censored and the courts, UMG and the RIAA didn't even have to get their hands dirty. Friggin' nefarious, no?
How does that affect the internet as we know it? Why would any website or ISP allow you to share any file whether you created it, own it, or not, if the threat of allowing you to do so is going out of business? What is the internet if not a way to share content you've created: websites, bits of open-sourced code, photos of your vacation.
Is pirating of copyrighted works a problem? Yes. It has been since people have had the ability to make a copy. Is destroying the greatest innovation since the printing press the answer? No. No, it is not.
What can you or I or anyone else do about it? Not a lot, realistically, except make your voice heard as often as possible. Your congressperson is getting buckets and buckets of lobbyist money to support their re-election campaigns and keeping their jobs is a pretty big interest for these folks. Keeping your job as a congressperson takes TONS of money (that's a rant for another day). You can't even begin to fight money with money in this case. You've already lost that battle by a huge margin. What your congressperson can't ignore is millions of constituent voices. They want to but they'd look super corrupt. They are, after all, supposed to representing you and what you believe. Right? Right.
Let's talk a little history. Hollywood. Why is it in Hollywood? When motion pictures were invented they were an incredibly innovative technology; an innovative technology that could make people a lot of money; an innovative technology to which Edison owned the patents. People didn't want to pay Edison money to make movies so they moved their movie making endeavors to California where the patent laws of the time did not apply. They were stealing. They were patent pirates. They found a way to steal so they could profit from further innovating on an innovation.
Hollywood and the entertainment industries that have sprung up around it, including the music industry, are extremely profitable for the captains of these industries. The captains of these industries have sought, rightfully so, to defend their rights to continue making money from them. Unfortunately, they have a history of trying to crush or stifle other innovations in defense of their originally ill-gotten gain. The VCR, cassette tapes, DVD burners, CD burners, DVRs, and a plethora of digital formats throughout the development of the personal computer and the internet have each and every one been vehemently attacked by the entertainment industries before eventually being adopted, at least in part, by them. They are the distributors of entertainment and they want to maintain that control. They don't want you to be able to distribute their entertainment, rightfully so, but they also don't want you to be able to distribute your own creations without them getting a slice of the earnings.
In this sense, the internet is a massive threat to them. The internet allows the content creator to cut out the distributing and managing middle man. It also allows people to take their products and distribute them for free but that's only part of their problem. What happens to their business model when musical acts like Radiohead or Girl Talk and performers like Louis CK take their products directly to market? What happens to their business model when these same acts say 'pay whatever you want or nothing' or 'take a look or a listen and if you like it, then pay me'? What happens when new, undiscovered acts or performers take their creative content to Soundcloud or to YouTube and give it away in exchange for exposure? Their business model falls to pieces and they have to restructure it. They hate that. They do not want to do that. They've set up a giant pyramid of people who all get money from the content others have created. These are executives and administrators. They are not artists or performers. They are not content creators. If the pyramid falls, they are boned.
Isn't this way over-simplified? YES. WAY. But I'm not going for tl;dr here. There are tons of people who may or may not be working behind the scenes to create content: producers, writers, sound/recording engineers, etc. When Radiohead or Louis CK work, those people work too.
Lobbying and lobbyists aren't inherently bad things. In fact they were originally and still can be a pretty good thing. You want your business needs to be seen and considered by your elected legislators. That's great. But lobbying in many cases has grown into something else, something more than a consideration of needs; a quid pro quo agreement. I scratch your back with massive campaign donations and support and you write laws that benefit me, even if it's to the detriment of your other constituents. Enter the MPAA and the RIAA.
The MPAA and RIAA are not the entertainment industry. They do not pay content creators and are not hired by content creators. They are lobbyists hired by the captains of the entertainment industry to protect the interests and profits of themselves and their shareholders. Whether this has any affect on the profits enjoyed by the actual content creators is arguable. I'm not going to argue it. I just want to point out the straw man argument that is often used in the media to defend the actions of these groups. These people are far separate from the actual content creators.
The MPAA and the RIAA versus the internet. Right now, right this very second, there are laws in place that allow the US Justice Department to take domestic internet sites offline permanently for violation of copyright laws. Yes. It's true. This is not a new thing. Also, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), entertainment companies have the right to directly remove copyright violating files from domestic websites (a right they severely abuse but, again, I'm not going into that).
