Heh, heh. Does what it says on the package.
All things considered, I had a really good weekend. On Saturday morning, I woke up at zero-dark-30 to drive down to Annapolis and pick up Zachary for another snowboarding day. We were able to get to Pennsylvania, get our gear and be on the slopes by 8:30.
Years ago, when I was mountain biking regularly with Rob, he taught me everything about how to do it right. Being a full 6 inches shorter than me, and having spent a ton of time on the West Coast biking on original trails, he knew what he was doing and would launch himself down mountain sides with abandon—but the key was that he was always in control. He showed me how to lean all the way back in the saddle and control my balance on the bike itself, anticipate obstacles and the right way to get over them, and just to generally not be afraid. After riding with him for a couple of seasons, I could keep up with him and follow him down steep mountainsides without blinking—often we found ourselves laughing the harder things got.
With Zachary on Saturday, we started on the intermediate slope and I followed behind as he snowplowed back and forth to get his balance and technique sorted out. We ditched our heavy winter gear after the second run, opting to go in longsleeve shirts under the warm sun, and by the fifth run he started carving back and forth—and I had to work to keep up with him. I found that I had to push myself to stay behind him, and that old familiar feeling of unease and exhilaration put a smile on my face. We went nonstop from 8:30 until about 3PM, and I tapped out when my right leg (my steering leg) started getting wobbly. Zachary did one more run by himself (another excellent sign) and we packed it in at 3:30. He’s ready to level up to the advanced slopes, and I’m going to have to spend some serious time this summer working on my core and leg muscles to be ready to follow him down those trails next season, as well as screw up my courage to follow him, just like I did with his dad 30 years ago.
Sunday morning Finn and I woke early, got some breakfast, and took Hazel for a hike in Patapsco State Park near the house. It was a beautiful day to be outside, and we got to talk about a bunch of different things while waiting for Hazel to smell the smells. She was happy to be out on the trails, and even though she claimed she wanted to walk as far as possible, I could tell she was gassed when we got to the top of the steeper climbs. I’m resolving to make hiking a weekly activity, both to get her out of the house, but also to try and re-connect.
Back at home, I put the carb back on the Travelall, drained as much gas out of the tank as possible, and did a wet compression test on the Scout 800. After monkeying with the distributor for a bit, I finally got it running! Once I sorted that out I jumped in and got it in gear and moving forward and backwards. This is a HUGE relief, and I’m extremely pleased with myself for sticking with it and diagnosing all of the issues up until this point. Now I need to sort the front brakes out to get at least a little stopping power, and I should be able to pull it around to the garage and swap vehicles out.
Back inside after the sun went down, I sat on the couch and mindlessly surfed the web with the dog snoring next to me, feeling the soreness in my entire body—my legs, arms, hands, back, neck, and brain. It’s been a while since I’ve gone that hard and it left me righteously tired. Given how fucked up current events are right now, it was good to have a bunch of wins close to home.
a few years ago, I was asked by the faculty at MICA to supply data for a class in the Data Vizualization graduate program, and if I could sit in and help with critique for a few of the classes. I’ve done it for two semesters now, and one of the students in the last cohort got in touch with me after the final class and asked if I’d come and give her students at the Yale School of Management a presentation on how WRI uses data visualization. That sure sounded like fun, so I immediately agreed.
I’ve spent the last week or so working on the deck and my delivery, and I had it down pretty good by the time I had to board the train to New Haven. They paid for my ticket and a hotel room, which was very nice of them, and after checking in and doing a final runthrough I took an Uber to the shiny School of Management building for my big show. After some technical challenges with the room A/V setup—my work laptop would not connect, but luckily I had my personal machine with me, and that played nice—I went through my deck and our work successfully. The students seemed to respond well to it, and there were more than a few who were from the School of Environment, so I had some good questions to answer at the end.
From there, they took me out for a delicious Italian dinner, and a few more faculty from the Urban Studies program joined us, where I learned they are working with WRI on a project I’m involved with. The conversation was far-ranging and very interesting—I was worried we’d only talk shop, but the topics went from the environment to architecture to personal histories to where the best thrift stores are (I said Austin; one of the students suggested London).