So what's the deal with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)? Why do the MPAA and RIAA want these laws so badly and why would they hurt the internet? The laws currently in place only apply to domestic websites; websites with a .org, .net or .com domain name in the Domain Names System (DNS). The DNS allows websites to use a URL (uniform resource locator) or 'website name' instead of their IP address (a string of numbers). When the Justice Department takes down a website, they remove it from the DNS. It's still there, you just have to use the IP address to get to it. You can't take a website down unless you go physically cut the cord. But for most web users the website is effectively gone if it is no longer listed in the DNS.
These laws expand the takedown power of the US Justice Department to websites with any URL suffix. Think bit.ly or redd.it. It greatly expands their takedown powers. Yes, the companies whose copyrights have been violated still have to get a court order to have entire websites taken down. But wait, there's more. What these laws also do, and what is a great threat to the internet as we know it today, is to require Internet Service Providers and all websites to police their own customer and users. That means that if you decide to share a copyrighted work on YouTube, your ISP and YouTube have both committed a crime.
If I make a video of myself dancing to a Lady Gaga song and I place it on YouTube, YouTube has to recognize that I've done so, decide if I've committed a copyright violation against Universal Media Group and take down my video. If they do not, YouTube has committed a copyright violation and could be taken offline. You see, it's too much of a pain in the ass for UMG or the RIAA to sue me individually for copyright infringement. It's much easier to threaten the company I've used to commit that infringement (if that example would count as infringement at all which a court would have to decide and it costs money to take me to court so...).
What if I record a song on SoundCloud and call it "Poker Face"? It's a completely new creative work that does not have any semblance at all to Lady Gaga's song of the same title. Soundcloud can't take the time to listen to every song users upload and they can't take the risk of being shutdown so they delete my song and maybe my account. My ISP sees the upload of PokerFace.mp3 and cancels my internet account and I can't even go online anymore. I've just been completely censored and the courts, UMG and the RIAA didn't even have to get their hands dirty. Friggin' nefarious, no?
How does that affect the internet as we know it? Why would any website or ISP allow you to share any file whether you created it, own it, or not, if the threat of allowing you to do so is going out of business? What is the internet if not a way to share content you've created: websites, bits of open-sourced code, photos of your vacation.
Is pirating of copyrighted works a problem? Yes. It has been since people have had the ability to make a copy. Is destroying the greatest innovation since the printing press the answer? No. No, it is not.
What can you or I or anyone else do about it? Not a lot, realistically, except make your voice heard as often as possible. Your congressperson is getting buckets and buckets of lobbyist money to support their re-election campaigns and keeping their jobs is a pretty big interest for these folks. Keeping your job as a congressperson takes TONS of money (that's a rant for another day). You can't even begin to fight money with money in this case. You've already lost that battle by a huge margin. What your congressperson can't ignore is millions of constituent voices. They want to but they'd look super corrupt. They are, after all, supposed to representing you and what you believe. Right? Right.
Friday, October 7, 2011
My Newly Unchanged Life
People like to ask you questions about things. Different people often ask the same question about the same subject. They are genuinely interested in your interests. They want details. This is why people always ask about tattoos "Did it hurt?" They know it hurt. That's not what they want to know. But that is a gateway to talking about the experience as a whole.
I didn't expect to feel different after getting engaged but I did. I still do. I feel awesome. Feeling awesome for nearly an entire week is, in my opinion, a pretty good indicator I'm doing something right. But the question people have asked me most consistently is, what's changed? What's different? Anything? The other question everyone asks is "When's the wedding?" and the answer to that is "We don't know and did not realize you'd be asking that question, I guess, because we are completely unprepared with an answer."
But the conceit of this blog post is that my life has or has not changed due to getting engaged and/or turning 35 and, hey, maybe I could say what's different and what's not and maybe it'll be entertaining. Maybe. So, without further ado, a window into my life as a newly engaged man...
Work is pretty much the same. I'm a software application designer which sounds pretty cut and dry but it entails so much more than you might expect. When I come in to the office each day I check two things, bridge and rocketship. This week, both remained more or less static.
But then, you wouldn't really expect my work life to change much based on an engagement or a birthday. How are things around the house? What's my home life like? Have I had to, you know, grow up? Tone things down. Yes, a little. But I'm still young, alive, kicking it old school and what not.
Just the other night I found I had the house to myself so I busted out my axe and raged on some wild jams until the sonic assault was too much and the cat's asked if I might keep it d-meow-n.
My fingers were starting to hurt from busting crazy hot licks anyway so I decided to head to the shooting range for some target practice. Now, this kind of activity might seem frivolous and not befitting of someone of advanced age and responsibility but I assure you it's for a purpose. In fact, before I got engaged I never shot anything at anything. Practically never. But with the prospect of having a wife and a family having become imminent, I set about preparing myself to defend my brood if/when the time comes.
Later in the week some friends, Rachel, and I got together for a night of pizza, drinking and birthday celebrating. Here's where things actually seem to be a little different.
Also, I wasn't the designated driver. That meant that instead of having one glass of wine, I could have two glasses and a shot or two of whiskey (and mean hangover and a touch of regret and a feeling of creeping mortality).
So yeah, I may not be able to hold my drink anymore but I'm still rocking hard and shooting straight and living the high tech bay area dream. Maybe things will change when we tie the knot and settle down for real but maybe not. And that is awesome.
I didn't expect to feel different after getting engaged but I did. I still do. I feel awesome. Feeling awesome for nearly an entire week is, in my opinion, a pretty good indicator I'm doing something right. But the question people have asked me most consistently is, what's changed? What's different? Anything? The other question everyone asks is "When's the wedding?" and the answer to that is "We don't know and did not realize you'd be asking that question, I guess, because we are completely unprepared with an answer."
But the conceit of this blog post is that my life has or has not changed due to getting engaged and/or turning 35 and, hey, maybe I could say what's different and what's not and maybe it'll be entertaining. Maybe. So, without further ado, a window into my life as a newly engaged man...
Work is pretty much the same. I'm a software application designer which sounds pretty cut and dry but it entails so much more than you might expect. When I come in to the office each day I check two things, bridge and rocketship. This week, both remained more or less static.
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| There IS a rocketship in this picture. |
This week was Oracle Open World. The software I design for is an Oracle proprietary product so not only were some of my department-mates presenting at Open World but we got a bunch of passes. For a few hours, I was a woman named Teresa. I got a great new grocery bag, a water bottle and a USB thumb drive. I also got to see some of the cutting edge technology on display.
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| Is it a mistake or an ad for the iPhone 54S? |
PG&E is actively involved in the community. Which community? All of them! This week saw the kick-off of our charitable giving campaign and the IT department hosted a silent auction. It may surprise some to find out that I am a connoisseur of the arts. I was delighted to come away from the silent auction being the sole bidder and eventual overall winner of this wonderful addition to my collection of prints of animals wearing hats. Seriously. I can only assume that my bid was so powerful it scared off all other potential bids.
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| "Wha?" He seemed to say. |
Just the other night I found I had the house to myself so I busted out my axe and raged on some wild jams until the sonic assault was too much and the cat's asked if I might keep it d-meow-n.
My fingers were starting to hurt from busting crazy hot licks anyway so I decided to head to the shooting range for some target practice. Now, this kind of activity might seem frivolous and not befitting of someone of advanced age and responsibility but I assure you it's for a purpose. In fact, before I got engaged I never shot anything at anything. Practically never. But with the prospect of having a wife and a family having become imminent, I set about preparing myself to defend my brood if/when the time comes.
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| That's a tight cluster! |
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| What if the cats become zombies? |
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| What if Cat Stevens becomes a zombie?! |
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| Instead of making a dent in this... |
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| We finished this. |
So yeah, I may not be able to hold my drink anymore but I'm still rocking hard and shooting straight and living the high tech bay area dream. Maybe things will change when we tie the knot and settle down for real but maybe not. And that is awesome.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The Best Day Of My Life (So Far)
I'm almost always up in the morning before Rachel. I muddle around trying to be quiet and trying to predict when Rachel will get up so I can have coffee hot and ready to go. It's a small ritual but it's important to me. It's part of our history. Before we lived together, Rachel would stay over on the weekends (she lived in San Mateo and I lived in Berkeley) and I'd get up and lumber out for a short walk in the mornings, returning with a couple of low fat lattes and some kind of delicious pastry or fruit or both. When we first moved in to our new place, our neighbors' orange tree was in full bloom and in our yard. The oranges were hard and dry and didn't have a lot of juice so I'd go out and pick as many as I could and then try to juice as many as I could before Rachel would wake. Getting up first and doing small things for her is one of the main ways I feel like I am able to do something special for my sweetheart.