This morning I woke to sunshine coming through the window. I got a coffee and a muffin at a crunchy cafe down the street and walked back over to the campus to meet one of the Urban Studies folks I met last night. I was there to look at a room in the Sterling Library where WRI will be exhibiting an installation featuring five years of the WRI Ross Prize. I’d been in the fancy new Management building on Wednesday, but the Library was like I was walking through a Harry Potter set. With my reconnaisance done, I got a car back to the train station and headed back home.
I was nervous going into it, but I think seven years of teaching and other opportunities I’ve had to do public speaking have gone a long way to making it easier to do. As a kid, I never thought I’d be doing this kind of stuff, but I find it a fun challenge, and I have to say, I kind of enjoy it.
Monday morning: there’s about 2″ of very damp snow on the ground, and the outside temperatures are 34˚. We were supposed to have a boiler repairman come by sometime between 10 and 2 today, but as of 11:45 this morning I have heard nothing from the company. We’ve got space heaters working overtime to keep things warm, and it’s averaging about 65˚ inside, but I’d really like to have our heat back.
Update: they sent a nice plumber out to look at the system, who admitted sheepishly that he’s not an HVAC guy, and rescheduled for tomorrow morning. I don’t blame him in the least, but that’s an asshole move by the company.
* * *
I spent most of Sunday putting the final touches on a presentation I’m going to be giving at the Yale School of Management on Wednesday about data visualization for social good, an invitation I was very pleased to accept after helping teach a graduate course at MICA last semester. I’m still practicing my delivery, and after doing the talk for Jen on Sunday afternoon I wound up re-ordering a whole section. I’m hopping a train on Wednesday morning, doing the presentation that afternoon, and they’re taking me out to dinner in the evening. They put me up in a hotel overnight and I take a train back on Thursday morning. It should be a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to the experience.
[frantically returns to practice]
This tank of a laptop is an Aluminum G4 I bought off Craigslist nine years ago to repair and use as a backup/utility machine for sunsetted software. It’s been stored carefully in a bin in the basement, and occasionally it gets dusted off to be pressed into service. The last time I used it for a big project was when I batch-processed all of our first and second-generation font files into OpenType format (modern Macs and most current software doesn’t play well with TrueType or Type1 fonts) with an ancient, unsupported specialty app, generate sample sheets for each folder, and compile them into PDF booklets.
I’ve got two big bins of legacy hardware down there, everything from original MS Word 3.5″ floppy drives to whole laptops, and every time I straighten up the basement I look at the bins and think about culling the whole collection, minus one or two machines. And every time a mixture of apathy and unease stops me. Hoarding situations always start with the words, “…I might need that someday,” so I have to be very careful about what constitutes being useful and having a serious problem. In my defense, I have lightened the collection a couple of times already, but there are still more machines that probably need to be dropped off at an e-cycling center.
Yesterday Jen was working on a file provided by a client with an embedded typeface that wouldn’t open on her machine. After looking it over for a few minutes, I went down to grab the G4, booted it up, and converted the old TrueType font they sent into OpenType and got the file working for her. The machine fired right up, and even though the spinning hard drive is making some kind of vibrating noise, it worked like a charm.
Is it hoarding if they still make you money (or save it in this case)?
* * *
I got an email this morning from Bank of America assuring me that they have ruled in my favor for the fraud claim I filed last Thanksgiving. I’m glad they made an actual human review the case instead of just letting the robots decide everything was legit, because I was ready to go nuclear on them.
I was headed back from the auto parts store this weekend and took a route I rarely every drive; while passing a local auto body shop I spied a peculiar shape among the rows of modern appliances and quickly reversed to take a closer look.
This is a Porsche 356, and even though I could see down to the ground between the rocker panels, there’s obviously no engine, and every panel is covered in bondo, rust, and regret, this shell is probably worth $30K as it sits. Double that if whoever owns it has the engine stored away somewhere.
I think vintage Porsche pricing has come down a bit in the last decade, but air-cooled examples like this are still worth a mortgage, if you have the money for it.
She Drives Me Crazy, by the Fine Young Cannibals. This song has taken up residence in my brain after I listened to a podcast about the quick life and death of this band, who made two albums and split up in the late 80’s. I wasn’t a huge fan back in the day but now I have more respect for the production and craft, and it’s catchy as hell. Bonus trivia: the guitarist and bassist were both from The English Beat, another favorite band of mine from the early 80’s.