Sunday, I was up first. I thought about making some coffee and scrambling some eggs and seeing if I couldn't 'salad' the odd assortment of fruit on top of the (eye-melting, DNA-unraveling, atomic-polarity-reversing) microwave. Too sleepy. Our extremely modest alcohol intake the night before had left my no-longer-young body feeling extra no longer young. "Sigh." I thought. I decided that the only reasonable solution would be to walk over to Fellini to get a couple of LOLs (that's what they write on the cup for a low fat latte) and some pastries. But then I thought another thought "I bet I could do this on my bike."
This was, ultimately, a misguided thought. I had assumed, perhaps unreasonably, that gravity on the surface of the Earth, as we perceive it, is basically constant. I did not realize there was caveat to this law, 'except in the interior of a bicycle basket'. I rode over to Fellini's and ordered two coffees and three pastries, a cinnamon breakfast bun, a chocolate croissant, and an apple turnover. I placed the two coffees into laterally opposite corners of the bike basket and bolstered their upright integrity with the placement of the pastries surrounding them. I then walked the bike out of the rough parking lot the street, mounted it, and began to pedal. I learned a lot about the physics of objects inside of a zero-G bike basket during those first few pedal strokes.
One coffee, after ushering up a small geyser of latte foam, flopped over onto its back and began burbling it's coffee contents all over the pastries. I continued riding and reached into the basket to grab this coffee so I could ride with it in my hand. "Problem solved", thought I, and it was for almost the entire ride home. Upon reaching the slight downhill to get to my house, the second coffee, I kid you not, leaped into the air, did a complete end-over-end revolution, landed, flopped over and started to pour coffee onto the bike wheel which in turn sprayed it all over the place. "Sigh." I thought again.
I got the coffee safely home, the pastry cut into easily shared slices and laid out on a cutting board, I began the wait for Rachel to get up game. I knew the day was special. I knew why. She didn't know. This made time seem to move very, very slowly. I watched some news. KRON 4 Weekend News is the funniest thing on television, I'm convinced. I ate most of the pastries and drank all of my coffee. Rachel's was getting cold so I risked revealing the specialness of the day by doing something I had never done before, breakfast in bed. I opened the door tentatively to find Rachel fully awake and jabbing away contentedly at her iPhone. She was surprised but my hand had not been tipped. She decided the idea of flaky pastries in bed was not so great and came downstairs.
I expected I'd get more and more anxious as the day went on. After all, I kind of have, you know, anxiety issues. But I didn't. I wasn't. At all. I expected to be freaking out all day and to have trouble sleeping the night before. Nope and nope. Whenever I thought about what I was going to be doing in just a couple of hours, calm and peace and ethereal joy flowed through my self. I was loving letting the day just unfold all on its own.
As the morning warmed and the clouds burned off, it looked like it was going to be an absolutely perfect day... in Berkeley. But what would it be like in SF? Foggy? Raining? No. Also perfect. The only moment of panic came as I drove out towards the city and Rachel checked the traffic. Traffic all around the park was starting to be yellow and red and that's when I remembered that Hardly Strictly Bluegrass would be going for its final day. I panicked a little and started making back up plans in my head in case we could not get anywhere near the Academy of Sciences. Twin Peaks! I'd never been to Twin Peaks but it's a thing. A bay area thing. Battery Spencer! Couldn't ask for a better view than the view from Battery Spencer! As we got closer it became obvious that it was just normal traffic and as soon as we hit the park we were fine and cruised right into the garage.
We arrived right at 11am, when the Academy opens to the general public. We got in line and reminisced about our second date, commenting on how much the prices have gone up in two short years. We laughed at how they try to take a picture of you in front of a green screen and how awkward that was for us on our second date there. This time I knew we'd be stopping and posing and I knew I'd be buying the cheesy picture.
We rushed over to the planetarium to get passes to a show but they were seating a show right then so we just rushed into the theater and grabbed a seat. The new show with Jodie Foster is a lot less motion-sickness-inducing than the old one with Whoopi Goldberg and I love that they update the shows frequently to try to keep up with the epic pace of discovery in this new age of telescope badassness.
The planetarium show exits on the third floor and walks you right by the stairway to go up to the living roof, where I was planning on proposing. It was kind of a joke that I was going to propose up there. I'd been super excited to see it on my first visit and when we got up there, well, there wasn't much to see. Obviously, I guess, it was just a lot of low plants on an oddly shaped roof. The living roof, on my initial visit, had been kind of a let down. This would not be true of our second visit. Now, I'd planned to do it later in our day, after lunch, right before we were going to leave. But we were right there. Too crowded. I didn't want to do it when it was so crowded. No problem, Rachel had to wait in the line for the ladies restroom. In the time that took, pretty much everyone had cleared off of the third floor except women still in the restroom line. "Hey" I said, "Want to check out the living roof real quick? We're right here, after all."
We walked up the stairs and this time didn't focus on the roof but on the incredible view. The day was breezy and cool and the sky was bright blue. Fog still scoured the hilly sections of the Richmond district near the beaches. We leaned against the railing looking out over the DeYoung and smiling at each other. "Hey" I said, "Want to hear a poem I wrote?". "Uhhh, okay." "Well, I guess I don't have to read it." "That's okay, I want to hear it." (Quotes may not be direct but they are pretty close.)
"It's called, A Modest Proposal but it's not about eating babies.
A Modest Proposal
I propose this to you now, my love
That I should have your hand
That you and I should marry
That I should be your man
As a man I kneel before you (here's where I got down on one knee, the left one)
As a man I give my heart
As a man I offer you forever
Or maybe just the start...
For we can not know forever
Can not fathom eternity
I need not ask that much from you
A lifetime's enough for me
So stand by me for a lifetime
And I promise this much is true
I'll show you for a lifetime
That my heart belongs to you
And let me stand by your side
For I could not bear to know
That I had felt a love like yours
And I had let it go
Rachel Louise Gold, will you marry me?"
"Yes!" She was crying a bit by this point but she definitely said yes and I'm pretty sure I said thank you. "I have something to go along with this" I said and pulled the ring box from my bag, took the ring from the box and put it on her finger; a perfect fit. The rooftop wasn't crowded. There were maybe 15 other people up there. I looked around to see reactions and no one was. No one had paid us any attention at all. I'd gotten down on one knee in public, read a poem and proposed to my future wife and no one batted an eye. Ahhhh the Bay Area, where studied ignorance of the unusual is part of the social contract. We hugged and kissed and declared our love for each other but then Rachel had to get down to the business of informing best friends and all of Facebook. It was tough. Thanks to Hardly Strictly, we were experiencing massive cell network lag.
Warming in the sun of the Indian Summer, listening to the squeals and congratulations coming through Rachel's phone, I felt good. I felt amazing. I felt different. The only anxiety or panic I'd felt had been right at the moment before I asked if she wanted to hear my poem. After that, it was all crystal clear and calm. It was so easy because it was so right. I knew exactly what I wanted and all I'd had to do was ask. We locked hands together and started back downstairs to see the aquarium exhibits. Walking down the stairs, I knew what was different. We were a unit now. Sure, we still have to get married to make it official official but we'd promised each other a preliminary vow of one lifetime and we were allied, bonded, complicit. It wasn't us against the world exactly. It was us and the rest of the world.
A lot of other stuff happened that day. We ate lunch. We saw a great play, Phaedra by the Shotgun Players at the Ashby Playhouse (side note: A great play everyone should see but maybe not the best play to see on the day of your engagement, wedding, etc...). We made soup and watched Boardwalk Empire. Rachel made more calls and received more congratulations. I decided to make my calls the next day, my Mom was probably already asleep anyway. Writing it now, it seems like an anti-climactic end to a climactic day. It didn't feel that way, though. It just felt right.
Update: I'm told and now recall that the conversation before the proposal was more along the lines of this:
"Hey, want to hear a poem I wrote?"