Thursday morning at about 4AM, Hazel and I awoke to the odd sound of water dripping somewhere in the bedroom. I got up and followed the noise to the radiator, which was leaking at the relief valve onto the floor. I threw some old T-shirts over it and on the floor, and crawled back into bed until the alarm rang. After making some coffee I checked the basement to find water running freely from the relief valve on the top of the boiler, and on further inspection found that the other radiators were leaking the same way.
After shutting the boiler and main water valve off, a very nice plumber named Youssef came out and between us we got the boiler separated from the water line, the major leaks stopped, and the remainder of the water drained out of the system. I got an estimate to repair the existing boiler and one to replace it, and after picking my chin up off the floor, we opted to repair the unit we’ve got. It’s about 40 years old and will need to be replaced at some point soon, but I wasn’t budgeting for that this year. I had been stockpiling cash to pay for some other stuff, and had just paid off my credit card, so we’ve got enough left over to pay for this out of pocket. But it seems like every time we get some cash assembled to do something we want to do, some other thing breaks and the money goes to that thing.
This pretty watch showed up in my Marketplace feed the other day, and it caught my eye enough to set up an alert on WatchPatrol. It’s a Vostok Amphibia Sniper, a Russian brand making watches since 1941. They sell new models but longtime readers know I’m a sucker for old beat-up antiques. I’ll be on the lookout for a similar model for a lower price. I really dig the balance of the dial face to the crown, the shapes of the dial letters, and the design of the three hands.
I read a random review for an animated series on Adult Swim called Primal, which is written and directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, the man behind Samurai Jack and a bunch of other animated properties you’ve probably heard of. This series follows the story of Fang and Spear, a dinosaur and a caveman (yes, I know) who come to reluctantly bond through shared experience. Because it stars a dinosaur and a caveman, there is no dialogue—much like Samurai Jack—but it is instantly compelling, and his skill in conveying emotion through expression and movement is still unmatched. There are three seasons so far and I’m doing everything I can not to binge them all; this is made easier by the fact that you can’t just listen to it like you would a podcast, although the sound design is gorgeous: it demands your full attention. It’s a visual treat to watch due to the things I’ve already mentioned plus the lush, vibrant landscapes in every frame. Highly recommended.
We hit a huge milestone last year that I neglected to celebrate: our house officially turned 100 years old. Erected sometime in 1925, it’s seen two world wars, 17 presidents, three families, and six color changes (that I can identify). For the last couple of months I’ve been keeping a list of things that need to be addressed. I haven’t really had to do much on it in the last few years, but as with every house, this one needs constant attention. Here are the things I want to take care of that I don’t need to call outside experts in for:
- The master bathroom punchlist. There are a number of small finishing touches that need to be done in the master bathroom,, and these are these should be relatively easy to knock out on a rainy day. The only thing that’s going to be a challenge is fixing a small area of grout on the floor, where the cats knocked over some PVC pipe primer that stained the grout. When I looked into it a few years ago, the grout was only available in a $70/5-gallon bucket—all I need is a half a cup.
- Scrape and paint the windows. I painted the house 5 years ago and did all the windows while I was up on the cherry picker, but it’s about that time when the paint starts to peel, and I’ve got to redo sections of it. Thankfully, I don’t think I need to do any of the eaves, it’s mostly the south-facing windows that need help.
- Replace the kitchen window. There are two rooms in the house that were updated before we moved in with vinyl windows: The original full bathroom and the kitchen. Both replacements were pieces of shit when we moved in. The locks are broken and they leak profusely, so they both need to be swapped out for new units. This will probably be the biggest undertaking.
- Fix the aluminum siding outside the attic window. During the last big windstorm, one section of our aluminum siding was torn off the side of the house. I’ve got a box of replacement siding in the eaves of the garage, so this should be relatively easy to do.
- Clear out the attic. Jen cleared out a bunch of stuff last year, but the fiber ceiling tiles the doctor put up in the 60’s have all fallen down. I had them tested for asbestos and they are free, which is a huge relief, but they all need to be bagged up and hauled out of there. I’m looking into what to put up in their place to keep heat in the house. And there’s a bunch of crap up there that I need to get rid of.
- Fix the greenhouse. I redid the plastic 7 years ago, but whatever I bought this last time didn’t hold up as well as the stuff I got in 2005. There are two places along the top spines where the plastic has split, so I need to redo those sections.