"Sure!"
"Uhhh... you do?!"
"Yeah, why not? You don't have to read it."
"Oh no, I want to read it... okay, here goes..."
So, for the sake of correcting history and my admittedly poor memory making skills, Rachel was actually enthusiastic to hear my poem.
Sunday, I was up first. I thought about making some coffee and scrambling some eggs and seeing if I couldn't 'salad' the odd assortment of fruit on top of the (eye-melting, DNA-unraveling, atomic-polarity-reversing) microwave. Too sleepy. Our extremely modest alcohol intake the night before had left my no-longer-young body feeling extra no longer young. "Sigh." I thought. I decided that the only reasonable solution would be to walk over to Fellini to get a couple of LOLs (that's what they write on the cup for a low fat latte) and some pastries. But then I thought another thought "I bet I could do this on my bike."
This was, ultimately, a misguided thought. I had assumed, perhaps unreasonably, that gravity on the surface of the Earth, as we perceive it, is basically constant. I did not realize there was caveat to this law, 'except in the interior of a bicycle basket'. I rode over to Fellini's and ordered two coffees and three pastries, a cinnamon breakfast bun, a chocolate croissant, and an apple turnover. I placed the two coffees into laterally opposite corners of the bike basket and bolstered their upright integrity with the placement of the pastries surrounding them. I then walked the bike out of the rough parking lot the street, mounted it, and began to pedal. I learned a lot about the physics of objects inside of a zero-G bike basket during those first few pedal strokes.
One coffee, after ushering up a small geyser of latte foam, flopped over onto its back and began burbling it's coffee contents all over the pastries. I continued riding and reached into the basket to grab this coffee so I could ride with it in my hand. "Problem solved", thought I, and it was for almost the entire ride home. Upon reaching the slight downhill to get to my house, the second coffee, I kid you not, leaped into the air, did a complete end-over-end revolution, landed, flopped over and started to pour coffee onto the bike wheel which in turn sprayed it all over the place. "Sigh." I thought again.
I got the coffee safely home, the pastry cut into easily shared slices and laid out on a cutting board, I began the wait for Rachel to get up game. I knew the day was special. I knew why. She didn't know. This made time seem to move very, very slowly. I watched some news. KRON 4 Weekend News is the funniest thing on television, I'm convinced. I ate most of the pastries and drank all of my coffee. Rachel's was getting cold so I risked revealing the specialness of the day by doing something I had never done before, breakfast in bed. I opened the door tentatively to find Rachel fully awake and jabbing away contentedly at her iPhone. She was surprised but my hand had not been tipped. She decided the idea of flaky pastries in bed was not so great and came downstairs.
I expected I'd get more and more anxious as the day went on. After all, I kind of have, you know, anxiety issues. But I didn't. I wasn't. At all. I expected to be freaking out all day and to have trouble sleeping the night before. Nope and nope. Whenever I thought about what I was going to be doing in just a couple of hours, calm and peace and ethereal joy flowed through my self. I was loving letting the day just unfold all on its own.
 |
| Cool as a penguin |
We rushed over to the planetarium to get passes to a show but they were seating a show right then so we just rushed into the theater and grabbed a seat. The new show with Jodie Foster is a lot less motion-sickness-inducing than the old one with Whoopi Goldberg and I love that they update the shows frequently to try to keep up with the epic pace of discovery in this new age of telescope badassness.
The planetarium show exits on the third floor and walks you right by the stairway to go up to the living roof, where I was planning on proposing. It was kind of a joke that I was going to propose up there. I'd been super excited to see it on my first visit and when we got up there, well, there wasn't much to see. Obviously, I guess, it was just a lot of low plants on an oddly shaped roof. The living roof, on my initial visit, had been kind of a let down. This would not be true of our second visit. Now, I'd planned to do it later in our day, after lunch, right before we were going to leave. But we were right there. Too crowded. I didn't want to do it when it was so crowded. No problem, Rachel had to wait in the line for the ladies restroom. In the time that took, pretty much everyone had cleared off of the third floor except women still in the restroom line. "Hey" I said, "Want to check out the living roof real quick? We're right here, after all."
We walked up the stairs and this time didn't focus on the roof but on the incredible view. The day was breezy and cool and the sky was bright blue. Fog still scoured the hilly sections of the Richmond district near the beaches. We leaned against the railing looking out over the DeYoung and smiling at each other. "Hey" I said, "Want to hear a poem I wrote?". "Uhhh, okay." "Well, I guess I don't have to read it." "That's okay, I want to hear it." (Quotes may not be direct but they are pretty close.)
"It's called, A Modest Proposal but it's not about eating babies.
A Modest ProposalI propose this to you now, my love
That I should have your hand
That you and I should marry
That I should be your man
As a man I kneel before you (here's where I got down on one knee, the left one)
As a man I give my heart
As a man I offer you forever
Or maybe just the start...
For we can not know forever
Can not fathom eternity
I need not ask that much from you
A lifetime's enough for me
So stand by me for a lifetime
And I promise this much is true
I'll show you for a lifetime
That my heart belongs to you
And let me stand by your side
For I could not bear to know
That I had felt a love like yours
And I had let it go
Rachel Louise Gold, will you marry me?"
"Yes!" She was crying a bit by this point but she definitely said yes and I'm pretty sure I said thank you. "I have something to go along with this" I said and pulled the ring box from my bag, took the ring from the box and put it on her finger; a perfect fit. The rooftop wasn't crowded. There were maybe 15 other people up there. I looked around to see reactions and no one was. No one had paid us any attention at all. I'd gotten down on one knee in public, read a poem and proposed to my future wife and no one batted an eye. Ahhhh the Bay Area, where studied ignorance of the unusual is part of the social contract. We hugged and kissed and declared our love for each other but then Rachel had to get down to the business of informing best friends and all of Facebook. It was tough. Thanks to Hardly Strictly, we were experiencing massive cell network lag.
A lot of other stuff happened that day. We ate lunch. We saw a great play, Phaedra by the Shotgun Players at the Ashby Playhouse (side note: A great play everyone should see but maybe not the best play to see on the day of your engagement, wedding, etc...). We made soup and watched Boardwalk Empire. Rachel made more calls and received more congratulations. I decided to make my calls the next day, my Mom was probably already asleep anyway. Writing it now, it seems like an anti-climactic end to a climactic day. It didn't feel that way, though. It just felt right."Hey, want to hear a poem I wrote?"
"Sure!"
"Uhhh... you do?!"
"Yeah, why not? You don't have to read it."
"Oh no, I want to read it... okay, here goes..."
So, for the sake of correcting history and my admittedly poor memory making skills, Rachel was actually enthusiastic to hear my poem.
Monday, October 3, 2011
The Beginning of the Beginning
Two years ago I decided to give myself a birthday present: a date with a beautiful woman. That date was the day before my birthday and it was incredible. About a week later we'd have our second date, a trip to the California Academy of Sciences. It would turn out to be the beginning of the most incredible relationship of my life. Two years later I decided to give myself an even more audacious birthday present. I'd ask this amazing woman to marry me.
The ring came in the mail on Thursday. No tracking number. No insurance. No signature at the door. Just a small brown box jammed under the doormat. Rachel, when she got home, actually noticed the doormat was a little bent like something had been jammed underneath it. I told her that the UPS guy had tried to cover a large box of knives she'd ordered with it. People say that I am not good at lying or keeping secrets. Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't - I don't want to tip my hand - but what people fail to take into consideration, I think, is that Rachel is extremely perceptive. I don't think I've ever been 100% successful at keeping something from her long enough for it to be a genuine surprise.
I rushed the package up to my room and opened it. It was the first time I'd seen the ring in person. I'd found it on a website for a store in Portland, ME that specializes in jewelry made by local artisans and in a few pieces of vintage and antique jewelry. It was the first ring I had bookmarked in my search. It was the first ring I'd shown Rachel as an example of the kinds of things I was looking at. It ended up being The Ring. The pictures had not done it justice. It was gorgeous. It was vintage. It matched the wedding band that Rachel's great grandmother had worn as well as I could have hoped. I checked all of the criteria off in my head. I was excited but calm, not at all nervous or anxious. I put the ring on. I took some pictures to send to my brothers and sisters who had been advising me in my ring hunt and proposal planning.
It wasn't until Friday evening that it really hit me. I had taken the ring to work to show some close friends. I told people my plan. I revised the short poem I'd written. I texted Rachel to get her mother's phone number - not at all suspicious - and when I got home from work I called her and had a really nice, slightly frenetic, conversation. Honestly, I hadn't planned out much to say beyond "I'm planning to ask Rachel to marry me this Sunday." The news was well-received, though, and I felt good. Almost there. All I needed to do now was talk to her father and hope the weather held out for Sunday. It looked like rain.
But Friday was the first time it really hit me: I wasn't going to be single much longer. Sure, I hadn't been single single for almost two years but I'd never been engaged before either and that seemed like a big big deal. It seemed even less single. It seemed like the least single I would ever be in my life before getting married. I decided to document how I spent my last hours un-fianced.
Saturday started off like usual, Rachel getting up for work woke me up and I went downstairs to make coffee and breakfast. Rachel didn't want a big breakfast so I French pressed out a couple of coffees and made myself some eggs over easy and wheat toast and split a Kiwi with her. It was a really good Kiwi. Rachel left for work and I chuckled at the ineptitude of the local newscast for a bit before putting on some grubby clothes and riding my bike over to the Westbrae Nursery. We'd been super busy and every weekend for months had been filled with activities which subtly equated to yard neglect. I'd had enough of the weeds choking out the plants and enough of the promises of my landlord that he'd have a gardener out. I picked up a pair of clippers, a pair of loppers, a metal spade and a pruning saw (accuracy of tool terminology not guaranteed). I loaded them into my bike basket and headed home. I was ready to do work.
I threw myself into my work and two and a half hours later had trimmed, weeded, hedged and beheaded enough plant life to fill the driveway. I'd done enough destruction to fill my yard waste barrel four times over. By the time I was done I could barely hold my water bottle and my arms were so shaky I splashed it all over myself anyway. I began to worry I'd be so broken that, when I tried to put the ring on her finger, my shaking would fling it down some kind of grating that leads to a bottomless pit. I mean, realistically. We were planning to celebrate my birthday that night with a dinner at La Lime's so I didn't want to eat too much for lunch but was also starving. A pb&j sandwich and half a box of Annie's Bunny Grahams (assorted) hit the spot. I tried calling Rachel's father again but he didn't answer so I jumped in the shower.
I'd gotten myself cleaned up when the phone rang, Rachel's father returning my call. Now, I knew he'd had his reservations about me but I felt like, after two years of slightly awkward interactions, we'd really hit our stride and had come to like each other. A recent day and evening in Napa for Rachel's birthday had been exceedingly pleasant and had left me feeling like everything had worked itself out. This was not quite the case. I had expected, at the very least, a begrudging congratulations tempered with a wait and see attitude. Sadly, this also was not quite the case. However, I remained undaunted (or at least only very mildly daunted).
I walked up to Mr. Mopps, listening to the new Panda Bear album and daydreaming in world as I walked. Mr. Mopps had a very poor selection of faux weaponry. Thanks a lot, progressive Berkeley. I couldn't leave empty-handed, though. Mr. Mopps is one of those places that I love for the fact that it exists. I want it to exist. I want it to succeed. It's an institution and it's awesome and cute and if I have kids I want to take them there so I had to buy something. By this time I was being helped by an employee so I asked if they had any books on origami, picked up a Klutz book on the subject and was on my way, walking in the sunshine.
We got ourselves all fancied up and headed out for my fancy birthday dinner. Friends, this dinner was amazing. From the drinks to the food to the service, La Lime's did not miss a beat. I kicked things off with a Sazerac and Rachel with a glass of Pinot Grigio (I think). We started off with the best olives I've ever had, some super fresh mozzarella and a mixed greens salad. We continued with a fresh and light shrimp and peas pasta dish for Rachel and a burger with pork belly on it for me. We also ordered some beets to share and my burger came with little whole fried potatoes that we also shared. I had a glass of a Syrah blend that melted away any remaining thoughts and stress of the day and of the day ahead. It was a meal in the moment and it was amazing. For dessert we shared a Peach Tatin ala mode and a glass of Moscato. We made our way back home and dozed off watching Eureka on demand. Happy birthday to me.
The next day I would propose to Rachel. I had a plan. I had a poem. I had a ring. I was ready.
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